Exodus20:15
When David took Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah and had him killed for his indiscretion, the prophet Nathan came to see him:
"The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!" (2 Samuel 12:1-7)
This story really highlights heart of the issue around stealing.
To steal is to devalue the person from whom you steal and to consider yourself to "have the right" to take from someone else.
It is a form of playing God.
- It is the strong victimising the weak
- It is the violent terrorising the peaceful
- It is a self-serving scorning of the trust created in a company/group/society.
Whether we rob a bank or make private photocopies at work, we are scorning the trust of society and considering ourselves worthy of the right to do something that, if everyone else did it, would plunge us into chaos.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
