The Tribune

By Rev Canon S

Sebastian Campbell

Ethics and conscience

1. A moralist who prides himself in not stealing but yet makes a false claim to the insurance company, or destroys property to collect a claim.
2. A businessman whose loose code of ethics permits him to overcharge so as to make bloated profits, but yet will beat his children for picking around the home or fire an employee for “stealing” a pen.
3. False labelling, for example a superior brand name on an inferior product or changing price tags in a shop.
4. Falsifying the scales; in how many different ways can we conceive of this. False weights and false measures were common place in the time of Amos; he’s very sensitive of this in his writings. Products on store shelves need to be randomly checked to verify quality and weight. Price control must be beefed up in all our stores.
5. A doctor who makes a person to believe that he is more ill than he really is in order to increase the number of visits and bills. It is blatantly obvious that many doctors are more concerned with private wealth than public health. Are there obvious cases of overcharging for healthcare? An example is a dentist who pretends to do more work on your teeth than he actually does.
6. What of a politician who peddles influences, then rips you off with your eyes wide open?
7. Is the receiver just as bad as the thief? Yes, lawyers defend thieves and drug lords, then take the stolen or drug money as pay.
8. An honest day’s work for and honest day’s pay. What of the worker who fails to give the full amount of work for what he is capable of doing and for what he is paid. Work begins at 9am and finishes at 5pm, lunch is one hour only. How much of this time is taken at liberty and we flaunt long breaks and telephone gossip time. Surely this is a rip-off.
9. Perpetually taking time off from work under the disguise of sickness or justifying family matters as free tickets for time off.
10. Ticket agents who bump passengers so as to collect pay to get another on.
11. Removal of landmarks; crouching on another’s property – pushing your boundary another feet or two on the neighbour’s and building thereon.

Do we ever remotely associate this commandment with these issues? The greatest incident of theft in our Bahamas though is the stealing of good name and character. Character assassination is too common place. Effectively done, it robs people out of making a living or ever holding up their head again in public. True, loose lips sink ships.

What then is the most Christian way to go? Let’s look at some instances:

In Mexico a first-offender stealer of food goes free.

In Sweden a poor man is allowed three opportunities to steal to feed his family.

In Muslim countries they will not cut off the hand that steals perishable food, because it might be stolen to satisfy immediate hunger.

In China they never convict a hungry thief.

Can the Christian view be Christianised so that we can more ‘Christianly’ define the real thieves of society? For if we don’t, the small man will always carry the stigma that a thief is always a thief, while the “muck-a-muck” thief is the one clothed in fine linen and hailed as Mr Respectable.

Can you now answer what constitutes theft?