The Good Samaritan

The present post is a continuation of the discussion I began in my post, The Sanctity of Marriage. If you have not read my first post, I strongly recommend that you read that post first before you read this one. There you will find the basic information to understand the content of this post.

In my first post, I introduced Joseph Fletcher’s book, a book that caused much discussion when it was published because of the premise of the book and because the book was illustrated with many fascinating stories and anecdotes. Fletcher’s book, Situation Ethics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966), elicited much debate because Fletcher was advocating a new form of morality, a morality based on individual responsibility in which a situation decided whether an action was right or wrong.

The basic presupposition of Fletcher’s new morality was that a moral decision made in love and designed to help another person, is not wrong even if that decision violates law codes and rules of behavior.

In my previous post I presented the first story, a story dealing with the sanctity of marriage. In this post I am presenting the second story. I welcome your comments and reactions. At the end of the story, I will give the guidelines for your response. Before I tell you the story, I want to introduce what the Bible says about the right of private property.

The Theological Principle

The eighth commandment says: “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). The eighth commandment commands every Israelite, and indeed every person, to respect the property of another person. The whole Bible, and not the eighth commandment only, affirms the right of private property. This means that no person has the right to take someone else’s property.

The taking of someone else’s private property by force is a violation of this command. I remember when someone broke into my house many years ago. Gone were a stereo, a television, and many other valuable items. When I came home and discovered that I had been robbed, it felt like a personal violation of my right to keep what was lawfully mine.

The Story

One day a man was walking by the park (let us call this man “The Good Samaritan”) when he saw an elderly woman sleeping on a park bench. He looked at her and realized that she was cold and hungry. He was so touched by the situation of that poor woman that he felt compelled to help her.

So, he went home, got his gun and decided to get some money to help that poor woman. As he went through the streets of his city, he meets you coming out of a bank. You had gone to the bank to cash your paycheck. You had worked hard to earn your money with which you would help your family and pay your bills.

On your way out of the bank, the Good Samaritan accosts you and takes some (not all) of your money by force to help the poor hungry woman. The Good Samaritan comes to where the poor woman was, and with your money, he buys her some food, and with the rest of your money, he buys her some clothes.

When the Good Samaritan told one of his friends what he had done, the friend told him what he had done was wrong. So, the Good Samaritan goes out, polls 100 people and 95% of them said he was right. The Good Samaritan goes back to his friend and told him that 95% of the people believed what he had done was right. The friend says that the sample was too small to be conclusive. So, the Good Samaritan pools one million people and this time 90% of the people agree with him.

The Question

Is it proper for a Good Samaritan to take your money by force to help a stranger?

The Comments

I welcome your comments. The rules for commenting on this post are the same as in the previous post. If you want to comment on this post, I am going to ask you to abide by the following guidelines:

1. Your comment must only address the question I raised and the issue presented by the story.

2. Be brief and to the point. Do not preach a sermon.

3. No personal attacks will be allowed. Respect the comments of other readers.

4. If you are going to react to a comment by a reader, respond with respect and dignity.

5. Any comment that does not abide by these guidelines will be deleted.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Eighth Commandment, Good Samaritan, Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, Stealing

You Shall Not Steal Thy Brother’s Song

Every Christian knows that stealing is wrong. Christians know by heart what the eighth commandment says: “You shall not steal.” To steal means to take possession of that which belongs to another person.

The Hebrew word for “stealing” covers a wide range of thefts, including music.

James Michael Stevens, a prolific musician, has written an article in which he tells of his experience with churches and Christians singers who use his music without paying royalties.

The following is an excerpt of his article:

The second example is of another church that has thousands in attendance every Sunday and which may indeed be the world's largest. The church was selling about 20 different CDs on the church's website that contained our song. I contacted them to see if I could get some copies of the CDs and to make them aware that all of them had been done without permission, without our knowledge and without paying royalties. Since the church was merely selling them and were not the record producers, I thought they would want to know since their church was one of the world's best known with one of the most famous pastors of all time. The next day, someone went on the church's website and removed the title of our song from the song list of each of the CDs. Now understand that they were still selling the CDs, and our song was still on each of them, they just removed our title from the list so no one would know.

Now let me share some of the reasoning that Christians gave for illegal copying:

One person said that the fault of the illegal copying was with the greedy record companies, because the record companies charged too much for their CDs. Since they charged "too much," then this made it OK for the music to be copied without permission. Hey, if they cost too much, don't buy them. Perhaps some in the record industry would like to give their input, but my guess is that they actually lose money on many if not the majority of releases.

Here was the logic from another party, which was actually a man in a Christian singing group. The young man said in essence that he had made illegal copies of a CD from a name artist and gave the copies to friends including a minister of music at a church. The minister of music listened to the CD and liked it so much that he invited the artist to his church to perform. The artist got a "gig" and was able to sell "legal" copies of his CDs at the concert. The question to me by the infringer was "Did my making the illegal copies hurt or help the artist?" .Or does the "end, justify the means?"

Another gentleman, who was also a Christian musician, suggested to me the bible does not even support the idea of intellectual property rights and therefore, there was no such thing as giving a valid "moral" argument for the refraining from copyright infringement, only a "legal" one. There were many other bizarre justifications as well.

Read the article by clicking here.

To pilfer music without proper acknowledgment is one way by which countless Christians violate the eighth commandment. And this kind of stealing is not a victimless crime. Christians composers make a living from their work.

In his book, Written in Stone: The Ten Commandments and Today’s Moral Crisis (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2003), Philip Graham Ryken wrote: “There is theft of intellectual property, the violation of copyrights, including the unlawful duplication of music and videos” (p. 173).

It is sad that some of the people who are pilfering music are some of the same people who advocate that the Ten Commandments be exhibited in public places.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Christian Music, Stealing, Ten Commandments