sonia-marmeladova:
naamahdarling:
confetti-vampire:
tragedycamp:
i think that when god made stealing a mortal sin he didn’t know that walmart would ever exist
I’m absolutely not a rabbi, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this, actually, and what stealing might mean to gd. and I know this post is probably a joke but like I said. been thinking about it a lot.
So what a lot of people may not know is that the Torah is mostly like. a farming manual. A day-to-day life guide for 6,000 years ago. And so it has instructions for harvesting, of course. But it says specifically that you shouldn’t reap all the way to the edge of your field, and that you should leave that for the poor. It also says that you shouldn’t take the fallen grapes from your vineyard, and to leave that also for the poor. And a lot more little things like that.
So why is it encouraged? Why doesn’t it count as stealing for the poor to take the food you grew?
I think that gd’s definition of stealing would, in this case, punish you if you did take the fallen food from your fields, because you’d be taking it from the mouths and bellies of people who clearly desperately need it. It’s not the poor who are stealing, because they are simply trying to survive. I think gd wants us to remember, in our harvests, in our successes, that we have a duty to give what we can to those who need it, and if we don’t, that’s stealing from our fellow human.
In other words, pouring bleach on edible food thrown in dumpsters is stealing, and a mortal sin.
“‘But whom do I treat unjustly,’ you say, ‘by keeping what is my own?’”
“Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all—this is what the rich do. They first take possession of the common property, and then they keep it as their own because they were the first to take it. But if every man took only what sufficed for his own need, and left the rest to the needy, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need…”
“Is God unjust, dividing unequally the goods of this life? Why are you rich, while the other is poor? Isn’t it, if for no other reason, so that you can gain a reward for your kindness and faithful stewardship, and for him to be honored with the great virtue of patience? But you, having gathered everything inside the empty bosom of avarice, do you think that you wrong no one, while you rob so many people?”
“He who strips a man of his clothes is to be called a thief. Is not he who, when he is able, fails to clothe the naked, worthy of no other title? The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”
St. Basil the Great, church father.
(via queerprayers)
