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).