Shoplifting at Walmart

Magalene works at the carpet manufacturing company where I work. She says her daughter, 24, is employed at Walmart and sees people try to shoplift. Magalene’s story about wickedness at Walmart goes like this:

“My daughter was checking receipts as people went out the door,” Magalene says, “and a girl she knew came up with a computer in a buggy. My daughter asked for her receipt, and the girl said the clerk didn’t give her one. My daughter said, ‘I have to see a receipt.’ Come to find out, the girl was trying to steal that computer.”

Magalene says she warned her daughter about a family who once attended the church Magalene attends, saying, “If you see any of them in your store, you watch ’em, ’cause they steal.”

Magalene says Walmart has surveillance cameras inside and outside.

“A man and a little boy came into the store and went separate ways,” she says. “The boy got liquid dishwashing detergent and began sloshing it down an aisle. The man came and slid down on that detergent. He was lying there saying he was going to sue the store. They found out on the video that him and that boy came in together.”

She says one Walmart cashier pushed a buggy holding a flat-screen TV through an employee entrance at the rear of the store. Somebody was waiting outside to run with that TV. Weeks later, Magalene’s daughter saw that cashier leave the store in police handcuffs.

“One woman faked an asthma attack, so another woman could try to get out the door with some goods,” Magalene says. “And my daughter says people try to bring things back to the store for refunds, and some of that stuff looks like it is 15 years old, and some of it didn’t even come from Walmart. One woman said she was going to sue the store if they didn’t take back the things she brought in.”

Professional shoplifters and Walmart’s own employees reportedly inflict the greatest shoplifting damage to Walmart.

We may become incensed that sticky-fingered folk ignore the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” Their crimes are evident, but could some of us, at times, be thieves of a different sort?

“For most of us, the idea of one man stealing from another man is offensive to the point of being repulsive,” says writer Paul Meacham, Jr. “But, to steal from God, how could anyone do such a thing? Yet, that is exactly the charge God leveled against Israel through the prophet Malachi.”

“Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me” (Malachi 3:8).

“They had robbed God by not bringing the offerings and sacrifices He required,” Meacham says. “Can a man steal from God today? Certainly. When one withholds from God what is rightfully His, he is guilty of robbing God.”

Meacham says a man “robs God” when he doesn’t give God some of his income and also robs God when he gives God his sorrow but not his service. God requires more of us than just to trust Him in times of sorrow, Meacham says, adding, “Everyone can honor God with faithful, respectful service. Such is required by God and is a sign of our freedom from sin.”

Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

A person robs God when he gives God his fear but not his faithfulness, Meacham says. “If we turn to God to help us overcome our fear and fail to serve Him faithfully, we are robbing God of that which is rightfully His,” he notes.

If I try to shoplift at Walmart, I may get caught and taken away in handcuffs. If I attempt to get a “five-finger discount” on merchandise at Wally-World, my arrest may become public knowledge. Robbing God of money and of my service and faithfulness may not result in immediate consequences. He usually doesn’t set off an alarm or dispatch law enforcement officers to throw me to the ground and cuff me. No, God gives me freedom to choose blessing or cursing.

“Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:9-10).

Judgment at New River

Summers ago when my daughters and I rafted on the New River near Beckley, West Virginia, I mentally criticized one of our guides for something he said. Days later, I realized we were sort of “in the same boat.”

My wife isn’t an outdoor person, so when our two daughters took breaks from college and high school one summer, I arranged for three-fourths of our family to try white-water rafting in West Virginia.

The three of us drove to a Beckley motel, rose early the next day and rode a bus from a ticket-buying station to the river. We donned life vests and helmets and met two other adventurers (a young man and his wife) who manned the center of our inflatable craft. Two young male guides rode the raft’s rear, and I sat behind my daughters, who planted themselves in the raft’s bow.

We paddled peacefully after entering that old and deep river at a still-water section. I admired mountain scenery and noticed railroad tracks laid along steep banks.

Numerous folksingers have crooned “I’m riding that New River train.” Those words come from “New River Train,” a song that originated, I understand, in The New River Gorge region, which produced lots of coal through the early 1900s.

Before encountering rocky, white water rapids, we enjoyed tranquil passage and listened to our main guide, a dark-haired West Virginia native, recite river facts.
During a silence, I observed a Whitetail doe pause perhaps a hundred yards ahead and to our right, enter the river and begin swimming across.

“How beautiful,” I thought. Words from one of my favorite worship choruses came to mind: “As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee…” (Psalm 42:1).

I felt the doe’s entry into our idyllic scene provided icing on the cake for our near-Garden of Eden experience. Her timely appearance added flourish to an already-special display of God’s panorama. I felt thankful to be with my daughters and awed by the river and mountains.

“Look at the deer,” someone said.

From the back of the raft, our main guide, speaking in his best macho-drawl, said, “That’d sure look good in my freezer.”

“Crude!” I thought, wondering how anyone could see a lovely doe swimming a picturesque river framed by take-your-breath-away mountains and think only of appetite. How could he view such a creature and think first of his belly? His bull-in-a-China shop, caveman commentary offended me. I said nothing but judged him to be a man who mostly lived life on a physical level.

For days after our excursion, I thought about our guide’s distasteful reaction. Then, as I reveled in self-righteousness, this thought—like a heaven-born bubble ascending from the murky bottom of a deep subconscious river—floated to the surface of my mind: “How many times have you looked at person of the opposite sex and had less than spiritual thoughts?”

My puffed-up, highly inflated raft of self-righteousness struck upon the rock of that question and—swoosh!—lost all air.

This analogy hit me: a deer crosses a river, and a hunter says, “That’d look good in my freezer”; a graceful lady crosses a street, and some man muses….”

I’d fallen into the trap of thinking myself more spiritual than our deer-hunting guide, when I hadn’t shared his temptation. I hadn’t looked at that deer as dinner. I wasn’t a hunter. However, I have faced various temptations involving anger, strife, intemperance, lust and idolatry, and my initial responses to thoughts concerning “works of the flesh” haven’t always been good.

Someone said, “Temptation, unlike opportunity, doesn’t knock - it tries to kick the door in.”

No one has to search long in the trash heap of his own fallen nature to find something that puts him on a level playing field with the rest of mankind.

I believe God constantly attempts to show each of us our personal, burdensome sins - not to condemn us, but to show us we need to confess our sins and find relief by accepting his offer of forgiveness through Christ.

I believe there’s hope for the crudest of sinners. And for would-be super-sojourners, who try to think mystical thoughts while navigating life’s deep rivers, who desire to hold high “the light” and help other travelers, there is also hope - because God can even forgive self-righteousness that tends, at times, to rise in religious hearts.

The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity

Writer Brett McCracken says many pastors and leaders are concerned about young people leaving American churches, never to return.

On August 13, 2010, a McCracken article about “wannabe cool Christianity” was published in the “Opinion Journal” of “The Wall Street Journal.” His book “Hipster Christianity: Where Church and Cool Collide” was published in August 2010.

McCracken writes, “As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.”

He says statistics show an exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70 percent of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

McCracken says the plan to keep youth in church “has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant.”

“As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called ‘the emerging church’ – a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement,” he says. “Perhaps because it was too ‘let's rethink everything’ radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it – to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it ‘cool’ – remains.”

McCracken says “Wannabe cool” Christianity can manifest itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an “iCampus.” Other churches encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during services. But one of the most popular methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking, McCracken says.

Dan Burrell of Lake Lure, N.C., writes about “cool churches” on his danburrell.com blog: “Having just moved, I am looking for a new church…Sadly, I ended up in such a church today. I knew I was in trouble when the opening song was – I kid you not – ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ I almost left…this type of church has become exactly what they claim to hate in the church of their ‘fathers.’ It is extremely cliché, focused on a single generation, lost in a world of their own creation and mistakenly thinking that they are somehow relevant…The last church I attended…had a wonderful grasp on multi-cultural and multi-generational ministry with blended worship, a wide range of dress styles…creative outreaches, etc....but the ONE THING on which there was zero compromise was the clear, expositional preaching of the Scripture…Sadly, churches such as that are difficult to find and often drowned out by those on the far fight and far left who keep telling us that the other is out of touch or simply wrong.”

In the book, “The Courage to Be Protestant,” David Wells writes, “The born-again, marketing church has calculated that unless it makes deep, serious cultural adaptations, it will go out of business, especially with the younger generations. What it has not considered carefully enough is that it may well be putting itself out of business with God. And the further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.”

If evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken, McCracken says, adding, “As a twenty-something, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real. If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched – and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.”