GREEDY, AH WANNA SEE YEW!

A Thievin’ Theologian Flunks Love 101
(The names are as fake as Greedy’s toothy smile,
but , I hate to say, the story’s true)

By Patricia Backora

 

His eyes danced with delight. It was testimony time at Sweetwater Church, and Brother Duncan Greedy was telling everyone how Bible college had enriched his walk with Jesus.

“Did y’all know there’s three different words for ‘love’ in Greek?” tall, lanky Duncan asked all the fascinated faces around him. “Phileo, agape, and eros. Now, phileo love is like brotherly love. That’s where they get the name ‘Philadelphia’ from, the City of Brotherly Love. Then there’s agape, spelled a-g-a-p-e and pronounced ah-GAH-pay. That’s the most Christlike love of all, saints, the self-sacrificin’ kind Christians are supposed to have for one another. Finally,” he blushed in his country-boy way, “there’s ‘eros’ love, the kind husbands have for wives.”

“What a blessin’ not to be limited to English in my daily study. Thank God,” he grinned, “I know Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and can dig into the real meat of God’s Holy Word, instead of relyin’ on vague, all-purpose English words. Greek really does zero in on the exact meanin’ of what you’re tryin’ to say.”

“Amen,” droned a few sleepy saints, who envied him his exhaustive erudition.

“Thank you, Brother Duncan,” sighed the pastor. “Who’ll be next, now? We’ve got time for one more good one.”

They say opposites attract. True. Duncan turned on the charm, and it wasn’t long before his proposed to a girl he had his eye on. It was well nigh miraculous. Pearl had refused to date others in the church. Her one love had always been to serve Christ, and her dearest dream had always been to go to Mexico as a missionary. But she even gave her calling up to make Duncan happy.

You could never have found a sweeter, more unselfish Christian than she was, even in her poverty. How true, you acquire the flavor of what you marinate yourself in. Truly she reminded me of Jesus.

If I live 1000 years I’ll never figure out what attracted Pearl to that guy, except they were both tall and skinny. Once she made the last payment on her station wagon, wedding bells rang. Now she could stop slaving at a typewriter and start cooking and cleaning for Duncan. We were all glad to see her enjoy a little prosperity for a change.

But what price prosperity? Duncan didn’t much care where that came from, in that recession year of ‘74.

Now Duncan had it made. Not only had he gotten his girl, and all her domestic skills, but a vehicle for his new business venture: Splatter Brothers House Painting. The pastor heartily approved. Some brothers in the church needed a job, but didn’t want to work in an ungodly secular environment.

Most people thought Duncan was a little weird, but, what the heck? That only made him more lovable. You never saw that guy without a goofy grin on his face, as if he was always sharing a private joke with himself.

Duncan took on a his motley crew: a reformed hippie, his buddy Buck Barker, one dishevelled dude who’d just as soon change his job as his socks, and Brother Wayne, a highly respected church elder who had three kids and a fourth on the way. What fellowship they all would share, they thought. Why, it’d be the next best thing to heaven.

From the outset Duncan let his underlings know that before he’s split up the money among them, his own business expenses must be deducted first. They all agreed.

His phone bill must be paid, since it was used to land jobs for them all. Fair enough. Gas must be put in his tank, and his car must be kept in good running order. Also reasonable.

Duncan had such confidence in their brotherly love he also deducted his extraneous expenses, such as his mortgage and utility bills. And there were the personal perks, such as refuelling his fridge with health foods. But never with the same frugal fare the rest of his men subsisted on. That would have wrecked his hypochondriac stomach, and he was allergic to anything cheap. So he splashed out on the finest delicacies money could buy. Economy was a virtue for everyone but himself. I remember once he showed a bunch of us the first juicer I’d ever seen, an innovation which was just then coming into vogue. What a genius invention that thing was. It could turn a big pile of carrots into a tablespoon of juice.

Working with Duncan would prove an educational experience for his crew.

“Duncan,” Buck asked him, as they prepared to work on a rambling old house, “aren’t you gonna scrape the old paint off first before using your spray gun?”

“What on earth for?”

“If you don’t, Duncan, it’ll look all lumpy and uneven.”

It would not do for Duncan’s professional prowess to be questioned by the other men, who looked at him quizzically. Even lethargic Marvin, an archetypical bachelor slob said: “If I were you, Duncan, I’d think twice before cutting corners on this one.”

He scratched the back of his neck with a wry smile. “Well, I’d kind’a thought of scrapin’ it, but once we slather a good pile of paint on, nobody’ll notice anyway.”

Buck’s cigarette nearly fell out of his mouth. “You mean you’re gonna prime it without scraping it first? Look how weathered this old house is. It must be fifty years since it was last painted.” He scraped a sliver of peeling paint off with his fingernail.

Duncan scratched his head. “What’s primin’?”

“It’s when you paint on the first coat, then let it dry before applying the second.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Duncan grinned, “It’d take way too long.”

Buck rolled up his eyes. “Now, Duncan, maybe I’m being a bit of an ignoramus, but don’t you think the paint job will last a lot longer if you apply two layers instead of only one?”

“Not the way I do it, Buck. That’s why I got this little baby,” he winked at his sprayer. “It blasts the paint on faster than ten men can in the same time usin’ brushes.”

“But it’s gonna look like hell if you don’t scrape the old paint off first, then prime the house, give it a day or two to dry, then go over it again. Or didn’t you factor that in when you made your bid, Duncan?”

“Listen to Buck,” said Wayne. “ He’s one sharp cookie. He’ll never steer you wrong, Duncan.”

Duncan got a peculiar frown on his face. “Now y’all see here. I don’t need nobody to steer me nowhere. Look, y’all, there might just be one Way to get to heaven, but there’s lots of ways to solve a nit-pickin’ problem like a bump on a wall. If we see any, we’ll just slap on more paint to make ‘em less noticeable. And don’t worry, Buck, we’ll pile on enough paint for two coats, all at once. That’s bein’ a better steward of our time. The Bible says: ‘Redeem the time’. Not even Buck can dispute that. Remember, y’all, the slower we go, the quicker Christmas comes.”

If the men got forty dollars a week apiece, they thought they were living high on the hog. Problem was, Duncan always underestimated the costs connected with the job, though he’d always buy less than half the paint needed and thin it out with water. The customer would marvel at Duncan’s bargain-basement bid, even more at the sheer speed at which a big two-story house could get painted. One starry-eyed lady said, “It’s nothing short of miraculous! Y’all finished in only three hours!”

Duncan grinned and took a bow, waving his sprayer. He said, “That’s the miracle of modern technology.” He really thought, She’s dumb as mud. Good timin, too.’ Rain’s in tomorrow’s forecast. I did my part. I slapped new paint on for her. I never said how long it would last, and before it runs, I’ll run.

That paint sprayer was Duncan’s favorite toy. How easy to slather his thin gruel onto unprepared surfaces. Generally, the customer wouldn’t even bother to check to see if he’d scraped the old paint off first. So long as Duncan split before hard rains hit, he’d be home free.

The first couple of paydays, the crew members took their losses with grace. But winter was coming on, and poverty was beginning to take its toll on crew morale.

Every day Buck would take one mayonnaise sandwich to work, two if times were good. His three friends didn’t fare much better. Wistfully they’d eye the head honcho, who always had a bountiful feast to say grace over. He’d have two or three whole wheat sandwiches stacked high with the choicest fillings, and always a pile of special homemade cookies for dessert. What a luxury, to bake cookies in that year when the sugar industry copied the marketing strategy of the oil industry__faked a big shortage, and ran up sugar prices to $5.00 a bag, equivalent to $10.00 in today’s money.

Buck,dizzy with hunger, and shivering head to toe, tramped through the snow to ask Duncan, who was munching away, lost in his own private bliss: “Would you mind sharing just one with the rest of us?”

Duncan’s cookie-crammed mouth fell open. “The very idea!” he huffed. “Y’all have got some nerve! Can’t your wife bake, Buck?”

“With what?” Buck shot back. “You can’t make cookies out of hot air.”

Seeing the vacant look on Duncan’s face, Buck resolved he’d rather shut up and fast than ask again.

To this day I don’t know how Duncan got any sleep at night, the way he treated his brethren in Christ; the way his tainted paint smudged his Christian testimony. Worst of all, it didn’t seem to faze him that his hypocrisy grieved the Holy Spirit.

Because he always made the cheapest bids, Duncan landed a contract to renovate the Grand Old Train Station, an historical site which allegedly predated the Civil War. What lay behind Duncan’s toothy grin as he strolled through the dilapidated depot and appraised the job? What brewed in his bustling brain?

Having outlasted the blast of Yankee guns and braved the brunt of cannon balls, would this relic of the Old Confederacy survive Duncan’s splatter gun, or would the stalwart landmark fall?

Over the years, whole chunks of plaster had fallen out of the walls, due to the high humidity. But Duncan was undaunted. “Piece of cake,” he said, unmoved by the scope of the job. “Fellers, this job’s a gift. We’ll knock it out in no time.”

“How?” asked Buck, who aggravated Duncan the most, because he wouldn’t shut up and submit to authority like everybody else without contributing his two cents’ worth.

“Just go faster with the plaster,” Duncan shrugged. “Any idiot can figure that one out.”

And go fast they did. Bothersome Buck tried to reason with Duncan again. “Hey, Duncan, I’m telling you right now, you’ve gotta give each layer of plaster time to set and dry before you apply the next coat. Otherwise the air can’t get through to harden it. Not in this kind of climate.”

“Aw...it’ll look just fine.”

“But what if it doesn’t set, Duncan, and rots away with mildew? What then?”

“Aw, Buck, stop borrowin’ trouble. All they’re payin’ us for is to fill in the holes in this wall. Pure and simple. They never said we had to resurrect this old ruin to everlastin’ life. For all we know, the Russians might nuke this place to kingdom come tomorrow, and even if they don’t, the sinners who hired us are all goin’ to hell anyhow. Trouble with you is, you worry too much.”

“Okay,” Buck shrugged, “you’re the boss.”

“That’s better. Now let’s get that plaster mixed. Time we spent a-arguin’, we could’a had it done by now.”

In no time all the gaps were filled in and the train station looked good as new_until the following week, when it caved in like a California mudslide.

So who got blamed when the inspectors saw it? Poor, unlucky Buck, the one who’d dared to doubt Duncan’s erudite wisdom. Duncan cackled like a mother hen when he fondled his filthy lucre, pleased as punch he lived way out in the sticks and his hideout was hard to find.

Throughout their trial of affliction, Brother Wayne kept the other men’s spirits up with his philosophical humour. He’d remind them they were only living out a practical lesson in forgiving and forbearing one another in love. Going through a fiery trial was an occasion for rejoicing, he said, because their faith was being refined in the furnace of affliction. If somebody wrongs you, it’s God’s business to set them straight.

Nevertheless, Duncan never did apologize to anybody he’d wronged, whether the church saints, or to the sinners whose houses he’d “painted” with cut-price slop he’d gotten for just $2.00 a can. He’d sweeten the pot by telling customers his curdled, petrified old paint cost much more. So he was a liar, as well as a cheat. Sometimes a hypocrite practicing greasy grace and sloppy agape needs the cuff of the “bear” in “forbearance” to strike the fear of God in his heart.

The Splatter Brothers were commissioned to renovate an old mansion with an ornate staircase. Once again Buck begged to differ with Duncan. “Duncan, the man specifically said: Stain the stairs and paint the walls. I heard him.”

“Well, you need to clean out your ears, Buck. He said: ‘Paint the stairs and stain the walls’.”

Buck knew how intractable he was. “Okay, have it your way.”

“All right, fellers,” said Duncan, “we gotta hustle now. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve got Christmas shoppin’ to do before all the stores close.”

Heaving a sigh, the crew began, knowing what the result would be. Their client wasn’t around to be consulted. They carried out Duncan’s orders, just ‘cause he was boss. Unquestioning submission to authority. That sort of reminds me of the excuse the Nazis gave after WWII. They were only following orders. That old mansion didn’t have a prayer, as Duncan aimed his slop sprayer.

When they finished, Duncan grinned gleefully. Time to receive the reward of iniquity. Nobody would bother to inspect the work first, Duncan assumed. They’d just take his word for it that he’d done the job satisfactorily. He bragged to all the others about that long-awaited wild spending spree he’d go on to celebrate the birth of the One Who gave His all for others.

Then the floorboards creaked as if a freight train was coming to avenge the fall of the train station. Duncan froze. The steps drew closer and closer. He jumped like a scared jackrabbit. Before Duncan could duck out the rear door he heard an earth-shaking roar: “GREEDY, AH WANNA SEE YEW!”

There stood the angriest man Duncan had ever seen. His eyes blazed fire and his nose breathed steam. The tirade which followed was unprintable. Duncan’s daddy had never given him such a verbal whippin’ in his life. The four crew members ducked into another room. They just couldn’t hold it in. They’d have to go back and strip off Duncan’s fine craftsmanship and redo it properly. But laughter is good medicine for bruised morale.

It seems Duncan must have heard them laugh. Something turned him from a bunglin’ good ‘ol boy corner-cuttin’ con into a much meaner con. Sin is like that. Only when its airbrushed veneer is stripped away do you behold it for the nasty, stinky thing of hell it really is. It’s easy to be duped by a lovable rogue who grins so good you never notice he’s busy bilking you behind your back. That kind of guy can’t be let off the hook for “not being all there”, simply because it takes a high degree of serpentine cunning to exploit vulnerable people the way Duncan did.

Contrary to popular belief, even God’s patience with unrepentant sinners is not infinite. Otherwise, why would He say He’s coming someday to punish the earth for its wickedness? God’s children are called to rebuke sin when necessary, not be doormats for those who abuse our love time and time and time again.

Buck finally had his showdown with Duncan one snowy-cold afternoon. Duncan was still in the afterglow of Christmas cheer, anticipating a prosperous new year. With the help of his four hungry men, his cup would surely overflow again and again. But how grateful was Duncan Greedy?

The time was drawing near for Brother Wayne’s wife to give birth. He felt a strong need to call her and ask if she was okay. Since his job kept him broke, Wayne had to borrow a coin if he wanted to use a pay phone. He knew only one man among them whose pockets weren’t hollow_Duncan. Taking a deep breath, he asked if he might borrow a whole quarter.

He might as well have asked Duncan for a whole quart of blood. At first, Duncan raised his eyebrows in shock. Then he snapped, “No time for that! Get back to work!”

Buck boiled over. He strode over and sharply said: “I don’t believe we heard you right. What did you just say to Wayne?”

“All I said was, we’re way behind schedule, so what gives Wayne the notion he’s got time to call his wife?”

“Well, wouldn’t you call yours if she was about to have a baby and needed reassurance?”

“Well, that’s different.”

Collars were really getting hot by now. I’ve rephrased their dialogue to make it printable, so you’ll get the gist of the conversation without the shock of the original vernacular. Now, the ball’s in Buck’s court.

“How’s it different? Doesn’t the Bible say to love your neighbor as yourself?”

Duncan grew livid. “Now you see here, Barker, you’re in rebellion. You’re tryin’ to usurp my authority over these men...”

“You don’t have authority over my cigarette butt!” shouted Buck, tossing one to the ground. “For months and months all of us have put up with your bull, and the only reason we did it was out of respect for Brother Wayne, not for you! You’ve robbed us blind every single week! We oughta report you to the Labor Board for fraud! While we barely had a scrap of bread among us, you stuffed your fat face with big sandwiches and piles of cookies, and you had the gall to eat them right under our nose, you flea-brained flake! You skimmed off cash you could have paid us with and paid YOUR gas bill, YOUR electric bill, YOUR phone bill, YOUR car upkeep and gas, and filled YOUR refrigerator with fancy foods while we almost dropped dead from cold and hunger! Is that showing the love of Christ?”

“Well...uh...we did have an agreement...”

“It was like making a deal with satan! Every day when we got up and dragged our dead bodies to work, we kept our mouths shut, hoping against hope the Lord would make you see the light! But now you’ve pushed me too far!”

Greedy started to fidget. He looked round, but got no supportive glances from the others.“Look, if it’s about the money...”

“Well, I don’t need your grimy money! I wouldn’t wipe my nose on it! You make me sick, the garbagey way you just treated Brother Wayne’s wife, all over a stinking quarter! You don’t care two cents about her! All you love is yourself! You cheap chiseller! It would be bad enough if what you just said about wanting to get finished on time was the real reason! Now I may look dumb, but don’t take me for a fool, boy! I just ain’t that stupid! You were worried Wayne wouldn’t pay the quarter back, weren’t you?”

“That’s none of your business, Barker! Some Christian you are! At least I don’t cuss!”

A storm brewed on Buck’s face. “The way you live is one big cussword, the way you screw so-called sinners day after day after day and still have the gall to tell ‘em the grand old story of Jesus and His love! So who’s the sinner, Greedy? It’s you! You and your convoluted words for ‘love’, when you wouldn’t even recognize love if it hit you between the eyes! You say you feel sorry for us dumb hicks for only knowing English. Well, boy, if God can’t get through to you in plain English, all your Greek gobbledygook is just so much hot air! Now, what was that St. Paul said about a clanging cymbal?”

Duncan gritted his teeth. “It’s YOU who thinks you’re smarter’n everybody else, just ‘cause you believe in evolution!”

“Well,” retorted Buck, “evolution is only a theory, but to say you evolved from a monkey insults the monkey. All of us here have treated you like a friend, but that doesn’t mean beans to you. What was that you said about the love of a friend? And how did you return it? You spat on our friendship, and you stole our livelihoods out from under our feet. I know your kind, Greedy. All you do is use people, then throw ‘em away like old trash you don’t need anymore. No animal on earth is that mean. And do you think it’s the love of Christ, to con your customers like you do each and every day? No, Duncan, you couldn’t have evolved from anything except a shark. So testify to the whole church and say: ‘God showed me this and this, and I’m superior to the rest of you yokels who barely graduated high school.’ But in the final analysis, God’s gonna bring you to book for what you did with all that fancy book-learnin’. You not only treated poor Wayne and his family like dirt, but Christ too. He said that what you do to your brother, you do to Him as well, or didn’t they expound on that superfluous point in seminary? By their fruits ye shall know them, the Lord said, and just being around you leaves a nasty taste in my mouth!” Buck spat on the ground.

Duncan looked as mad as a hornet. “Barker,” he cried, hoisting his aristocratic nose high, “you’re fired! Get lost!”

But Buck wasn’t about to slink away like a whipped puppy and let him have the final word. He threw down his paint brush and yelled, “I’ve never been fired from any job before, you bloodsucker, and this won’t be the first time! You can’t fire me from this joke of a job! I quit!”

Within the next couple of days, the long-standing prayer of Brother Wayne’s wife was answered. Every day upon Wayne’s arrival home she’d asked him : “Have you quit your job yet?”

Now Duncan had no crew left. He just scratched his head and said, “Why’s everybody mad at me, anyway? Why’d Buck bless me out like that? They’re the ones who were goofin’ off on the job, and slothfulness is a sin. Aw...to heck with ‘em all! I can do just fine without ‘em, and I won’t have to pay no wages, neither!”

Well, y’all can guess real quick how that plan panned out. In short order Splatter Brothers Paint Company went belly up.

At church, Pearl tried to apologize to one sister she’d been close to in earlier years. She found it awkward, as if the words stuck in her throat, as if it were agonizing to mention the upheaval caused by her husband. Her eyes were poignant with fathomless pain. But it was not she who should be blamed. It was Duncan’s duty to own up to his sins, which he was much too proud to do.

Forgiveness must sometimes be conditional. Jesus said in Luke 17:3: If (thy brother) repent, forgive him. In no case should we stop loving the other person, but true reconciliation is a two-way transaction. If the rascal is determined not to ask forgiveness, maintaining genuine fellowship with him is impossible.

So what if your “brother” refuses to listen to reason? Remember, Duncan had defrauded a church elder too. Wayne was such a sweet, patient saint, who daily lived what he preached. Duncan didn’t care where his affluence came from, even if it came out of other men’s mouths. Jesus instructed His disciples that if the offender refuses to listen to a privately spoken rebuke, he is to be publicly censured by the church (Matthew 18:15-17). If he still refuses to listen, he is to be treated as an unbeliever, rather than a brother.

I honestly believe the pastor was patient with Duncan because Pearl had always been one of the saintliest pillars of our church, and he didn’t want to hurt her. She had quite enough to bear, living with that man. If it weren’t for the beautiful children she had, she might have wished she could go back to her former life as a poorer woman who had to depend solely on her holy, harmless Saviour.

Not content with the unrepented-of discord he sowed among the brethren, dastardly Duncan concocted an even more brilliant scheme several years later: quit working to support his big family and go back to college. Poor Pearl was up to her neck in diapers and dishes and had four children under the age of six.

“So what do you think of goin’ back to work so I can study to be a history prof?” Duncan proposed to her. “ It’d only be temporary, of course; that is, unless you really enjoy the job and want to keep on workin’.”

There were practical considerations. Her mouth quivered with strain. How, she asked, could they possibly afford child care for four small children? That alone would eat up all her take-home pay.

“Oh, you’ll think of somethin’,” he breezily said. “You’re a smart gal. But my dream will never come true without your help. If you truly love Jesus, you’ll submit. Remember how Brother Barry said a good wife would even jump off a cliff if her husband told her to.”

Pearl knew only God could deliver her from having to leave her family in day care they could never afford. Her little babies needed her. She prayed her heart out for a miracle.

The good Lord works in mysterious ways. It wasn’t long Duncan’s uncle went to his eternal reward. Even before the body was cold the will was read, and guess who got a big slab of the pie? Problem solved. Pearl could stay home with the kids, and Duncan could be a schoolboy again.

At the gravesite service, Duncan hid his face behind his sleeve. “He’s breaking down,” whispered one of the mourners, “and he’s just too dignified to let us see him cry.”

Once the minister finished his long-winded eulogy and committed the departed’s soul to God, Duncan hasted away to be alone with his thoughts. “This really hit him hard,” said his elderly aunt. I never realized Duncan and Lester were that close.”

Pearl caught up with Duncan. Instead of tears, she saw a grin as wide as the state of Texas. “You look so peaceful, Duncan,” she said. “You must be happy for Uncle Lester, just knowing his sufferings are over, and he’s with Jesus now.”

“Oh, it ain’t just that,” Duncan sniffed. “That ol’ guy taught me more about love in the cemetery than I learned in the seminary. Greater love hath no uncle than this, than that he lay down his life savings for dear ol’ Duncan.”