Most people think that the Eighth Commandment, you shall not steal, applies to only bank robbers,

applies only to burglars and thieves. But the Hebrew word for stealing, the word gannath,

is an all-encompassing word. It means everything from larceny to shoplifting, to pickpockets, to embezzling, to racketeering, and on and on and on and on. It's an all-encompassing word. In other words, the biblical definition for stealing is this. The taking of anything that does not belong to you, regardless of its value.

That's the biblical definition of stealing. I want you to listen carefully.

Because the vast majority of people do not think of themselves as thieves. They really don't.

And yet I read just this week about a hotel that in their first year of operation,

they had to replace 38,000 spoons, 18,000 towels, 355 coffee pots, and 100 Bibles.

I'm sure the Gideons will forgive them for the Bibles.

That is to say nothing of workers who would not put a full day's work for a full day's pay.

It says nothing about those who pad their expense accounts. It says nothing about those who paid their expense accounts. It says nothing about

those who use company time for personal phone calls. It says nothing about those who surf the net

during working hours and play even computer games. I read recently that employee theft of time and property

cost American business and investors more than $200 billion a year. According to some estimates,

as much as third of the cost of a product goes to cover various forms of stealing.

Stealing that occurs for the time that product is made to the time it comes to the marketplace.

Analyst, in fact, call that theft surcharge.

Theft surcharge. I never heard of it before, but I've done studies on this one.

Which, of course, puts an enormous burden on the economy to say nothing about what it does

to erode the inner souls of our people in our culture.

Those, of course, cannot even be compared to the highway robberies that has been taking

place in corporate America of late.

That highway robbery of these executives who make millions upon millions upon millions of dollars,

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