if starving and hungry...you can pick food from a farmers field to eat it and it was NOT considered theft according to the Bible/God!
not certain on restaurants or eating a fruit in a supermarket if starving, that you could not afford? But if the passage about starving and eating from a "farmer's field" can be translated in to these other circumstances, I would imagine under God's laws, not US Law, eating the fruit in the supermarket or ordering a meal that you know you will not be able to pay for in a restaurant if you are basically starving, is not a crime.
Somehow, our Nation made of Christians and others that are religious, have lost their way...I'm afraid they are 'waxed over cold' as the Bible predicts in prophesy....(they suffer from the me, me, me syndrome and the 'love of money' above people.)
care
Isn't there a passage in the bible that says to follow the laws of the land?
yes...but this is a case where what our Creator gave us, what we were endowed with, (human life) TRUMPS the law of the land!
THIS is the lesson behind the Good Samaritan parable mountain man, that is often missed.
There was a man, who was robbed and beaten and bloodied on the side of the road. A
Levite and a
Priest, both of high Religious Governing status among the Jews, passed this severely beaten man on the road, and both, at separate times during the day, left this man there, where he was going to die, and just walked right past him.
Supposedly, the Levite and the Priest, were following God's Law...which forbade them from working on the Sabbath, with other religious concerns and laws on the uncleanliness of human blood etc...AND THIS is why these two men passed the injured man and left him for dead....they were following the Law.....supposedly God's written rules in the Bible...
Then came along a Samaritan man....(the Samaritans were considered a lowly tribe among the Jews...)and this man stopped and helped the man that was left for dead...he carried him in to town and put him up in a hotel, and washed and cleaned his wounds and fed him....he had other business to do and the injured man took him out of his way in order for the Samaritan to help him...but he had to get back to this business and head to the area where he originally set out to go, but left money with the innkeeper for the injured man's room for a few days worth, including food...and he told the innkeeper to please take care of him and if the money he left was not enough because the man needed longer to get healed, he would return by the inn on his way home from his business and pay the innkeeper what was owed him and to see how the man was doing.
Christ then asked his apostles, who they thought was truly following God's Law? And they answered correctly, the Samaritan man...
Christ pointed out that NOTHING, (no law 'of not working on the Sabbath' as example) would ever out trump the caring for any human life injured or sick or in emergency need...
Often, Christ pointed out that their supposed religious...the Levite, the Priests, the Sadducee, etc were hypocrites and totally misunderstood or twisted God's Laws for their own purposes....
So, if we take this parable and others that Christ gave regarding following the Laws of the Sabbath which were the Laws of the Land to them...(He was criticized by the Religious Jews for healing a man on the Sabbath and set them straight on such, on another occasion)
and how Christ taught that those Laws were meant to be broken if a human was in need or you had a chance to do a good deed for a human in need or the plain fact that saving another person's life and feeding another person with the fruit in your field if they are hungry or starving and even without them asking....was what God wanted you to do...
then to me the man starving and feeding himself by taking fruit from your field and eating it as the example, would also ethicallt cover the man taking fruit from your grocery stand and eating it, without the ability to pay, and should not be considered a thief and should not be charged with a crime....
I know that is hard for us to accept...but if HUMANS really do come first, and their well being and survival comes first, above all other Laws of the land in the Bible as lessons to us...such as the Good Samaritan and the one of the hungry guy in the field...then I too see this as ethical....
Oh, and on the story about the man starving and eating the fruit of a farmer...he was not considered a thief or stealing anything AS LONG AS he did not leave the farmer's field with any of the fruit or was to sell off any of the farmer's fruit...ONLY if he ate the fruit and veggies while he was in their field, out of pure hunger, was he not considered a thief....or breaking the Law...but if he took any with him to profit from it, then he was stealing....
Sorry for rambling on...
Care