Column: Stealing from a church

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

“What kind of people steal from a church?” Last week, after someone took a pallet of shingles from the church parking lot, I heard that question at least a dozen times. “What kind of people steal from a church?” The question assumes there is a particular kind of person who specializes in ecclesiastic crime.
I have tried to smooth over some of the rhetoric and lower the anxiety. It has not worked. Never mind that the shingles actually belonged to the roofer, and there are contracts and insurance policies involved. Never mind that the loss represented less than 5 percent of the total number of shingles on the roof. Someone stole from a church! “What kinds of people do things like that?”
This week a friend told me there had been a rash of thefts in her neighborhood. I asked her, “What is missing?”
She said, “Rocking chairs.”
I know that times are tough, but rocking chairs! I could ask the question, “What kind of people steal rocking chairs?” The only answer I can imagine is retiring thieves.
Yet, I know what people mean when they ask, “What kind of people steal from a church?” The question is rhetorical; they do not expect an answer. We think of a church as holy ground, as a place that is off limits to thieves and crooks. We refer to churches as sanctuaries, tabernacles, temples and worship centers. They are the sources of charity, not the victims of crime. People give to churches; they do not steal from them. “What kind of people steal from a church?”
Jean Valjean was that kind of person. In Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables, a kind bishop named Myriel gives Valjean a night’s shelter. The former convict rewards the bishop’s charity by stealing his silverware. By chance, the police arrest Valjean and force him to return the silver to Myriel before they take him to jail. However, rather than see Valjean returned to prison for the theft, the bishop creates a story that the silverware was a gift to Valjean. Bishop Myriel then scolds him for not taking the silver candlesticks that he had also given Valjean. In Hugo’s novel, that act of redemptive kindness slowly converts Jean Valjean. He becomes the man whom his benefactor imagined.
Well, that is a novel and a lovely idea. However, we do not live in a novel, but in a real world where people take shingles and rocking chairs. “What kind of people steal from a church?” People who steal from a church are similar to those who steal from any other place. They are people who are sad and mad. They are desperate and depressed, angry, cheated and poor. Some do it for kicks, others as a last resort. They are both perpetrators and victims. They are from the other side of town and next door to you. They are just like you and me, and yet nothing like us. They are people for whom a church is not a place of sanctuary, but a place of opportunity. It is just another building.
Rather than “what kinds of people steal from a church,” the more important question may be “what kind of church is stolen from?” How can we expect anyone to see the church as more than just another building and business when we behave as any other building or business?
“What kind of church is stolen from?” I would like to think it is the kind of church that might say, “We had some nails to give you also.”

Dr. Mark Ross is the pastor of Marion Baptist Church. To learn more about MBC, visit http://www.marionbaptistchurchva.com/