Righteous Thievery

One of Pastor Allen’s anecdotes from the Sunday sermon is worth repeating for those who were not there. When he was a teacher at Desert Christian School, there was a common use refrigerator in the teacher’s lounge. From time to time Allen would note (most perpetually hungry males can identify with this) a particularly enticing-looking item which had been there for several days untouched. On one such occasion, he took the nice restaurant-boxed sandwich and went around the office and teachers room inquiring, Is this yours?” Perhaps he was hoping (as I would have) that someone would eventually say, “No, why don’t you just eat it?”
Instead, someone asked him, “Is it yours?” That’s all it took: three innocent words and, of course, he rushed back and returned it to its shelf in the refrigerator.

I hope I wasn’t the only one who had a twinge of conscience at that story. I have tried to assuage guilt over covetousness myself, in just such a manner, many times. Pastor Allen went on to list other forms of “righteous thievery,” such as: taking pens and pencils; using someone else’s stapler, sending personal emails on company time, etc. He had more (and some better) examples, but these are the ones I recall.

For those with overly sensitive consciences, these examples do not include times when: the pens are clearly identified as free giveaways, someone offers you their stapler (and the staples inside), or you have explicit permission to answer e mails. But we should not presume upon these liberties, for one presumption can lead to a wholesale outbreak of righteous thievery.

When I was an elementary school administrator, we simplified this law down into these words for young children (who generally have a hard time understanding “public” and “private”): “Nothing is yours unless a teacher puts it into your hands.”

Any way you state it, it’s the eighth commandment. Keep it!