We return to our series on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments. The previous essays in this series can be accessed through the links in the left hand column of this page.
As with the other Commandments please remember that they are intended to apply to practicing Jews and Christians. Those who would apply them to others who have not chosen to follow them abuse the original intention of the Commandments.
The Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal," sounds simple enough. Hopefully, by the end of this essay you will realize that, like the other Commandments, it is not as simple as it sounds.
This Commandment probably originally related to two very different things, only one of which we think of as "stealing." Exodus Chapters 21 and 22, part of the "Covenant Code," which expands upon and applies the Ten Commandments to everyday situations, clearly indicate that this Commandment applies to the unauthorized taking of another's animals and other property. That much we can clearly understand as "stealing."
But it also applies to kidnapping (21:16); that it, "stealing a man," or, more literally in Hebrew, "stealing a soul." Kidnapping someone for slavery was a fairly common practice of the time, (Remember Joseph?) and was punishable by death.
This type of theft was the only kind of "stealing" punishable by death. All other stealing was generally covered by making restitution to the owner, sometimes "overcompensating" the victim up to double the value of the stolen property.
Like the other Commandments, the prohibition against stealing was designed to guard the fellowship of the community, to insure stability of the nation, and to promote peace among neighbors.
Israel understood property as many still do today: as an extension of one's "self." Then, as now, people were often valued by what they had more than by who they were. We are not so unlike them as we might think! Theft of property was seen as a violation of the person, an idea not so foreign to anyone who has been the victim of theft.
In Deuteronomy, at 25:16, the Commandment is extended to all forms of dishonesty, an important point which will become more clear as we continue with this essay.
Theft was viewed as an attack on the integrity of the human being by depriving one of the fruits of one's labor. After all, as we know from Genesis, work is part of God's plan for creation. God intends for people to work, and to receive the fruits of their labor.
And a thief does not respect this intention. Nor does a thief respect the gifts or talents that we use when we work, gifts which are blessings from God. Theft, then, makes a mockery of how God intends us to use creation: through the honest use of our time and our talents, as well as the resources of the planet.
Although I am not a great proponent of a "free market" economy, we should be clear that this is not an argument in favor of any particular form of economic system. Nothing in God's plan forbids communal ownership, as we can see by reading the Acts of the Apostles.
In fact, there the withholding of private property from the common use of the early Church resulted in a husband and wife, Ananias and Sapphira, dying - allegedly at the hands of God. In that story the withholding, the hoarding, of property from the good of the community was a type of "theft" that was described as abhorrent to God.
The question there was to do the will of God and to not test the Spirit's intention for the struggling new Christian community. By withholding valuables that were supposed to be pooled to benefit the entire community, this couple "stole" from the community and paid a very high price, indeed, for their "theft."
And while I do not believe that God would order such deaths, the question for us today is similar, but in many ways it is an even more difficult one. How do we apply this Commandment to our lives?
Most Jews and Christians understand the prohibition against stealing in its most obvious forms. We know not to steal something outright. And we know not to condone those who do. Even if we don't, there are laws that do, and that punish obvious theft. It is not the obvious theft that is the big issue for us today, although there is plenty of that going around.
Rather it is the subtle theft that should concern us. It is the kind of theft that we sometimes try very hard to call anything else but stealing, that we try to justify to ourselves, that should worry us. When we become like Pharisees, using the letter of the law, bending it, to do what we want, yet knowing that it is against God's intention, then we violate the Law just as surely as if we steal outright.
I did an essay not so long ago about how God promised to help us understand the Torah because he said that he would write what we needed to know on our hearts. Right and wrong today are still "Written on our Hearts." We all have a conscience. And we ignore it to our moral detriment.
Take taxes. We may hate to pay taxes. Yet, if we knowingly cheat on our taxes, even though we do not get caught, and we know that the chances of getting caught are slim, and we know that "everyone else" does it, we are still stealing.
Take contributing to the or synagogue or church. We know what God expects from us in giving back in thanksgiving for the gift of life God has given to us. Yet, if we have a plan to give a certain amount, but we chose to spend the money on a new "toy" that we don't need, but we really want, instead of giving our fair share to God, then what do you think God calls that?
What about when we sell something to someone and we know that it is defective, but we don't tell them? Or if someone offers to pay us far more for something we have than we know it is worth? Or if the clerk at Wal-Mart accidentally gives you an extra $20 on a busy day, and there is no way she will remember who she gave it to, or, if she did, how to track you down, what do you do?
What about, when you are at work and your boss goes out of town? Do you take advantage of the fact to slack off and fiddle around instead of doing the job for which you are paid? Do you even think that loafing on the job is a form of theft?
There are thousands more examples of how we, day after day, are confronted with decisions, choices, about whether to do the right thing, or to steal. We don't want to call it that, but that is what it is.
And I am less concerned when we aren't even bright enough to know we are stealing, than when we feel our conscience telling us that we are dead wrong, and we go ahead and rationalize our actions anyway. Just how do we honor God when we do that?
But we need to look even further, beyond the petty - and not so petty - thefts that we engage in through our own spiritual dishonesty to the thefts that we see going on all around us on a world-wide scale and either think nothing of or do nothing about. It is this subtle form of dishonesty that the extension of the Commandment in Deuteronomy seeks to confront.
We need to look at the structures of our corporate life together, locally, nationally and internationally, that we are ready and willing participants in, and ask ourselves just what God must think of them, our participation in them, or our indifference to their existence.
And to do that, we need to look first at American affluence. Now, don't laugh. By any economic standard of wealth as it is distributed in this world, most of us are affluent. And, if you literally are not affluent, if you have fallen victim to the economic crisis, have little or no income, and lost all or most of your valuables, then you can attest personally to how "affluent" the middle class family looks when viewed from the bottom of the economic bucket.
So we must ask ourselves about our attachment to the "things" of this life, about the extravagance of our lifestyles, about the mountains of waste we generate every year. How much food do you think is thrown away every day by the restaurants of this country, by the grocery stores that dare not display anything that is not "perfect"?
How many clothes do you already have in your closets that you seldom wear? Are they so bad that you are compelled to go out and buy more, over and over, as they stack up, hardly worn at all? Do we need, really need, all the things we have? But, worse, do we have to replace perfectly good "things" with other "things" just because they are "new"?
How do we justify how we spend our money in the face of the unbelievably wide-spread hunger and poverty in the world, in this country? I don't think that we can, that I can. I think we, you and I, if we are not out of work, homeless, or just plain broke, are stealing from the mouths of others.
Don't you find it sad that people in the lowest economic strata in the USA give more as a portion of their wealth than those in any other bracket? Is it true that you have to have known poverty to understand poverty? Aren't we smart enough to know how bad it must be to live that way without experiencing it ourselves?
Which brings me to the largest point of all. One that you may not even agree with. But that's all right, because it needs to be said, and we all need to think about it. That is all I ask. Think about it. Don't just react, think. We are going to talk a little theology, to tie together how all this gluttony affects our faith; because I think that God must be shaking His head in dismay at our ostrich-like attitude about the plight of others.
The goods, the resources, of this good earth were put here by God to be shared: by all of the people on it and all of the creatures of it. God created this earth for our use, not our abuse. It, and all the resources of it, are ON LOAN to us.
We may think we "own" it. We may even think that we "own" all the things that we have in our possession; but we don't. God does. God tells us, "The earth is mine." And he means just what he says.
The fact of the matter is that we have done a lousy job in distributing the wealth of the earth, God's wealth. When St. Paul talks about the principalities and powers, the rulers and dominions of this world, he is not talking some abstract theological nonsense.
They exist. And we allow them to exist. And we need to, in Walter Bruggemann's terms, "probe even the subtle forms of 'theft' that rob persons of their future." He points to kinds of "theft" that Jews and Christians too often have turned a blind eye to, things we may not have focused on as "stealing".
First, there is a terrible inequity of "haves" and "have nots" in our society. Babies born into acute poverty are, at the outset of life, denied any realistic chance of "becoming all they can be" or, in secular terms, "living the American dream." Where you are born, and who your parents are, can determine whether or not you have any reasonable chance at living a good life.
Yet those children have every bit as much a God-given right to live Christ's promised "abundant life" as do our own children. Very often those children are robbed of their future, not necessarily by "bad people," but rather by power arrangements and social structures that long ago relegated them to a permanent underclass in our society.
It is true, as Jesus said, that "the poor will always be with us." But do not misinterpret what He said. He was stating a fact; not a preference. As Christians, should we be contributing to the theft of the birthright of millions of children, even if we contribute to that theft only through our indifference?
Second, a major theft began to run rampant in the nineteenth century by the developed nations of the resources of the undeveloped nations. We always called it something else: "colonialism," "the white man's burden," "saving the world for democracy," "manifest destiny."
But whatever we called it then, or call it now, the fact is that the rich nations and companies often stole the resources of Africa, Asia and Latin America while giving them only a fraction of the value of those resources. Nor did they develop the infrastructures in those poor lands to allow the people there to become self-sufficient in the future.
And the sad truth is that the developed nations, seldom through direct action, but through the actions of our unchecked giant banks and corporations, continue this rape of smaller, dependent nations while turning a blind eye to corporate greed, and often aiding and abetting that greed through laws and regulations that encourage such stealing.
And while that is bad enough, current credit arrangements, military alliances, and the weakness of international cooperation keep those same countries in abject poverty even now, over a hundred and fifty years later. Thus the world watches a self-fulfilling prophecy as predictable wave after wave of violence, poverty, hunger, illness and plague sweep through those lands.
And what do we do? We soothe our collective conscience by coming in when it is all but too late, with disaster aid, which is, of course, better than nothing. But the root of the problem is institutional, and we do little or nothing to change those institutions. And so the principalities and powers, rulers and dominions of Paul's day are alive and well in our own.
When the theft is raw and obvious we raise our voices in sincere complaint for a day, a week, a month or a year. And then we move on to the next "interesting issue."
But the theft goes on, long after our sound bite attention span has moved on to yet another thing we can cluck our tongues at and shake our heads, "amazed" at the greed of others. Are we really all that amazed, or are we really not all that interested as long as we are not directly doing the raping of resources ourselves?
In our own nation we sit back and watch, and cluck our tongues as corporate executives rob and rape our greatest companies, executives who pay themselves at rates hundreds of times what they pay their employees.
We watch as government leaders turn their heads with indifference, or cluck their tongues, or blame it on someone else, or appoint yet another commission to investigate the greed of the nation's largest financial institutions, even as we give $700 Billion dollars to them to insure that nothing changes.
We support sports teams owned by arrogant billionaires who argue with spoiled millionaire players over who will get our money, all the while the costs to the fan skyrockets to where an ordinary family cannot afford to attend the games.
We think nothing of the fact that a baseball player can make $5 to 20 thousand dollars for every time at bat; a basketball player $3000 and more for every basket attempted, or a golfer more than a million dollars for winning just one match.
Where am I going with this? Just here. Our values are warped, my friends. And include me when I say "our." My values are warped. We, you and I, know what is right. We know the right things to do.
And if we cheat in our day-to-day lives with all the little thefts that we either commit or ignore, then how can we even begin to look seriously at the really huge thefts going on in the world at large? Aren't they just doing the same thing but on a more massive scale?
We might take a quick glance at the Eighth Commandment and think that it is simple and that obeying it is not all that hard. Well that is wrong headed thinking. It is not simple; applying it to your life is not simple; applying it to the principalities and powers that rule this earth is even harder; and, sometimes, obeying it seems almost impossible.
But what is impossible for man is possible for God. If we cannot stop ourselves from stealing without God's help, then we need to turn to God for the strength to "do the right thing."
If we cannot look at the structures of evil which distribute the wealth of this world so unevenly that vast numbers of people have no chance at the "abundant life," then we need to turn to God for the strength to look at the reality of the stealing of the life blood of others that we allow. And we need to do it now.
God bless.
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Lucy Mercer
Erica K
Shawn O'Shea
Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Sissy414
Raymond Roske
Salon.com
Comments
Indeed they are.
{SIGH}
Thank you for expanding on this commandment.
I respect and trust your views.
:-)
Rated
Well done, as usual Monte and Bless you for your thoughtful words.
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew.
We hear about how things are in places we've never seen, but until we actually experience them for ourselves it seems we cannot really understand.
I know that I was always under the impression that the Caribbean nations were little islands of paradise, each one a lustrous gem in the incredibly blue waters. But until I actually went there, saw some of the abject poverty that exists and did a little mental measuring of the tourist industry, I didn't really get it.
The ship I was on had something like two thousand passengers. Not all those passengers bought something on every island we stopped at. But many did. I'd be willing to bet that we weren't the only ship making stops that week, either. Yet, as we rode around the islands on buses, or tour trucks, everywhere I looked there were houses that were run-down and decrepit, people idling about because there was no work to be had. Yet our ship alone had to account for several hundred thousand dollars of income for the islands each.
Brings to mind yet another song I remember from my youth. It was meant as a humorous take on humanity, and yet it rang true for generations afterwards. It was by a group called the Kingston Trio, and it is called "The Merry Minuet":
They're rioting in Africa. There's strife in Iran. What nature doesn't do to us... will be done by our fellow man.
That song was written somewhere in the '50s or '60s, don't recall. yet here we are, a generation later, still doing the same things.
We don't seem to understand, when we steal from our neighbors we steal from ourselves.
Rated.
Hi, Leonde, thanks for the kind words. I have done an essay on Chapter 13 of First Corinthians. I did not title it that, but the entire essay is built upon that text and ends with a discussion of that text as applied to every day life. You may have missed it. It has sort of taken on a life of its own and has almost 1800 hits which is very high for a post on faith from me. Please take a look and leave a comment: "Without Love We Are Nothing,"
http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2009/06/25/note_to_open_salon_without_love_we_are_nothing
Thanks, scupper. We all are a bit warped when it comes to our values as tested by our actions. But you have the right solution: "... I am working on it."
Thank you, L&P. The simple thing that you ask seems so obvious, but you and I know it is not. If we all just stepped up and did even a small amount much of the suffering would be overcome and we would have resources at hand to help with natural catastrophes like Haiti. Alas, we talk a better game than we play.
Trudge, your perceptive comment opens for thought an entirely different area where we "steal." I hope that others will listen to you and reflect on how much we steal from the lives of those we love by inconsiderate acts of selfishness, as you so succinctly put it, "We neglect our families when pursuing things that really won't matter in the end."
Robin: the idea of stealing another's soul is one of the most troublesome and troubling aspects of psychic theft. Often when we are doing it we don't even know we are. The pain that comes when we realize the harm we are doing lasts a long time. But we must remember to forgive ourselves when we realize the harm and vow to not do it again. God often forgives us long before we are ready to forgive ourselves and let go. And God will forgive all of our sins.
Wendy, Thank you for the kind words and for sharing how this issue has affected your own life so deeply. Whatever else we do, we must remember that when we recognize and admit our mistakes, including our lack of action, we can be forgiven for those. And we must remember also to forgive ourselves and not continue to beat ourselves up over things we should be moving past. Whatever we try to do we will never be perfect at doing, so we need to cut ourselves some slack and simply intend to try to do better, but also we must try to shake off the unwarranted guilt. One thing we must avoid is feeling that it is our fault that others take advantage of us. That kind of victimization is not healthy. The fact is that when others use us it is almost always they who are the guilty. Blaming the victim is a terrible exercise and is to be avoided, even if the victim is us.
Thank you, Sage. Much appreciate you dropping by and commenting. I have not read Foster's book but will see if I can get a copy to read.
Pilgrim, much appreciate the kind words.
Anne: Yes, very much stealing one's dignity (self worth) through condescension is a serious and sometimes frighteningly devastating thing to do, and it is often done out of spite, arrogance or pride. Well worth considering the terrible psychic effects we can have on others with an insensitive tongue.
RB: What is so amazing at times is how we can KNOW what is written on our hearts and then completely ignore what we know is right in order to do some selfish thing that can have major impact on others without even giving it much thought at all. What is worse we can know both that what we are doing is wrong and that it will hurt others, and go ahead and do it anyway. "The hell with others," is not something taught by any faith..
Bill: good to have you here again sharing your thoughts. I was not aware of those Disney lyrics but that is pretty good philosophy. I do know that it is true that until we can see things for ourselves often we simply cannot understand the depth of the pain. I do not see why that is so needed but there is something in the human psyche that rejects the pain more when it is distant than when it is close and we can feel and touch the misery. We run from so many realities and try to build a safe world for ourselves that keeps us from noticing. We also deny the poverty until some great crisis hits, like in Haiti. We forget that Haiti is like it is because we have all neglected the poverty there from the beginning of the nation when it was a colony of slaves. And, sadly, we will forget it again in a month or two, just like we have forgotten the tsunami victims and others, over and over. I have often said that until we pile the bodies up like cord wood Americans seem incapable of understanding a problem. And when we do we seldom are in it for the long haul and what it really takes to make things better for others.
MAWB: so good of you to drop by, read, and comment. The reason that you have not heard much about the stealing of a soul is that the Commandments are not taught that way traditionally. But there is much discussion of the infinite value of a soul in the rabbinic writings that supplement the Torah, and in Christian theology dealing with the anthropology of the faith. The soul, or spirit as I prefer to call it, is the primary connection humans have with the divine. As such it is precious, unique, and allows for connection with others and with God in a more than physical or materialistic way. When we subjugate another's soul, or use it for our devices without care for the nurture or well being of that soul we are destroying the very integrity of an individual.
Thanks everybody for the fine comments.
God bless you.
We're that to be truly understood, believed and acted upon, our daily dose of sound bites from quarrelsome politicians could be reduced to a trickle that could then swell into a chorus of better news and stories of accomplishment for all.
Hi, Don. Some aspects of Calvinism are a puzzle to other mainline Christians but nothing I have ever read about Calvinists supports even the most subtle form of stealing. In any case, these essays are not designed to have people agree with me, but rather to have them think deeply about the implications of the Commandment and to come to their own conclusions. Glad to have you reading this series.
I don't get over to your blog nearly enough these days, but when I do, I am comforted, enlightened, and am left with plenty to think about. You provide such an in-depth analysis of the Bible that changes the way I 'know' the Bible. I see the lessons much more clearly.
Thank you for all the effort and thought and love that goes into a post like this, MOnte.
Monte
As an anthropologist and historian of religion, I have been disturbed to recognize the fact that economic inequity is strongly correlated with social complexity. You want to find a society without social inequality and exploitation? They don't exist. However, the closest humans come is a simple, band-level foraging society. The discrepancy between haves and have-nots increases dramatically with each subsequent notch on the ladder of social complexity. In neolithic horticulturalist village chiefdoms we see the emergence of chattle slavery and hoarding of resources. The scale of the inequity increases steadily and dramatically through the rise of urban civilizations culminating in the postmodern dreamscape of the present.
I have always thought that the early part of Genesis (from the story of the Fall through that of Cain and Able) was a parable about the rise in economic inequality. Although I know the ancient Hebrews were pastoralists rather than foragers, I cannot help but see Eden as an allegory for simple society, with animal and plant domestication and the subsequent rise in social complexity and attendant economic inequality and brother-against-brother strife indicated by the Fall.
I think that the Genesis myth can easily be read to harbor much of the allegorical intention that you give it. If you take that metaphor to its extreme then you end up with a "society" of two humans in harmony with the rest of creation.
However, the theology of creation insists that humanity is to be fruitful and multiply, which indicates that God expected humanity to grow into a true social system. The internal implications of that myth are that when humankind became capable of being "like gods" with the ability to distinguish good and evil the admittance of evil into the equation required a decision on the part of the members to turn from evil and embrace good.
Then, with Cain and Able we find that, immediately, one part of humanity was not able to make that decision, choosing evil instead. In a sense, then, the history of society building has been the tension between those two choices: good, which presumes equitable sharing, and evil, which presumes hoarding and the subjugation of others to increase the wealth of the dominant.
I believe that your thesis is true anthropologically and in the development not only or religions but of the social order.
I hope others who come here to read will carefully read your comments because they help explain the difficulty of choosing the good in complex societies.
Excellent perception, IJ.
Monte
Monte
institutional iniquity,
but we deep down admire it in this culture,
don't we?
Buncha outlaws. Caper-movies. "Oceans 11, 12, 13, 14..."
It's a schizo nation. We act badly in order
to be punished, it seems. The public enables it,
the Smart Set goes for it, and we play the game of
gotcha.
Nobody in this hypocrisy has a chance at abundant life.
Abundant life comes---from my personal experience---
from having that moment of decision,
knowing it's a ...test...or a choice...or...
a crossroads of my karma....
and just biting the bullet and doing the right thing,
sometimes from a sense of love for the world,
or a particular person,
or an idea....
the payoff, if they but knew...is magnificent.
It is vulgar to put it in such gambling analogies
but look:
take a chance on Goodness,
rolll that wheel of Life,
and see if it doesnt come up for you, bigtime.
(my personal "decision" is: whether or
not to steal a newspaper from a guy's yard...
i miss reading the news...cant damn afford it)
best, Jim
Guess the right thing to do is read the newspaper at the library.
When I could not afford the Washington Post when I first got to DC I asked a neighbor if he would give his to me when he was finished with them. He was surprisingly nice about it and gave them to me, usually the next day. The stuff that was hot off the presses was a bit stale but I could keep up with the hot topics on the radio and TV. Just a thought.
Monte