So children, who have been told not to help themselves to things in the fridge or cupboard, will open the door when no one is looking and steal some cake or chocolate, not because they are hungry but because they are greedy.  There are those who pretend that stealing from someone’s fruit tree, or scrumping, is not stealing.  But it is.  I remember a pensioner who had an apple tree in his back garden.  It was a nice little tree which used to keep him supplied with fruit for most of the autumn.  One year, just before the tree was ready for picking, some boys climbed in, stripped the tree and then went off, leaving behind on the ground a number of apples out of which they had taken one bite and then thrown them away.  So the old man had no fruit that autumn.  Those boys had stolen his apples just as if they had taken them from his sitting room.

It is also stealing to borrow and not to give back, or to order goods from a shop and not pay the bill.  And if parents give children some money for the Church collection and they spend it on themselves, this is double theft.  It is stealing from God and also stealing from their parents.

If someone is given too much change in a shop, and keeps it, that is stealing; and it is stealing for a shopkeeper to give too little change on purpose.  One can also steal by finding.  For example, it would be stealing by finding if someone found your purse and kept it, instead of contacting you or, if your details were not in it, contacting the police station where you could claim it.

One can also steal from a train company by not paying the fare, or from a bus company by staying on the bus after the fare stage.  A woman buys a 60p ticket but gets off at the £1 fare stage.  She has stolen 40p because she has taken something for which she should have paid but didn’t.  She may like to think that it is not stealing, but if the ticket inspector gets on the bus, she doesn’t tell him that.  She tries to get off without getting caught.

It is also stealing to be idle at work.  For example, a man is paid £10 an hour.  But when the boss or foreman is out of the way, he does only half an hour’s work.  But he takes a full hour’s pay just the same.  He has done £5 worth of work and has taken £10 for it.  He has stolen £5.  Of course, if he did a full hour’s work and was paid only £5 instead of £10, he would look at it very differently.  So it is really stealing to get more than is right for oneself or to give less than is right to others.

All these things are dishonest, and they make dishonest people.  They turn people into thieves.