Wednesday, July 1, 2009

sin and theft

I just finished reading "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini (which was a most compelling book, by the way) and was struck by one of the overall themes of the book. The father says, "Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft."

He goes on to explain that when you kill a man, you steal his life and you steal his wife's right to a husband and his children's right to a father. Then you tell a lie, you steal a person's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal someone's right to fairness.

If you continue in this vein, then you'd say if you rape someone, you steal their innocence and virtue. If you commit adultery, you steal trust and loyalty. If you take the Lord's name in vane, you steal His right to respect.

I thought this was an interesting concept. I have never thought of sin in that manner before. I have tried to think of a sin that you can't tie to theft and I can't think of one. Can anyone else?

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