24 If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.
25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
This Lesson may seem a bit grim at this time. And I don’t want to cause any additional panic to readers. But it’s important to note that in the Bible, sustaining life is a preeminent value — and the right to life supersedes all other values, including those of private property.
So while hoarding is strictly forbidden, the foraging of food from others’ excess is permitted in order to sustain life.
According to William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, early Christian Fathers, St. Thomas, Lactantius, and Ambrose, each affirmed and clarifying this rule, declaring that “theft” to be “no sin if it is committed to relieve genuine need,” so long as the need is “real and urgent, and other means of meeting it lacking” (William Temple, “Christianity and Social Order).
I pray we don’t come to a point when the means to feed ones’ family are utterly lacking. But the shelves are barren. And too many people have taken too much. This is the real robbery, and a far more grievous sin than simply taking to survive.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. And it’s apparent that there’s a lot of very relevant stuff in this Book. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 24-27.
No comments:
Post a Comment