(UNDATED) “Greed is good.”

So said the fictional Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) to the shareholders of Teldar Paper in the 1987 movie “Wall Street.”

“I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works.

“Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit … And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.”

Oops.

This week as the Dow plummeted, 13,000 news stories included the word “greed” in summarizing our nation’s current crisis, economic and otherwise:

— Four Merrill Lynch executives pocketed $121 million in bonuses just before taxpayers helped finance a takeover of the failing firm.

— Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, one sportswriter said, typifies the belief that living in America is to be part of a culture in which nothing is ever enough and the end (sports stardom) justifies the means (illegal steroids).

— One book review of “Death by Leisure” (by Chris Ayres, the Hollywood correspondent for The Times of London) describes how Ayres found his life in California to be fiscally confusing as the local culture lured him into living large and introduced him to his “inner Big Spender.”

In an age of greed, it is sobering to note that every religious tradition rejects greed. Hinduism’s sacred Bhagavad Gita warns that “hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.” Buddha observed that “there is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.” Jesus commanded his followers to “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

Sorry, Mr. Gekko, but Greed is not good for us.

In the 2002 book “Affluenza,” co-authors John DeGraaf, David Wann and Thomas Naylor, describe our national affliction as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”

The No. 1 byproduct of an age of greed is hungry souls. The Romans learned this two millennia ago. “Money is like sea water,” the old saying goes. “The more you drink the more you are thirsty.” Our current economic crisis is providing us an opportunity to rethink what matters and to turn away from the materialism that holds us in its grip.

Jesus explained that a man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions. He told a parable of a hedonistic, self-centered rich man who hoarded his wealth and laid up plenty of good things that would last many years so he could eat, drink and be merry.

The man was a fool, Jesus said, because he was swapping the true riches of this life for possessions that he could not take with him to the next. Jesus instructed his followers to seek God first and God would provide their basic necessities.

C.S. Lewis paraphrased it this way: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Jesus offered an antidote that can cure affluenza. He used the rich-man (who lost it all) as an example:”This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

So what does “rich toward God” mean? For starters, it’s acknowledging that our material blessings are gifts from God that allow us to meet our basic needs. It also means benefiting others, not just accumulating more for ourselves. In a me-first economy, the spiritually focused person has learned the counterintuitive secret that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

In our greed-driven society, when the stability of our jobs and economy has been shaken and we are all uncertain about the future, the great religious traditions agree that our lives consist of more than our possessions. We can’t take our “stuff” with us to eternity; all we possess is a gift on loan from our generous God who is calling us to a generous life that is rich towards God and others.

Gordon Gekko was wrong. Greed is not good.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)