Let's get gut-level honest

[Jennifer Smith]

This is an interesting question.. Yesterday we went to see "the Book of Eli" which is basically Mad Max with a bible protecting hero.. (I can't really recommend it b/c it had some gratuitous violence and other content) But the movie had me thinking. People who got desperate would turn to theft and cannibalism, but the main character lived by using his skill to hunt and to trade.. and lived on much less than what we come to think of as necessary.. which isn't to say that I wouldn't raid a store for water..but I have been thinking that in a situation in which provision is so scarce that there is little food to be found, that a person could subsist on water and a little food.. In America we are such mass consumers.
I would hope theft would not be necessary, but if a person were going to die of thirst, I would think the store owner would want the water to be distributed.

[forestwalker]

I can't say that I find it wrong to do so. But saying so leaves me feeling uneasy. People, and especially children, are dying from lack of food, clean water, and medicine every day in places all over the world. Would we as easily affirm the right of those facing these mini-disasters to steal from their wealthier neighbors as we do for ourselves when imagining ourselves in the current situation of the Haitians? Is it a sin for an Indian shopkeeper to not open up his shop to the child dying in the gutter outside his shop? Are we in sin that that child is not fed? I don't know. Pastor Gary's question seems easy to answer at first but it ultimately forces much more difficult questions on us. For now I can only pray Prov 30:8b-9.