EIGHTH COMMANDMENT: Thou shalt not steal.
If you are trying to become a righteous person, the Ten Commandments are a great foundation on which to build your life around. They are a moral code and help you build correct principles to live your life by.
Since the fall of Adam and Eve, where Adam was told to labor by the sweat of his brow to have bread, many began trying to reap from someone else’s labor without giving something in return. This is called stealing or theft.
Those in public office as well as in private life, stealing is done in ways that look like it is the normal thing and that it is justified or accepted.
Our criminal court records are filled with accounts of juvenile delinquencies happening in our time.
Because of shoplifting, employee theft, our insurance rates go up, costs of courts and penal institutions become a burden on all of us.
God commanded “Thou shalt not steal,” knowing that we have a fundamental right of own property and stealing is against our best interest.
The Lord said not to steal nor do anything like unto it. Many people rationalize the way they steal but that does not change the commandment. Those people still think they are honorable and decent people. They are just fooling themselves but not God.
There are many ways we are dishonest. Out and out thefts like robbing money from tills or stealing from our employers, falsifying the books to get gain, making false claims and misusing food stamps, claiming false exemptions on tax forms, getting loans we do not plan to repay or getting them under false pretenses, claiming bankruptcies so we don’t have to pay bills that we incurred, stealing from people on the street or robbing homes.
A person who goes to work for his employer and avoids putting in an honest day’s work and still expecting the employer to pay for a full day’s work is being dishonest and is stealing from his employer.
Books can be written on the many ways to steal but I will not go into that here.
The simple words of the Lord “Thou shalt not steal,” should say it all.
For further information, go to www.lds.org
Comments are welcome.
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