In the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the far southwest corner, is a string of land along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Most of the towns in the region are small, and many of them are ugly, like most of the towns across America. When you roll into town you pass the welcome sign, with its symbols from the Ruritans, Rotarians, Masons, Lions, and the Chamber of Commerce. Then, in most towns here, you pass title loan storefronts, storage units, used car lots, truck stops and chain hotels. If you raise your eyes from the road, you’ll see a different world. It’s a world of green rolling hills and clean skies. It is in that world that the stain is doing its work.
The towns are lost, eaten by Wal Mart and fast food giants. They make valiant efforts to remake their downtown areas into places where people want to come, to shop, to eat, and to live. Some towns succeed, most do not. For most of them the stain is too strong to fight. It has settled down over the town like a fog that won’t leave. With no other worlds to conquer, the stain moves outward toward those green hills. It wants to clear-cut the trees, defoliate the fields with herbicides, kill all insect life with insecticides, rip through family farms with pipelines full of natural gas and oil destined for export. The stain is hungry, and because it is human it cannot be satisfied; it will eat until there is no more to eat.
The stain is the love of money. It will eat this string of land, and it will keep eating until it kills everything.
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
~1 Timothy 6:10
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