Uncle Kolya in the land of electrodes
I first felt how theft affects a person’s soul when I was thirteen. Or rather, I felt it much later, many years later. Then, in childhood, it was just the opposite - there were no feelings or experiences. There was just a fact that I’m still trying to comprehend and can’t do it fully.
I had a friend Genka, nicknamed Sailor. His family lived in a workers’ dormitory, where, as the song says, “there is only one restroom for thirty-eight rooms,” and even that one was in the courtyard. But there was a common storage room in the room. Such a small nook in the corridor, entirely consisting of closets on which large padlocks hung. One day, Genka’s dad and I went there to get some hardware for a bicycle. Dad removed the lock and opened the door. His closet was almost completely filled with welding electrodes. Packs in original packaging lay on the shelves in orderly rows, as if in a store or warehouse.
I asked:
- Uncle Kohl, are you a welder?
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Sailors' dad looked at me in surprise:
- I? Yes, well, I wanted to burn my eyes. This is harmful work. No, I'm a forklift driver.
- Why do you need so many electrodes?
- What do you mean why? I work in a welding shop.
- Well.
- So much for “well.” What else can I take out of there besides electrodes?
- You sell them, right?
Uncle Kolya laughed joyfully: “You, San, are completely stupid.” Who will buy them from me when half the city is working at the factory? If anyone needs it, they will bring it themselves, free of charge. And why cook with them, with these electrodes?
I didn't ask him anything else.
In general, the motto “take every nail from work - you are the master here, not the guest” was then an unspoken norm for many people. Nobody really thought about why. They just dragged and stacked the houses. Perhaps it will come in handy.
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It was theft, as Pushkin would say, senseless and merciless. When a person no longer steals out of any self-interest, but generally for unknown reasons. Ask why, he won’t really be able to answer. Writer Sergei Dovlatov recalled how one of his intelligent acquaintances stole a bucket of cement mortar at work. On the way, the solution naturally set and hardened. The thief threw out the petrified block not far from his own home. Another friend of his stole a fire extinguisher. The third is a music stand from an amateur club. None of them needed these things. Dovlatov believed that such aimless theft is metaphysical in nature.
And I completely agree with him in this definition.
During my student years, I myself had the opportunity to steal a spreading cactus from the office of the secretary of the party committee. And my roommate once brought a huge clock into the dorm, which for some reason he took from a pole on the street. There was some kind of courage in all this that excited the blood, made life sharp and unpredictable. One could consider this just a game, the usual mischief of poorly educated youth, if not for one circumstance: when we came to Church, all such “games” immediately stopped. The commandment “thou shalt not steal” cut them off from our lives once and for all. And when some irrational actions stop through the fulfillment of God’s commandment, this is a sure sign that the metaphysics behind them was very dark. And that hidden in this mischievous darkness was the one who, back in the Garden of Eden, taught people not to believe in God and invited them to diversify their lives by eating the forbidden fruit.
Sin of theft
Saint Basil, Bishop of Kineshma (in the world Veniamin Sergeevich Preobrazhensky), recalled with bitterness the following story: “A young missionary monk is giving a speech to a meeting of Buddhists in Tibet. With fervor and ardent animation, the young monk speaks about our Savior, about His sufferings that atoned for the sin of man, about His great love for people, about His wondrous teaching, which brings light and happiness to life, about eternal bliss. The lama-priests listen attentively and thoughtfully to the preacher and do not interrupt his speech with a single sound: Eastern etiquette is strict.
The Misadventures of Winnie the Pooh
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Genka Moryachk and I went to radio classes together. We soldered simple circuits and drew the design of radio tubes and transistors in notebooks. Well, they stole little details. Fortunately, there were plenty of them there, literally. Capacitors, resistors, diodes and other useful radio junk were kept in large boxes without any accounting. If a part was needed for the circuit, we looked for it in these deposits, like prospectors in a gold mine. And at the same time they grabbed a couple of unnecessary ones - home, in reserve.
It was there, in the radio circle, that an incident occurred that I will probably remember for the rest of my life. Our leader was a plump, bald man nicknamed Winnie the Pooh. While we were smoking soldering irons over some receiver or color-music attachment for a tape recorder, Winnie the Pooh was leisurely going about his adult affairs. He worked at the local police department, setting up alarm systems for private security there. And sometimes he brought various devices to class that needed repair.
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On that ill-fated day, he was dismantling some kind of cunning electrical box, stuffed with identical removable circuit boards the size of two matchboxes. Apparently, in order not to confuse their order, Winnie the Pooh took the boards out of the device and immediately laid them out in a neat row on the first student table. I think these were prototypes of future chips.
The circuit boards, like strange beetles, sparkled with the black varnish of transistors. I seized the moment, took the last one in the row and, with an imperceptible movement, lowered it by the top of my boot.
Winnie the Pooh discovered the loss after we left, when he began to put the boards back in place. A couple of days later we came to the next lesson, and for the first time I saw what real human despair looks like. Winnie the Pooh didn't even ask to give him the missing payment. He begged us for it.
- Guys... Well, please... I won’t punish anyone, I promise. I... I... I will give you any details in return that you say. If you want, I’ll give the tape recorder to the person who did it. I won't tell anyone. Just return it!
It was clear that the guy was seriously upset. There was nowhere to buy the same board; it would have been impossible to replicate the factory assembly myself. And without the missing part, the police device refused to work.
I watched an adult who had done nothing wrong to me suffer and be humiliated. I remember well that there was not even the slightest sympathy in my heart. I just sat there and looked at him and didn't care. What kind of petrification of the soul this is, where such ruthlessness came from in a thirteen-year-old boy, cannot be explained by any rational arguments. I think it was a real obsession with the spirit of theft, which kills any sympathy in a person for the robbed.
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No, it is clear that admitting to theft was a dangerous matter. But I could secretly throw the board into some box with parts without any problems. But come on, such a thought didn’t even arise then.
And then this board lay around my house for many, many years without any use. Until I got lost during the next move. I began to remember this incident only after I was thirty. And the older I got, the sadder these memories were. Apparently, with age, I was able to mentally put myself in the place of the unfortunate Winnie the Pooh.
By the way, on the same day I boasted of my thieves’ radio booty to Genka Moryachko. My friend fully approved of my action. A few years later he would go to prison for stealing binoculars from a yacht club. Then there will be three more convictions for the same ridiculous crimes. The last time Sailor was imprisoned was for removing the battery from a broken truck crane that was standing on the side of the road. He was already nearly forty then.
Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica
This contradicts
Augustine said that “[the so-called] “apostolates” with extreme arrogance adopted this name for themselves because they do not allow into their communities people who are married or have any property, although the same are monks and clergy, of whom in the Catholic Church a lot." The reason that these people became heretics was that, having separated themselves from the Church, they thought that those who enjoy the use of the above-mentioned things, of which they themselves are deprived, have no hope of salvation. Therefore, it is wrong to say that a person has no right to own property.
Our mom has long arms
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Perhaps someone will now think that senseless and merciless theft of this kind was characteristic only of Soviet people. But alas... A friend told me how during a recent Moscow hurricane a tree fell on their car, crushed the roof and broke the rear window. While they, having heard the howl of the “alarm”, were descending from the sixth floor, a woman passing by with two small children pulled out a large teddy bear, which was lying behind the backs of the seats, through a broken window. She pulled it out and gave it to her children. A neighbor saw this through the window and later told the owners. Just imagine - a hurricane is knocking down trees around you, you have two small ones next to you, and in front of their eyes you are climbing into someone else’s car for a cheap toy. Until the owners arrived.
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I think it will be worse than Dovlatov’s cement, Uncle Kolya’s electrodes and my cactus combined. And no explanations will explain anything here. There's nothing to talk about here. This is not about words anymore.
This is probably why the Lord gave us “thou shalt not steal” precisely as a commandment, as an iron, inviolable rule that is not subject to discussion. If you want to be God's, do it. If you don’t fulfill it, continue to play mischief with the hitherto unknown inhabitants of metaphysical darkness.
All commandments essentially only outline the boundaries of our humanity, beyond which likeness to God ends and likeness to the devil begins. The commandments protect the space in the human soul in which our love for God and for other people can flourish. If you violate even one of them, icy satanic indifference will immediately pour into this sunlit meadow, freezing out all living things and turning you into a heartless creature. Capable, for example, of indifferently observing the suffering of the poor fellow from whom you have just stolen something absolutely unnecessary to you.
Stealing is a sin
— The eighth commandment of the Decalogue, “Thou shalt not steal,” prohibits unlawfully appropriating what does not belong to us. Sin committed against this commandment comes in many forms. For example, employees sin by failing to fulfill their duties, employers by withholding wages, sellers by advertising low-quality goods and inflating prices, judges by acquitting the guilty and punishing those not involved in the crime, fraudsters by feigning illness or poverty, officials by exceeding their authority, enriching themselves at the expense of the state treasury and etc. The variety of forms is so great that.
Stealing is a grave sin cursed by Allah
Some enemies of Islam say that cutting off a hand is savage and inhumane. But as world experience shows, only such a law can eradicate the theft of other people's property. Such measures are a deterrent for those who commit crimes, neglecting religious and moral norms and prohibitions. Anyone who believes in Allah and fears Him will not steal - he knows that the Almighty sees him and, even if he escapes justice in this world, he will not escape punishment in the Hereafter.
***
One brother forged a key, opened the cell of one of the elders and took his money. The elder, having discovered the loss, wrote a charter: “Mr. Brother, whoever you are, show love, leave half for my needs next time.” And, dividing the money into two parts, he laid down the charter. The same one, coming another time and tearing up the charter, took all the money. Then, two years later, he began to die, and his soul did not come out. Then he called the elder and repented to him of what he had done, and through the elder’s prayers he peacefully departed to the Lord.
Stealing is a sin
Pride is the beginning of all sins and all evils. The proud always retreat from God. Because of pride, His first assistant, Dennitsa, fell away from God, who was cast out of heaven and has since been called the devil; Because of pride, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and submitted to the wickedness of the devil. Lord is one of the Names of God. Sin is rebellion against God, deviation in deed, word or thought from the commandments of God and the Law of God. It came not from God and not from nature, but from the abuses of the mind and will of people, from their arbitrary deviation from God, from replacing His holy will with their own, from self-will.
Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom
During the life of Saint Andrew, Christ the Fool for the Fool's sake, there lived in Constantinople a fierce sinner who robbed the dead. One day, having learned about the burial of a maiden, the daughter of a nobleman, in a secluded place, he went to her grave in order to remove her precious clothes. On the way, Saint Andrew met him and, foreknowledge of the wicked deed, they began to persuade him not to do this, otherwise he threatened with God's punishment. Instead of obeying the saint, he only laughed at him and went where he had planned. Having rolled away the stone from the cave in which the girl was buried, he opened her coffin, took off her shroud, then her precious clothes, and finally, he was not ashamed to completely expose her - he took the last shirt. But at the very time when he was finishing his vile deed, by the command of God, the deceased rose from the coffin and hit him in the face with her right hand, and he immediately lost his sight. “Damned! - she said. “If only out of shame you left me the last of your clothes.” But now you will never steal! And from this day you will know that there is God, Jesus Christ lives, there is Judgment and there will be reward after death.” After this, the blind thief, willy-nilly, abandoned his craft and began to feed on alms. He often reproached himself cruelly for his former life. “Damn you,” he would sometimes say, “my insatiable greed, for your sake I received this terrible blindness. It is bad for him who lives in idleness and engages in theft” (113, 101-102).
