Marcus J. Borg Quote

A perception of empire is found in an early Christian acrostic. An acrostic is a word made up of the first letters of each word in a phrase or sentence. In this case, the phrase is an early Christian saying in Latin: radix omnium malorum avaritia. Radix means root, omnium means all, malorum means evil, and avaritia means avarice (or greed). Putting it together, it says, Avarice (or greed) is the root of all evil. And the first letters of each word produce Roma, the Latin spelling of Rome. It makes a striking point: Roma - empire - is the embodiment of avarice, the incarnation of greed. That’s what empire is about. The embodiment of greed in domination systems is the root of all evil.