When I teach Church History from the Reformation to the present I focus on my own denomination’s history in a couple of lectures. I will give students the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve certainly had our warts (which I remind them is true of ANY church movement in history).

One of the things I tell them is we don’t seem to learn from history. When we went through the whole fiasco in the mid-80s with Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart one would tend to think that Christians would get off that celebrity bandwagon. Harsh lessons from those episodes should have been enough. Of course, I’ve been wrong about that one.

One would also think that having just gone through an economic crisis that bordered on collapse, investment firms would have learned to cool their jets and get back to some sound practices. Of course, I’m wrong about that as well.

In an era of blaming greedy Republicans it is interesting to note that the perpetrator here is a greedy Democrat. (I thought they didn’t like making money.) But the lesson of Jon Corzine is tragic. It is tragic that in the middle of this economic mess he decided to try and play the dangerous game. Talk about short -term memory loss!

But it is also tragic because we will not learn lessons from this episode, either. We will still have the temptation with greed. It will continue to happen to even the best intentioned people.

We need to be far more diligent in guarding our hearts. We need to take personal responsibility to ask the Lord to keep us from greed, from celebrity worship, and so much more this culture brings at us.