Larceny in Our Hearts

McAfee School of Theology Chapel Address
Dr. David P. Gushee

November 3, 2009

Text: Exodus 20:15-- “You shall not steal.”

Introduction: Don’t Take Other People’s Stuff

I was glad when I learned that Dr. Younger had planned chapel around the Ten Commandments this fall. I could not remember the last time I had heard anyone do a series of messages on this most significant text for ethics in the Old Testament.

I began to dream about the possibility that I might get asked to do one of these messages. The commands related to murder, adultery, and coveting struck me as especially interesting possibilities for a sermon. But then our master of ceremonies told me I would be speaking about the command against stealing. I thought this was a very boring assignment.  I planned my sermon:

Hey, don’t take other people’s stuff.

But sermons in chapel need to last at least twenty minutes. Where does one go next?

The next natural move struck me as what might be called:

Refining the Command: Don’t Even Subtly Take Other People’s Stuff.

You know, the cashier gives us back too much change. We were supposed to get $1.20 but instead are given $10.20. If we know this, and don’t correct the cashier, we are, admit it, taking other people’s stuff. The fact that “other people” in this case happens to be a store makes no difference. Ever done that?

Or let’s say you borrow someone’s stuff and then you lose it. If you fail to report that loss to your friend and hope they forget about their stuff, you are subtly taking other people’s stuff. If they remember and ask you about it and you refuse to replace it for them, you have taken someone else’s stuff and maybe lost a friend in the process.

Or consider taxes. Ministers face some very odd and sometimes very tempting tax situations. One of these is that we often get paid honoraria in cash or in small checks (or in other ways—once I got paid for preaching with a bottle of Hotter Than Hell hot sauce). Often these little churches don’t then send us the W-9 forms later that confirm for the IRS that we have been paid by them. If we don’t claim how much we were paid by these various churches, we are taking other people’s stuff—in this case, the government’s legally authorized share of our income.

There are other ways of stealing too. If one of us were to set our sights on stealing someone else’s girl or boyfriend, wife or husband, and did so, we would be guilty of stealing other people’s people, a really bad idea.

What about preaching other people’s stuff? I don’t see anything on this in Leviticus. My personal view is that preaching someone else’s sermon, if they have made it available online and have not sought to charge for it, is not a violation of the command against stealing. But I wouldn’t do it, because it may well be a violation of the command against bearing false witness. This is because preaching is an interpersonal act; preaching someone else’s sermon is kind of like borrowing someone else’s love letter and signing your name to it. Plus, if you use a first-person illustration involving, say, an experience of running with the bulls at Pamplona, you really need to have run with the bulls.

Professors emphasize the mortal sin of plagiarism more than almost any other offense. With plagiarism we once again see a connection between theft and lying. Plagiarists lie by acting as if someone else’s material is their own, thus misrepresenting themselves to their readers. They steal the intellectual property of others in the process. And they usually get caught anyway. A quick google search does them in. So plagiarism is wrong both deontologically and consequentially.

There are some common expressions that get at other subtle forms of stealing. You might say that someone “stole your thunder” when you had a good idea or good news and someone else felt compelled to spill it or take credit for it. Or we might say that someone “stole the show,” which can mean that they upstaged the person who was really supposed to get the attention. Consider for example the bridesmaid who wishes for the attention belonging to the bride and does something creative to get it. [Story about the fainting bridesmaid].  This kind of stealing is really about an inability to not be the center of attention, which marks a deficit in humility. 

These last examples take us into another possible move we can make here. We can turn to:

Interiorizing the Command: Don’t Desire to Take Other People’s Stuff

As the title of this message suggests, there is such a thing as “larceny in our hearts.” Sometimes the difference between a thief and an honest person, is courage, not intent. The difference may only be a failure of nerve at the key moment. There is little to celebrate here.

At this point the command against stealing links to the command against coveting. It reflects the reality that most wrong acts flow from some wrong in the heart, or more specifically the desires of the wrongdoer. Paying attention to the interior wellsprings of action is morally therapeutic, and sometimes morally terrifying.

It does help a little bit to realize that our society systematically teaches us to desire other people’s stuff. It’s called advertising. The investing-producing-buying cycle is totally dependent upon the manufacture of desire. Success is ensured when everyone knows that they need their own copy of Abby Griggs’ cool IPhone or Loyd Allen’s sleek Prius or Dock Hollingsworth’s latest suit and shirt and tie and pocket square combo. So interiorizing the command reminds us that our goal should be neither to covet nor to take other people’s stuff.

Review: A Pattern in Protestant Christianity

I want to pause here and have us notice something. I have made two moves so far. I first went for an attack on more subtle forms of theft, like tax evasion; then I turned inward to look at the state of our desires and our hearts. I think this reflects a fairly typical Christian pattern. First we look for tighter moral rules. Then we look at the sorry state of our hearts, so often aching to break the rules. The serious Christian, on this pattern, is both morally scrupulous and deeply aware of the moral cesspool within.

But I want to suggest that this is not enough. And to show what I mean, I want to turn to what Catholic social teaching does with the command against stealing. This tradition turns the command into the foundation for a rich social theology of economic life. It goes outward, not just inward: it goes social and structural, not just personal and interior. For me, the most interesting implications of this command are found on the outbound train, not the inbound, in social ethics, not in interior larceny. So for the next section of this message I want to lean heavily on the Roman Catholic catechism as it treats this command. Most of its ideas are echoed in mainline Protestant economic ethics. These are familiar concepts in Christian ethics. But not in our churches.

Going Social with the Command: Listening to Catholic Social Teaching

The commandment against stealing is treated here against the backdrop of a broader vision of God’s ordering of economic life. That vision begins with the idea that God created the earth and its resources and entrusted them to humanity as a whole to take care of them, improve them through our labor, and enjoy their benefits. Not- stealing is immediately linked to a theology of creation and an ethic of economic stewardship.

These wonderful gifts of God in creation are destined for the whole human race, not just one part of it. In Catholic social teaching this is called the universal destination of goods. It’s a great phrase which we would do well to consider on our side of the Christian fence. The implication of this teaching is clear—no social order is fully just if it hinders the distribution of goods to the entire community, as God intended. The addressee of God’s stuff is every member of the human family—if they don’t get it, it’s kind of like, you might say, tampering with the mail.

The command against stealing assumes the validity of the concept of private property, which is affirmed in the Catechism. If there is no differentiation between what is mine and what is yours then there can be no concept of theft. So the Bible implicitly recognizes the appropriateness of private property. Dock’s awesome suit really is his and not mine.

But private property is a concept held much more loosely in Catholic (and most Christian) ethics than in western liberal democratic capitalism. Private property is understood to be generally best for advancing the common good and for individual and family well being. But this is a relative rather than absolute understanding of private property. It is private property in the context of God’s ownership of all things, and the universal destination of goods, and a stewardship in which all good gifts must be considered in terms of how we might benefit others.

Catholic social teaching defines stealing as “usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner.” But it goes on to say that “there is no theft if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate essential needs is to put at one’s disposal and use the property of others.” Here the tradition which led the way in rejecting Communism as a political system says that private property is so non-absolute that it is in fact theft on our part to withhold food, shelter, or clothing from the poor.

Thus Basil the Great: “When someone steals a person’s clothes, we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.” This is not mere sentimentality. It is a principle which flows from the universal destination of goods. It has motivated Christians for centuries both to serious personal generosity and to efforts to reform social and economic systems. Is this our heartbeat?

Catholic social teaching emphasizes the responsibility of all sectors of society to bring about economic justice. It recognizes that the church itself has a special duty to the poor, and local Catholic congregations often put Baptists and other Protestants to shame in the quality and organization and resources devoted to local relief efforts. But unlike some versions of conservative Protestant social ethics, Catholic social teaching understands that the church neither has the resources nor the responsibility to do all that is needed to advance economic justice.

So this teaching emphasizes first that every person able in mind and body is responsible to work hard and to the best of his or her abilities. This is part of what it means to be made in the image of God. One might say that refusal to work hard is theft from God and from all who might benefit from our work.

Further, such hard work should pay adequately. The concept of a just wage, central to Catholic social teaching, is that people who work full time should receive pay adequate to provide for themselves and their families. Our pitiful minimum wage hardly qualifies. It is theft from the working poor.

Families are responsible for caring for their own family members who need support. They are also called to create an environment in the home in which hard work is valued and modeled. Children should be raised to work hard and to anticipate with excitement the prospect of maximizing their own giftedness and contributing to the common good. Failures in parenting, such as family breakdown or just terrible childraising, gradually erode economic justice. This is theft from the next generation.

Adequate education for all is an aspect of the universal destination of goods. Everyone has the right to an education that enables them to make the most of their gifts and abilities and to work effectively in the world. In an information-driven society, a trained intellect rather than a strong back is the most important form of capital. Therefore, our grossly inequitable educational system should be seen as theft from those children who are the most poorly educated by it—usually the children of the poor.

Businesses are responsible for economic justice in a most profound way. While profits are necessary to run successful businesses and invest in new enterprises, businesses have other responsibilities as well. These include attending to the ecological and economic effects of their companies, and considering the well being not just of their own employees but of all who are affected by their activities. Too insistent a focus on maximizing shareholder value can lead to theft from workers, society, and God’s creation.

Government’s primary responsibility is to guarantee the conditions necessary for a well-functioning economy that best serves the common good. There are things that only government can do, like protect individual freedom to pursue meaningful work, ensure equal access to employment without discrimination, protect the stability of the currency, protect the rights of workers and consumers, provide efficient public services, and protect the environment. These all require a fair, progressive, and efficient tax system, which should be supported rather than scorned by Christians. When government fails to meet its responsibilities it permits and underwrites stealing from the most vulnerable and from the society as a whole. Think about how much we are all paying for the financial meltdown.

The universal destination of goods requires attention to international economic structures. A globalized economy means that economic activity in southern Indiana is definitely connected to economic activity in southern India. And so it goes, everywhere. Effective international structures to provide some kind of international governance of economic life are required. And all sectors of the world community, from churches to NGO’s to businesses to governments to international organizations, have responsibilities to aid the poor and to contribute to economic development to lift people out of poverty. A world in which a billion people live on a dollar a day is a world of massive theft from the poorest of the poor.

Christian ministers can and should play a leading role in alerting Christian laypeople to these economic realities as well as to the responsibilities and opportunities of disciples in each of these areas. It is not easy work. It will not win you many pats on the back. But it goes with the territory of Christian ministry.

Conclusion

So is there an easy tag line for all of this?

It’s not just: don’t take other people’s stuff.

Nor is it just: don’t subtly take other people’s stuff.

Nor is it just: don’t even think about taking other people’s stuff.

It’s something like: we must work for a world in which everyone has adequate access to God’s stuff.

And: we must live in such a way that we are not in effect taking stuff that belongs to another one of God’s precious children.

And: we must serve our churches in such a way that they are motivated to be actively involved in helping people who have not received their share of God’s stuff.

And: we must vote and exercise our citizenship in such a way that we know what is happening with God’s stuff and vote for policies that ensure its more universal distribution.

Not stealing or even thinking about stealing is the easy part. Attending to the work of economic justice is much more difficult. But it is a task that none of us can avoid if we would be faithful Christians today and responsible Christian leaders in days to come.

Exodus 20:15. “You shall not steal.” Amen.