WWJD By Dr. Richard Youngblood
Question: Is it wrong to keep something another person
has lost but which you have found?
As children, we may have repeated the adage,
“Finders keepers, losers weepers;” but this spirit is
in direct opposition to God’s eternal moral teachings as expressed both in the
Ten Commandments and in the teachings of Jesus in his ministry. For example, in his message to the Israelites
in Deuteronomy Moses explained the commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exodus
20:15). He said: “If you
see your brother's ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take
it back to him. If the brother does not
live near you or if you do not know who he is, take it home with you and keep
it until he comes looking for it. Then give it back to him. Do the same if you find your brother's donkey
or his cloak or anything he loses. Do not ignore it” (Deuteronomy 22:1-3).
To keep any property that belongs to another person,
even if it has been lost by that person, is a form of stealing. Those who trust in the Lord will always make
every effort to return that property to its original owner. Assuming that the person who lost the
property was careless and, therefore, does not deserve to have it returned is
not justified. Neither can we avoid our responsibility
before God by ignoring any lost items we may see. The God who sees all places upon us the
responsibility to be our brother’s keeper by restoring the lost item if at all
possible.
In addition, Jesus taught his disciples what we call
the Golden Rule: “So in everything, do to others what you would have
them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the
Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). If I want to be faithful to Jesus as Lord of my
life, I must ask myself what I would want another person do about any property
that I accidently lost. No matter how
large or small that lost item is, I suspect that most of us would like to have it
returned.
Even dishonesty in small things is an indication of
a selfish and greedy heart. A person
who is so honest as to return even small items that he finds is a person who
can be trusted with things of much greater value. No society can long exist without this level
of basic honesty. I believe this is what
Jesus would have us do. After all, the
reason he came into our world was to seek and save lost people and return them
to the Heavenly Father.
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