You shall not steal.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor's money or possessions, or get them an any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income.
How might we better live out this commandment? Click through for some ideas.
Once again we find that Martin Luther is badgering us into doing more than we originally would have with this commandment. When we think "Thou shalt not steal" we envision picking someone's pocket or lifting a candy bar at the store. Those are certainly prohibitive. But stealing reaches farther than that. We've found sneaky ways of doing it...ways this commandment also frowns upon.
Charging a dishonest price or tipping scales in our favor is a method of stealing. This was commonplace in ancient times. Vendors would have fake weights made up so they could unbalance transactions in their favor. Goods were weighed upon sale then just as now. You may not know that coins were as well. Standardized minting was beyond the technology of the time. Coins were valued by how much metal they contained. By making your side of the scale heavier you forced the buyer to put more of his coins on the table. Several places in the Old Testament call this an "abomination".
Shorting your boss on a day's labor is another way of stealing. Your company is paying you to work. Checking personal e-mails, long lunches, lazing about...anything that doesn't get the job done as efficiently as possible robs people of the service they're paying for.
Giving lackadaisical service to a company's customers is another form of stealing for the same reason.
Unfair credit card charges, hidden penalties in contracts, and all type of shadowy, near-fraudulent practices designed to part the unsuspecting and their money are stealing as well.
One doesn't have to look far in the world of high finance to find examples of stealing. Bernie Madoff was the most famous but the more you dig into the system, the more you realize that it's designed for the people at the top to make money while everyone else risks theirs. One wonders sometimes if the whole thing isn't one big theft.
I'm sure you can think of other examples. What's worse (for the folks trying to keep it) is that Luther adds the positive aspect as well: help your neighbor improve and protect his possessions and income. Hoping someone else will lose their job so you can get promoted to it? Stealing. Failing to aid your neighbor in his time of need because you want to swoop in and buy his property after it's foreclosed? Stealing. Watching this happen to your neighbor and doing nothing even if you're not the one buying his property? Stealing.
Ouch.
But there it is. In a nutshell, God loves all of his children. The material things of this world are meant to show and represent that love. When somebody else is deprived of those material representations--be it in a way as simple as not having a sandwich to eat or as complex as getting duped in options on the futures market--their perception of God's love is diminished. God means for all of his children to be fed, not for some to gorge themselves while others cry from emptiness. God means for all of his children to be content and at peace. This means being at peace with what we have and what we don't have. When we acquire something by dishonest means, depriving its rightful owner of its benefit so we can have more ourselves, we show that we are neither content nor at peace and we rob the rightful owner of that chance as well. One could argue that it's "just stuff" but since we're made of "stuff" ourselves material things have a spiritual as well as physical importance. We commit a physical and spiritual wrong when we steal, when we fail to help people have and keep everything that was meant for them.
Our job this week is to examine where our priorities are. Do we believe so much in wealth as the key to happiness that we would be willing to do anything to get it? Are we pursuing subtle ways of stealing--depriving our neighbor--even now? Oddly enough do we also think so little of the spiritual importance of material things that we conveniently leave them out of our faith practices? If so we are valuing wealth in all the wrong ways and devaluing it incorrectly as well. The true value of wealth shows when we share it with others instead of hoarding it for ourselves. It's not a key to our own happiness as much as a tool to make the world better. We need to invert our thinking, considering wealth and material things of low priority when it comes to making us happy but as a high priority when used as part of our faith discipline. In this way wealth becomes a valuable servant instead of a tyrannical master. This also makes stealing nonsensical, as the purpose of wealth in the first place is to enrich the lives of others.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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