Preservation Of Property Commanded Series

The teacher said to the little boy who had stolen an apple

from another boy's lunch pail, "Don't you know that you

broke the eighth commandment?" "Yes," he responded,

"But I figured I might just as well have the apple and break

the eighth commandment as covet it and break the tenth."

The truth that is immediate evident in this incident is that

the human ability to rationalize about sin, and even use the

Scripture to support it, is unusually keen. A mother caught

her little girl in the cookie jar after she had been forbidden

to take any. The mother said as she caught her in the act of

petty thief, "What commandment is being broken here?"

The little girl said, "Suffer little children to come unto me

and forbid them not."

It is this keen ability to rationalize that makes us fearful

of the new morality line on the eighth commandment. We

do not disagree with the principle that the lesser of two evils

is the best choice. If the little boy who stole the apple would

have followed this principle, he would have chosen to be

guilty of coveting rather than stealing. Often we have been

guilty of leading people to sin by teaching that all sins are

equal. A person with this attitude easily yields to temptation.

He figures if he desires to sin, and that is as bad as doing the

sin, then he has nothing to lose by acting out his desire, for

he is already guilty.

It is important that we give our youth protection against

this kind of reasoning. There are degrees and various levels

of offense. Some are punished by death, while others require

only fines or restitution, and still others are resolved through

repentance. A sin such as coveting remains a matter

between you and God, and it can be forgiven by confusing,

but to act on the coveting, and steal, becomes a crime against

man. This calls for a settlement on that level, plus

repentance before God, and it can involve imprisonment as

well as restitution. All sins make you a sinner, but only some

sins make you a criminal. All violations of the Ten

Commandments are not equal. There is such a thing as a

lesser of two evils.

If a man is going to shoot his neighbor, and I know it, and

steal his gun, I turn stealing into a virtue, for I preserve life

in obedience to the sixth commandment, and I prevent an

unjust killing. If a busload of school children is stalled on a

track, and a train is coming, there are many ways in which I

might steal, or be destructive to the property of others in

order to stop the approaching train. It could be as minor as

taking a sheet from a nearby wash line, and running down

the track waving it. I could be as radical as taking

someone's car and stopping it on the track to halt the train

before it hit the bus. In any case, you would be a hero, and

what ever you did would be considered a virtue rather than

a vice.

The problem comes when people pervert this reality. For

example, what of the man who stole from his neighbor

because he loved him? Love is the absolute he argues, and

so he reasons that his neighbor is becoming too materialistic.

So, in true love for him he decides to remove the false

foundation of materialism that he is resting on. He begins to

steal his possessions in the hope that his neighbor will began

to seek a more spiritual foundation for his life. Such is the

power of rationalization.

The logic of the new morality has hit our nation at a time

when it is least needed. Stealing has already been so

minimized as a serious moral offense that it is fast becoming

the All-American sport. Everyone is playing the game. In a

article titled, Stealing Their Way Through College, it is

brought out that the major problem of the National

Association Of College Stores is the problem of shrinkage.

They haven't determined if the motive is love or not, but

students from every kind of college and university are

relieving them of millions of dollars worth of merchandise

without paying for it. I once counseled with a girl in a

Christian college who stole several hundred dollars worth of

clothing and cosmetics in one semester.

In one large Ivy League University the bookstore loses

$90,000 a year to student heisters. The worse case was that

of a divinity school graduate student caught lifting a Bible.

If he would have gotten by with it, he might have considered

it an answer to prayer. This is just how weak the American

conscious is on the matter of stealing. Youth is on a shop