The Sin of Greed — Part Two
What We Call It When We Want to Keep It
Aimee Bock had language for what she did. She hung a holy name on the door. She signed sheets that looked like care. In Part One we said the origin is a heart that will not receive life as gift, so it seizes life as possession. That is still true.
Part Two is about the next move. Greed almost never introduces itself. It translates.
Nobody in a kitchen says, I am an idolater. They say, I’m just being smart with our money. Nobody in a church foyer says, I worship a barn. They say, The Lord’s blessed us. The spirit from Minnesota is not only in a federal indictment. It is in the sentences we use so we can keep wanting more and still sleep.
Man’s court needs a statute. God’s account hears the phrase before the purchase.
The respectable dictionary
These are not theoretical. They are the lines that pass the gravy and survive the handshake after service.
“I’m just providing for my family.”
Provision is commanded. Using the children as a shield is not. A man can work an honest extra shift and love his house. He can also stack hours, land, and a third vehicle while the people he names as the reason barely have him. If the family is the reason, why do they keep getting the leftovers.
“I earned it.”
Sometimes you did. Wages belong to the labourer. The phrase becomes a sacrament when it means therefore no one may ask anything of me, including God. The oil-patch boom taught a whole province this sentence. A man comes off nights with a cheque that would make a teacher weep, and the truck, the sled, the bigger mortgage all arrive wearing the same words. When the bust comes, the payments do not repent with him. I earned it is a poor god. It cannot carry you through a downturn and it cannot answer for a hard heart in a good year.
“It’s just business.”
That split is the oldest trick in the book: Sunday ethics in one pocket, market ethics in the other. Paul would not grant the split. Greed is listed with the sins we would never joke about in the foyer. If it cannot be named among the saints on Sunday, it cannot be baptised as strategy on Monday.
“Everyone does it.”
Herd cover. Once a whole table agrees that bidding wars are normal, that a second title is wisdom, that a church’s size is the Lord’s smile, the lonely conviction dies. Greed loves company because company feels like permission.
“The money would be wasted anyway.”
This is how theft learns to sound like stewardship. If Ottawa is foolish, if the church budget is sloppy, if the neighbour is lazy, then keeping more becomes “reallocation.” Scripture is not impressed. A flawed steward does not make you the Owner.
“God wants me to prosper.”
Blessing language is the most dangerous sentence in a Christian mouth. The Father does give bread. He also warns that those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare (1 Timothy 6:9). Desire — not merely the balance. Prosperity is not proof of holiness any more than a crowded parking lot is proof of Pentecost. Ananias wanted the honour of generosity and a private remainder in the same breath. God read both columns.
“I’ll give when we’re secure.”
The rich fool’s barns were going to be enough tomorrow. He died that night. Delayed generosity is often appetite asking for one more season.
“No one really got hurt.”
The victims of respectable greed are distant: the renter who cannot save, the young couple priced out of the next street, the kid who learns that love is what remains after the deal. If harm has to wear a name tag before we will admit it, we have already chosen not to see.
“That’s the market.”
The market can describe a price. It cannot absolve a soul. When we say that’s the market, we often mean do not look at my hands.
A modern picture closer to home
Feeding Our Future is useful because it is loud. Most of us need a quieter mirror.
Here is one you can touch in Alberta this year.
Through 2025 and into 2026, investment newsletters have been writing the province like a playbook. British Columbia brought in a flipping tax. Rates eased. The advice, printed in plain daylight, is to take equity out of a West Coast house and park it in Calgary or Edmonton — “the Alberta pivot,” “positive cash flow from day one,” “smart investors.” Edmonton is being sold as the early upswing. Detached homes in good neighbourhoods still priced like a bargain if you already own somewhere else. No land-transfer tax. No speculation tax. Come north and harvest the advantage.
None of that is a crime. That is the point.
In Calgary, between 2021 and 2024, home prices rose about 32 percent and rents about 41 percent, while the average income rose about 8 percent. A city report in 2025 said the housing being built was a fraction of what the city would need. For a lot of young Calgarians the dream is no longer a title. It is making rent. Edmonton is now being pitched as the next field to join to the last field.
Listen to the foyer version of the same story.
We’re not flipping. We’re investing.
Somebody’s going to buy it.
We’re providing rental stock.
It’s for the kids’ future.
If I don’t, a syndicate from the coast will.
The Lord’s opened a door.
A door can be open and still lead into a barn.
Isaiah already knew the respectable version: Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land (Isaiah 5:8). He was not writing to a woman inventing names on a meal roster. He was writing to people who could defend every purchase at the gate.
Hold that beside the grocery cart, which is even closer. Canadians have watched food climb while the largest banners insisted they were not the cause. Surveys have found most shoppers believe inflation was used as cover. One in four households was food-insecure in 2025. The boardroom says margins and tariffs and supply chain. The kitchen says what else can you do, that’s just the price now. Both sentences can be partly true and still hide a hunger that will not stop at enough.
And the church is not innocent of the dialect. In Medicine Hat this summer a congregation lost its charitable status after auditors found tens of thousands in personal benefit on the ministry books — food, unreported compensation, private use dressed in sacred language. That is not every church. It is a warning about what blessing-talk can cover when no one in the foyer is willing to say the word greed.
Bock called it mercy.
We call it stewardship.
We call it the Alberta advantage.
We call it a hedge.
We call it provision.
We call it a door the Lord opened.
The vocabulary changes. The altar does not.
Why this has to convict, not only inform
A learning message can leave you able to spot Aimee Bock. A convicting one will not let you use her as cover.
Ask the phrases out loud, in the room where you actually live.
If your extra land, extra title, extra hours, extra barn is for the family, would the family say they have you.
If you earned it, who taught you that earning ends the conversation with God.
If everyone does it, name one person you would trust to stop you.
If God wants you to prosper, open 1 Timothy 6 and read the snare as if it were addressed to a believer in Alberta, not a villain in Minnesota.
If no one got hurt, list the people who will never sit at your table and will still pay your price — the renter, the late buyer, the child who inherited your anxiety instead of your presence.
Man can punish a forged roster. He will not knock on your second property. Hebrews 4:13 still stands: everything uncovered, laid bare, before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. El Roi does not need an indictment to read a kitchen. The danger of Part One, if we leave it there, is that we walk out grateful we are not her. The danger of Part Two is that we hear our own voice and still prefer the translation.
Greed is not only what gets you five hundred months. It is what you say so you never have to use the word.
The Music “We Don’t Call It Greed” – The Lyrics
Download the Guitar Chord Sheet and Worship Team Direction
[Intro — spoken, almost]
We hung a holy word on a hungry thing
And swore it still sounded like wisdom
[Verse 1]
Nobody says it at the table
Nobody says it in the lot
We pass the plate and praise the blessing
And we keep what the blessing got
We say we’re only being careful
We say the kids have got to eat
We say a man should build a future
Then we build one they can’t reach
[Chorus]
We don’t call it greed, we call it stewardship
We don’t call it greed, we call it smart
We don’t call it greed, we call it a door the Lord opened
And a hedge around our heart
But the God who sees the roster
Sees the keys there on the Book
You can bless it in the foyer
He still calls it what it is
[Verse 2]
Out here we know the boom language
I earned it, leave it be
A cheque comes off the night shift
And a barn grows where a home should be
We say that’s just the market, brother
We say somebody else will buy
We join a field onto a field
And we sleep fine if we don’t look
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
A woman called it mercy once
With a name hung on the door
We shook our heads and thanked the Lord
That we don’t steal from the poor
Then we priced a young man out of town
With a sentence that felt clean
If I don’t take it, it runs out
That’s the gospel we rehearsed between
[Bridge]
I earned it
It’s just business
Everyone I know would do the same
I’ll give later
No one got hurt
We were only being wise in Jesus’ name
[Final chorus — quieter, then the last four lines almost spoken]
We don’t call it greed, we call it stewardship
We don’t call it greed, we call it smart
We don’t call it greed, we call it a door the Lord opened
And a hedge around our heart
But the God who sees the roster
Sees the keys there on the Book
You can bless it in the foyer
He still calls it by its name
[Tag]
Man can miss it in the kitchen
God does not.
Ask for the mercy
You dressed in other words.
Part Three will ask the living question: how a person earns a wage, owns a place, and even prospers without kneeling to more.