When Is Enough, Enough?

Do you ever reach that point in life where you’ve just had enough? Maybe you’ve come to that place of not being able to handle someone’s bad attitude anymore at work, so you vent to yourself, “I’ve had enough!” Or perhaps when your kids have been picking at each other all day, you’ve reached a breaking point and lash out, “That’s enough!” Or possibly you’ve counseled someone in a problem too many times to count, but they never take your advice and so you tell your friend, “Enough is enough!”

These situations seem like justifiable uses of the powerful word, enough. And yet there’s another occasion when “enough” just might be the right thing to say. Seldom however does this “enough” get exercised in American culture. It’s the time when someone looks at their money and everything it can buy and they say to themselves, “I have enough.” This could be the most important time to say “enough.”

You see, we’re so easily lured into the false reality that we always need more, no matter what our status in life. But always wanting more for nothing more than satisfying that rush of getting the next dollar or possession is something we need to watch. It has a name, and it makes a famous “Top 7” list that would be better to miss. The unjustifiable need for more is called greed. It is considered by the ancients of faith as one of the 7 deadly sins.

Greed is the excessive desire for money or possessions. The key here is the word excessive. When our desire for money or possessions not needed becomes excessive, then we’re caught in greed. The thing is though that getting more of something we want is not the solution to our deepest needs. The easiest place to be greedy is with one of the most powerful pulls on earth – money. Is it possible to have enough money? The better question is, “Does money ultimately satisfy?”

Consider the case of a young Wall Street trader named Sam Polk who was thrilled when he got his first bonus of $40,000. Just five years later at the age of 30 with no children, debts or philanthropic goal, he was angry that his $3.6 million bonus wasn’t big enough. If we love money, money is going to let us down. It says in Ecclesiastes 5:10, “Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!” Loving money will result in never having enough, and that chase will never satisfy.

One of the ways to tackle our problem with greed is to take inventory of our bank accounts and possessions and honestly assess, “Do I have enough?” And if you want to go even deeper, ask yourself, “When is enough, enough?” When you get close to that point of having enough, and wrestling with yourself and God a bit in coming to that conclusion, perhaps at that point you’re on the cusp of being the most generous version of yourself you could possibly be.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon