Why do we fall prey to greed?

I am thrilled and amazed and delighted and overcome!

I just received the following email,

"Greeting,

I am Attorney and I contact you for a genuine business transaction which I want to entrust in your care. ... about my late client fund, (there) is nothing to worry about as everything is legal with documentations. Deposit valued ($8,500,000.00 United States).

(1) Can you handle this project?

(2) Can I give you this trust?

I expect your urgent response if you can handle this project.

Best Regard's,

Please kindly reply to my alternative email address below ... "

(Gellman note: email withheld because I do not want any of you to horn in on my windfall of $8.5 million).

Imagine my joy at receiving such good news.

So let me talk right now -- not to those dear readers who know that this is obviously a scam which I hope is every single one of you. But let me talk to the readers of my column who might think even for a moment, "What the heck. It might be real. Let me just respond to this guy and see if he really has $8,500,000 for me."

I have something to teach you ... you need help. You need help now and you need help for the foreseeable future. And the kind of help you need is not financial help or psychiatric help, it is spiritual help. That spiritual help is (take your pick)

1. If it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be true.

2. There is no free lunch

3. There is no shortcut to success

Now you/we all know these three lessons and yet it remains true that many of us, sadly myself included at several desperate moments in my life, can fall prey to the desperate belief that what we know is true about life is not really true about life. And do not believe for a moment that this crude email scam is only a danger to the uneducated and dim-witted. I have made many condolence phone calls to very savvy business people who were scammed out of millions of dollars by someone just as corrupt but quite a bit more sophisticated than the stupid scammer who showed up in my inbox this morning.

Those who prey upon the gullible with emails like the above -- which is one of many like it that I receive every week -- do not care if a million people delete their email scam if just one person bites on it. Then the scammers are on their way to gaining access to your money and your life. One out of a million are good odds for them.

What leads people to go for this rubbish? What are they thinking? The Bible is our guide. We know that the scammer is violating No. 8 of the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not steal), but what about the one in a million who says to the scammer, "Great! Send me the money!"?

We must all realize that there is a dark side within each of us. That dark side is not really our violence but actually our greed that provokes violence and the willingness to believe a lie about life. It is true that our good side -- our trusting nature -- can also get us in trouble, but predominately it is our greed and not our goodness that sinks us. The problem is all those who prey on our greed.

In Leviticus we are commanded, "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:14). This means more than just playing a cruel trick on disabled people. It means do not use people's weaknesses to exploit them. In the case of my primitive scammer that means preying on people's trust and greed, but it also means not offering a drink to a person you know has a problem with alcohol. It also means not taking a gambling-addicted friend to the racetrack. It might mean not flattering a vain person just to gain an advantage. There are many forms of blindness and many forms of stumbling blocks. Almost all forms of advertising violate the stumbling block law of Leviticus.

The mystery of the scammer who offered to give me $8,500,000 is not why he or she would do it. They are corrupt thugs. The mystery is what is there in all of us that is vulnerable to the predations of people who are peddling the oddly believable lie that we can get something for nothing.

I don't understand that dark side, but I have no time to figure it out. I am off to see the world just as soon as the money comes in. The guy said that if I sent him some money he could get it to me today.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including "Religion for Dummies," co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.)