There are some things that we hold as self-evident which means you need no proof for them. They are accepted by all people at all times as true. All we need to do is affirm them – but not prove them.

In the same way, you would expect a number of the commandments – like do not steal – to be self-evident. After all, don’t we just know that by nature? Isn’t it born into us that we should respect the property rights of others and stealing is wrong even if we get away with it or even figure out ways around it? Perhaps not.

The Hebrews had been living in a slave culture for 400 years and some of the basic values of a functioning community had been forgotten. There is a difference between a culture and a community. For instance, the rules and values of a prison culture are far different from what you and I would call a community. The Hebrews were living in a slave culture and the basic values were missing or forgotten. That is why God needs to treat them as moral children.

That is why there are so many lists of offenses and punishments in the Old Testament. There could be no general assumptions about what was right and what was wrong. It had to be all spelled out for them. I am sure there were endless discussions starting with, “Well, what about this?” and people then, as now, looking for loopholes and exceptions. There were so many creative ways to steal and to get around the simple commandment: you shall not steal from each other. It was like a test of wits. Why else would we enjoy scores of movies and plays about lovable scoundrels and thieves?

You could say things have not changed much. We are still trying to get around the simple commandment by redefining it or discovering loopholes or even legalizing it. We still live on the edge of it every day with false advertising, extortionate interest rates, spin, half-truths about products and services, demanding cheaper products that force manufacturers into stealing from people by paying unfair wages, deceptive practices, cheating on taxes and taking advantage of ignorance and stupidity. An entire recession was the result of massive and organized stealing that had become a common practice and produced what we have come to call “moral hazard”:
a moral hazard is a situation in which a party is more likely to take risks because the costs that could result will not be borne by the party taking the risk.

That is why Paul refers to the Law as his tutor in Galatians. The Law was put in charge to supervise us because we were moral children and needed everything spelled out.

2.  But what is important to understand is these commandments with all the rules and punishments prescribed were not put in place to produce perfect individuals. These are rules and principles for creating a community – a very particular kind of community. These rules have – over time – become the basis for other communities but they were intended to produce what Scripture calls a “peculiar people” with a special purpose. They were not peculiar individuals. They were not peculiar people by themselves. They were a “people” called to be peculiar. It’s exactly what the Apostle Peter describes in his letter. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Over and over in the Old Testament God tells them they are a people with a peculiar mission together – to be a blessing to the world and a light to the Gentiles. This is not something they will do as individuals but as a people together. All the way back to Abraham we see this. Genesis 12: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

To do that, there are some basic elements for building a community of people and not just a collection of individuals. First, there must be trust and respect for what belongs to others – and that is what this commandment is about. It is about how we live together and take care of each other. In a sense, if people followed the Biblical model of taking care of each other there would be no need for stealing to survive. There will always be stealing – but the Old Testament had rules not only for the respect of property but for the sharing of property in ways that made stealing unnecessary. People were obligated to take care of each other in ways that did not force people to steal to survive. It was not a choice but a mandate.

Even when someone broke the rules they were not separated from that obligation. They were not sent to prison. They were required to pay back what they had stolen. They were required to stay in the community and take responsibility for what they had done and work until they had made reparations for what they had done. You see something similar in Rwanda today. The people who were responsible for crimes during the genocide are returned to their own communities but they wear orange and pink clothing to identify them.

“A million victims, a million perpetrators — that’s what they say. Every single perpetrator can’t be kept in jail for life; every single perpetrator can’t be sentenced to death. In this tiny, densely populated country, everyone must share space. The students explained how, when prisoners are being released back into their villages, both sides receive extensive coaching on how to behave.

Villagers are taught to be respectful and polite, to steer clear of revenge, to allow the prisoners to become part of the community again. And prisoners are taught to be humble, to avoid confrontation, to expect others to be distrustful, and to ask for forgiveness. Genocide ideology, a blanket term for any kind of speech, writing, or behavior that could in some way incite tensions or lead to violence, is a crime. And it’s punished ruthlessly. Officially, through fines, imprisonment, expulsion from work, deportation.”

We have lost a sense of that obligation and duty has become a burden. We now call it charity and it is applauded but not required. We have lost the sense of being answerable to a group by calling it guilt – and guilt is bad. What God is teaching in the Ten Commandments is far more than how to be a moral person. It is how to be a community with obligations to each other. I love what Wendell Berry says about this. Our community has a claim on us. “And so I came to belong to this place. Being here satisfies me. I had laid my claim on the place had made it answerable to my life. Of course you can’t do that and get away free. You can’t choose it seems without being chosen. For the place in return had laid its claim on me and had made my life answerable to it.”

3.  Children sometimes need to live with the prospect of what the consequences of bad behavior are. They need something to stop them and make them think about what might happen if they break the rules. That is the purpose of being clear about consequences.

However, Paul in Ephesians takes a different approach to the commandment.

“He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.”

In other words, it is not as much about the consequences of stealing as it is about the value of work and the obligation to a community of people through that work. The Old Testament valued work and there are many, many references to the blessings and benefits that come from work in our lives. We know the passage from 2 Thessalonians 3:10. “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ, to settle down and earn the bread they eat.”

I like what G. Campbell Morgan said, “There is no more insidious evil sapping away the integrity and uprightness of the nations of the earth today than this lust for possession without toil.”

While he was referring to gambling, I think all of us have experience with people who have ruined their children in the same way. They have possessions without toil. It’s what was called “mailbox money” when we moved here and it has destroyed the incentive of generations.

Work is good. But for Paul work was more than good. It had an even higher purpose. Stop stealing, stop being idle, stop living off the work of others SO THAT you may have something to share with others. In other words, work is not an end in itself. Stealing robs work of its meaning. It is not even for just taking care of your own family or making sure they have enough. The larger value of work is as opposed to stealing is to become someone who takes care of others. Stealing is taking what is not yours. Working is receiving what you have earned. Sharing is giving what is yours to others. It is not giving what belongs to someone else to others. That’s a whole different discussion!

4.  You might say we are returning to the ways of Egypt. The things we have accepted as self-evident are no longer self-evident. The loop holes and exceptions have become the rule and instead of “do not steal” we are being taught “steal but call it something else” or steal but then claim victim status.

I was reading some statistics on shop lifting this week and was surprised to read that 10% of the population engages in shop lifting. We know what the effect is on the price of doing business. For instance in a low margin business like a supermarket the theft of a single $5 item requires $500 in additional purchases to make up for the loss.

“According to the National Retail Federation, the most-shoplifted items in the United States include chewing gum, Advil, the weight-loss drug Alli, cellphones, Claritin, Rogaine, Red Bull energy drinks, Dyson vacuums, Bumble and Bumble hair products, Cover Girl cosmetics, Crest Whitestrips, and deodorant. And Britain’s Global Retail Theft Barometer (GRTB) found that the most-shoplifted items from department stores in 2010 were perfume and face cream. This makes the average shoplifter look less like Jean Valjean — who, in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Miserables,” stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family — and more like an over-caffeinated, pain-pill-popping neat freak obsessed with his or hair, teeth and skin.”

“A 2008 Columbia University study of more than 40,000 Americans showed that it’s not the least among us doing the most thieving. “Shoplifting . . . was more common among those with higher education and income, suggesting that financial considerations are unlikely to be the main motivator,” the researchers concluded.”

While most shoplifting is impulsive and, typically, small items there is something to be said about our actually encouraging impulsive behavior. I read this in one of the trade publications on how to increase impulse buying.

“Consumers generally attempt to avoid impulse purchases while visiting local retailers. However, statistics shows us that on average, shoppers who run out on a “quick trip” will spend 54% more than originally planned. This bodes well for convenience store and grocery store operators, as 47% of these same shoppers will visit retail outlets three to four times every week. As a retailer, impulse purchases are a vital aspect of your business.

Why do people make impulse purchases?

There are many reasons that impulse purchasing accounts for 40% of consumer spending (60% in the grocery & convenience industry). One of the main reasons is based on physiology – impulse purchasing boosts self esteem and personal ego, which results in the consumer feeling happier after the purchase. In addition some impulse purchases fulfill physiological needs (or desires), such as thirst, hunger or a sweet tooth. Finally impulse buying is often driven by presumed external needs, such as a lighter to go with the cigarettes they came in to purchase. Despite the reason for the impulse purchases, there are several ways to increase your sales in this important category.

Top Three Ways to Increase Impulse Buying

Product Types

Impulse purchases are generally small in size, light in weight and inexpensive in nature. Furthermore the items need to either meet a physiological or psychological need or desire. For instance bottled water meets the physiological need of thirst, while a lottery ticket may meet a psychological desire to better oneself. Both items are chief candidates for impulse purchases.

Properly determining what items will best sell as impulse items is the key to increasing your impulse purchases.

Product Placement

Where you place your products is vital to the success of their movement. Traditionally, in and around the sales counter has been thought of as the only place to have impulse items, this is because the sales counter is a high traffic area that people congregate around. If you apply the same principle, there are several other key areas that impulse items could be placed. These include deli counters, coffee bars and beer coolers.

In addition to where products are placed, it is important to properly merchandise them. While it may make sense to have lots of options available at your points of sale, a cluttered counter or display is distracting. Often times key products get lost in the crowd. Instead, identify high margin items that have attractive qualities that can drive your sales higher.

Product Promotion

Finally, after you have determined the correct products and placed them in the optimal location it is time to promote the items. 88% of impulse purchases are the result of a sale or perceived sale. One of the best ways to draw attention to a product is to advertise it at a lower price or offer discounts for multiple purchases. Often times you can work with your distributor to offset the price by purchasing a greater quantity of the product you plan to promote. Furthermore if you are unable to apply a sale to the item that you wish to promote you can place the product next to items that are actually for sale.

Finally, promote the item with a significant call to action that requires an immediate answer – such as “Limited Time Only” or “Limited Quantities”. This puts the pressure on your customers to make a quick decision based on their emotions, instead of giving them time to reason their way out of buying the product.”

But, it is more than being encouraged to buy or steal on impulse, isn’t it? It is a loss of the “self-evident” truths that we once took for granted. It feels like the environment that Paul describes in Romans. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…”

For generations we have assumed what is called “Natural Law” that says there are some things that are wrong and right in every culture and in every time and people naturally recognize that – even if they break those laws they recognize them. What Paul is describing is a time when people knew God but persisted so long in exchanging truth for a lie that they no longer recognized what was consistently right and consistently wrong. They handed over their ability to distinguish truth and falsehood. In that world, stealing is good. Not just permissible or excusable but good.

This is what David describes in Psalm 12: “The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.” It is what Hosea cries out against. “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away..”

It is a time when people are no longer living off the moral capital of the past. That has been used up. There is no longer any “mailbox morality” to support a generation of people who are no longer creating any moral capital of their own. That is a dark time. It is a return to Egypt and bondage.

5.  On the other hand, we may be living in Babylonia – not in Egypt. Babylonia was a time when the Jews were captives but not slaves. Because of circumstances they could not control they became an even more unique people. We have looked at this before when we studied the Exile. In some ways, the Exile saved the Jews. They became traders, merchants, and even missionaries. They were forced to release the physical Temple and sacrifice as the main way to worship and became the People of the Book. They became artists, entrepreneurs and not only survived but thrived even with the loss of their freedom. They took on a whole new identity in the Babylonian exile. It may be we are looking at exile more than Egypt.

And that is the challenge of the Church today – to respond to the loss of the easy acceptance of self-evident truths in society. It was the challenge of the early church – to turn pagans into disciples. The challenge is the same today but it is turning attenders and joiners into disciples and individuals interested in personal growth and personal holiness into a community of peculiar people. That is what the Commandments were intended to do. In some ways, we have been so focused on acceptance and lowering the entry barriers that we have lost the obligation of high expectations. Attenders are not disciples. Unless people feel that the community has a rightful claim on us we will be just another voluntary organization that has little to say about how we live our lives. There will be no Commandments – only suggestions for a happier personal life. Unintentionally, we may even encourage people to steal from the church by indulging their getting something for nothing in our desire to have them attend.

6.  I think the ultimate goal of the Commandment not to steal looks like the example of Zaccheus. He became a different person altogether. He didn’t stop working but he had a new purpose in his work. He didn’t give away everything he had to the poor. He was no longer extorting people and he was not sent to prison or exile. His life changed in Jericho and Jericho was a better place for it. He redefined his life. There is no telling what the impact was of one man who stopped stealing so that he might work and be a blessing to others.

That is, in the end, the purpose of the Commandment. It is not just the prohibition of bad behavior. It is affirming the value of work. It is teaching us the importance of trust. It is the first step in becoming a blessing and a community of light in a very dark world.