"If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic." Luke 6:29
There Jesus goes again, turning everything on its head in His Sermon on the Mount.
The Big 10 tells us not to steal. Jesus tells us to be complicit in our own mugging. Or, as Rob told us, give it away before it's taken away. What we give away can't be stolen. The verse above is one of those inconvenient commands Jesus gave us that we conveniently pretend aren't there. Are we any better than the rich young ruler who walked away from Christ's command to him? I'm not sure I see the difference. If anything, it's merely a matter of scale.
In truth, we don't give anything away. All we have belongs to God. We are only stewards. It's all there for His use. If we hold onto too much for ourselves, we're actually stealing from God. Sounds harsh, but that's the way the prophet put it. (Malachi 3:8-9) That's a place I don't wanna be.
One more thing: The barriers to theft have been all but demolished by technology. Few of us would rip off a convenience store, but some don't think twice before ripping MP3s or downloading movies. That's theft, but we pretend it isn't because it's so easy. Besides, everyone's doing it. (Why does that matter again?) How about plagiarism, i.e. stealing another's words? Besides stealing, there's also pornography, gambling, slander, etc., etc. Technology has revealed weaknesses we may not have even been aware of.
This failing on our part was pointed out long ago by Mark Twain, hardly a Christ follower, when he wrote, "The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire." The fire in this case is the easy access that technology provides. Or in the words of another irreligious pundit, Oscar Wilde: "'I can resist anything, except temptation." Sad that we so often find ourselves thrown in with that lot. Jesus deserves better from us.
Prayer: Lead me not into temptation. But when temptation comes, which I acknowledge it will, show me the way out that you have already provided. Amen.
1 comments:
Good point about the barriers to theft being taken away by technology. How much easier it is today to plagiarize when writing a paper now that we have the "power of google". How tempting it is to claim someone else's original creative ideas posted on the Internet as my own ideas. Lord, how we need your strength to resist these temptations and to do what's right in your eyes.
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