What do American actress Winona Ryder, celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson and footballer Steven Gerrard have in common? As well as being famous people, they have all been caught shoplifting at one time, Antony Worrall Thompson most recently.
What makes rich and famous people steal items that they can easily afford? It’s a mystery. Did you know that certain medications given to people with Parkinson’s disease carry a health warning ‘may induce shoplifting’? How does that work?!
It’s a mystery sometimes, the way we behave. Have you ever found yourself hating something you did or said? Paul the apostle certainly did. In one of his letters he cries out: ‘I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate!’
Paul identifies in himself an innate selfishness that twists his best intentions. This is what causes us to hurt those we love, act in ways we are ashamed of and let ourselves down. Christians know this as sin. Rich and famous sinners need the cure just as much as homeless thieves. The cure is a person; his name is Jesus, and his living, guiding presence in our lives is the answer to our deepest problem.
Jan 12, 2012 @ 10:47:33
Interesting stuff, Loz, thanks.
Jan 12, 2012 @ 13:06:37
The Parkinson’s example shows how our behaviour comes from our brain wiring. Does that then take away our moral responsibility? The trend is to trace all behaviour, normal and abnormal, to brain function (fair enough), but then to shift from moral assessments to such causal ones and thence to treatment rather than a moral response. What then is moral responsibility? It must depend on a faculty of moral monitoring that is separate to brain function in essence, i.e. our spirit and conscience, which is able to assess objectively even behaviour that we seemingly ‘cannot help’. I expect science-worshippers will simply say that such concepts will be eradicated with further analysis of the brain, and we shall be left with nothing but wiring and technical solutions. Watch this space.