It is reported that there are 7.5 billion people living on planet earth today and sad to say not many of them could say that they have never misappropriated something that belonged to another person i.e. that they have not committed theft. Possibly, the same could be said about lying but that is another subject.
The eighth commandment is ‘Thou shalt not steal’, the sixth is ‘Thou shalt not kill’, the seventh ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’. So, God was precise in giving us an exact code of moral conduct for life.
The definition of theft is to ‘dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it’. The word ‘theft’ covers many acts of misappropriation - larceny (theft of personal property), robbery, fraud (identity, benefits, expenses, mortgage, insurance etc), embezzlement and burglary.
