8th Commandment -- Stealing Prohibited

 

Stop, thief! Think old-time TV crime drama – Adam-12, or Dragnet – and you get the picture. The grandma cries out in despair as the purse-snatcher makes off with her bag. Enter Officers Reed and Malloy to nab the malefactor, and all is made well when this criminal runs head-first into the criminal justice system. Before this fellow made his felonious move, you could have seen the look of wariness and a smirk on this miscreant’s face, as he furtively checked all directions to make certain his next few moments were unobserved (like what you can see in this 1931 image, The Cunning Thief, by Paul-Charles Chocarne-Moreau). He knew it was wrong, as his own cautious approach testified. “You shall not steal.” (Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19) That four-word divine directive seems pretty brief and understandable, doesn’t it? God wasn’t really making up something new for His chosen people, and Rubel Shelly indicates in his work on the Ten Commandments (Written in Stone: Ethics for the Heart, p. 215) that a concept of ‘minimal civility’, common in most cultures, guides a prohibition against crimes like theft. So why does the thief proceed anyway? One’s avarice can smother any ethic that says otherwise.

 

Stealing in politics…what’s that look like? Here are some examples among historical political figures, and they need little explanation, although two of them are stealing of a different sort – theft (at least attempted) of information during the Watergate scandal, and identity theft. The others are generally rooted in an ages-old issue – love of money, which leads to all sorts of evil (1 Timothy 6:10).

 

·         Watergate began with burglars at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Watergate scandal

·         Spiro Agnew, former vice president, and tax fraud Spiro_Agnew

·         Donald Trump Trump Tax Fraud and Trump Civil Tax Fraud

·         Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall and Teapot_Dome_scandal (Harding presidency)

·         Bribery and other crimes Bob Menendez - Wikipedia

·         Identity theft/wire fraud George Santos - Wikipedia

 

The question is kinda like the chicken and the egg dilemma: Does the political environment breed or coax corruption, including the temptation to steal; or are these people crooked before they enter the political landscape? Which came first? But, whatever else is involved, and it’s worth repeating -- this particular sin most often involves money. Even in the Watergate scandal, at one point during the newspaper reporters’ investigation of all the complicated activities they encountered, they were told to ‘follow the money’, in order to get at the root of what had been going on. Deep Throat told the reporter Woodward that he and Bernstein should keep at their task, like hound dogs sniffing the trail of greenbacks (All the President’s Men clip Bing Videos). In the identity theft issue (George Santos) listed above, he likewise apparently committed this as part of a fraud (i.e. theft) scheme.

 

Is there a way that this issue could be headed off, before it even gets started in politics? It is a difficult prospect, because money is involved in so much of life, and especially among a bunch of public officials who talk about funding projects, budgets, campaign financing, etc. etc. So, how about beginning with this: transparency by candidates regarding their personal taxes?  Presidential Tax Transparency | Yale Law & Policy Review (and see the link to a PDF document at the top of the article here). There may be other methods, but we all pay taxes, so why not go straight to the heart of the matter? Tax transparency (as is pointed out in the article) has been voluntarily practiced for decades by political candidates. If someone refuses to share, should that not be a yellow warning light for we who must decide how to mark a ballot? Financial disclosure is a must, for trust to be present between humans involved in a common enterprise. Consider what happened when a couple named Ananias and Sapphira tried to hide some money from others in their community (Acts 5:1-10): Death took them. You might think you can keep something like money hidden, but history shows that is a myth. Be transparent, or don’t pretend to be serving the public while you’re really trying to be clandestine in other ways. The conflict will eventually be exposed.

  

File:Paul-Charles Chocarne-Moreau The Cunning Thief.jpg - Wikimedia Commons …This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States