The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

I want to scream it to the world: Thou shalt not steal! This morning’s newspaper reported a young man as saying “Yes, I shoplift. But I never steal from friends, just from corporations, like Walmart. I steal from Walmart all day”. He is obviously not alone. It is reported that in the USA $32.3 billion is shoplifted annually and 4 times that amount is stolen via employee theft. Equally stunning: 74% of people polled thought that taking something from someone else is probably okay as long as the other person is not going to miss the stolen object.

I just mailed in my Federal and Sate Income Tax returns. I hope I did not steal. If I was completely honest I was unlike thousands of others. The IRS reports that if no one cheated on their taxes our national debt could be retired in one year.

If course, it is not only “others” that people steal from.  I wonder what the figure is for hyped expense accounts. Then there is the matter of simply no putting in an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s wages.

The Internet is a wonderful way to just ignore intellectual property rights. My son recently reported that after working as an advisor for two years with a PL D candidate he discovered at the very last minute that almost all of her dissertation had been plagiarized (since it was translated from the Chinese, the candidate probably thought it would go undetected.)  My young friends say that if you were completely honest about downloading music there would be nothing good to listen to.

I railed against stealing recently and a friend stopped me short. “Mel,” she said, “If your child was starving to death and you had no money would you steal a couple of bananas? Would that be so terrible?” I reflect upon whether or not I am a partner in any system that exploits the poor or withholds resources due others.

I even ask myself, “Did I “steal” when I did not report the source for the statistics quoted above. But then a voice pipes up, “Come on, Mel, this is a simple blog read by very few. It is not about to be published in some famous research journal. Come off it!”

 

So I work on being honest and not stealing. And I am pointed to good old Martin Luther when he says in his explanation of this 7^th Commandment that we should not only “not take our neighbors’ money or goods, but should help them to protect and improve their property and business”; and I hear my father repeating that age-old axiom, “Honesty is the best policy.”

The Sixth Commandment

People may not even remember the prohibitions of each of the Ten Commandments, but everyone seems to know there is one that says very explicitly “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” I want to focus first on the blessings that come from keeping this commandment, especially as it relates to being sexually faithful to one’s spouse.

Jane and I have been married for 61 years. There have been lots of good things in our marriage (and, of course, also a few rough spots). One of the really great things about our marriage is that both of us are absolutely truthful in asserting that we have not committed adultery, in terms of having sex with anyone other than each other. I fudge on saying I’ve kept the commandment perfectly because Jesus did say that even to lust after another woman is to commit adultery. But with that caveat aside I have found that being faithful in the matter of sex has implications ways beyond sex.

Faithfulness in these areas is just a pointer to even deeper faithfulness in love, commitment, support, and comfort. And by looking at past faithfulness we get a glimpse of the future. I know that we will be faithful if it ever comes to issues like long-term care, dealing with memory loss, having to be wheeled about, being reminded of when to take drugs, making personal messes with clothes, furniture and carpets! And at the heart of it all is undying faithfulness, which we have evidenced in our sex lives. There can hardly be a greater blessing and joy in a marriage relationship.

After saying all those positive things about marriage I also bring up the other side: having adulterous relationships. I recently finished the tome The Kennedy’s: After Camelot. The Kennedy men were infamous about not taking The Sixth Commandment very seriously; I was shocked to read how one Kennedy brother reportedly assured another brother with a message something like ,“Remember, the good news. Just because you are married to person A does not mean you have to stop having sex with person B.” Wow! How is that for brotherly advice!

Another aspect of the Kennedy’s spousal relationship and The Sixth Commandment is how the Commandment seemed to apply only to the women. It would have been scandalous had one of Kennedy female spouses had an affair, but when it was the guys it was overlooked.

Reflecting upon the fact that each of the Commandments is designed to protect us and our neighbors it is so good to see how this commandment helps protect one of life’s most precious relationships,  that made between committed partners.

The Fifth Commandment

In the Catholic and Lutheran system of numbering the 10 Commandments the fifth is “Thou shalt not kill”. I recently co-led a great discussion on this commandment at my church. My co-leader began by saying “No, we are not off the hook. If we really take this commandment seriously we will discover that all of us have broken it.”

From there the conversation quickly got very personal and reflective. First comment: “Actually, a better translation of this commandment is “Thou shalt not commit murder and I certainly never committed murder, that is, I have not taken another person’s life.”

“Well, said a third, “I am sure I have taken another’s life. I dropped bombs over Viet Nam and I am sure people were killed, even though I tried to steel myself into not imaging that.”

The military chaplain chimes in,” Now I have Marines coming to me asking about their moral culpability if they press a computer button and a drone launches a missile which kills someone on another continent.” From there the conversation quickly went to the centuries-old religious teachings about “just war” and the criteria which we apply to killing in a just war that not only allows for but actually demands that a loyal citizen kill others.

 The conversation went into an entirely different direction when a class member reflected, ” Forty years ago my Dr. told me very firmly, ‘You are pregnant. You have a very visible and fragile aneurysm in your brain. It is my great fear that should you carry this fetus to term and give birth there is extreme danger to your life.’  I chose to abort that fetus. It still bothers me, especially when I am accused of murder.”

An older gentleman shared this insight “I learned a new version of a limerick I had learned as a child. The new version is ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones; but words can really hurt me.’ Isn’t that another form of killing?”

All of this before we even began looking at what Luther says this commandment demands, namely that we help and befriend our neighbor in every bodily need.

So we agreed that we couldn’t get off the hook. We asked for forgiveness and for strength to protect and enhance human life, our own and that of every other person on this planet.