A Fibrous Root of Fallen Life

There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.  It covets things with a deep and fierce passion.  The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.  They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.  They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease.  The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.  Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.  God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

--A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (as quoted in Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God's Everything)

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Luke 12:15