Theft!

December 27th, 2025| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Calvin Johnson, 36, stole a BMW a few weeks ago. The 2018 convertible was filched while the car’s owner was walking his dog at Ormond Beach’s Centennial Park (in Florida). Johnson, cops say, rummaged through the unlocked BMW and found the keys in a cupholder.

The burglar then, driving over 100 mph, crashed the car in what was, thankfully, a single-vehicle accident, not involving other modes of transportation or other humans. It was totaled. Passing motorists extricated Johnson from the wreck. He was fine.

And his excuse?

I was just teleported into it. I’d nothing to do with no stealin’ and stuff.”

Or so said the arrest affidavit.

Of course, he did drive said pilfered BMW. Then again, maybe he was under an “Imperius Curse.”

[For those non-Potter maniacs, the Imperius Curse is one of the three Unforgivable Curses, it allows the caster to control another’s actions. A tool of the Dark Arts, it places the victim completely and unquestionably obedient to the one who cast it, rendering the former “imperiused.”]

You saved me from the aliens.”

Said Johnson to the police, also referring in passing to X-men, as he recounted his purported teleportation.

And, no, if you were suspecting it, Johnson was not under the influence.

In any case, our man was transported to a local hospital, where he was placed under guard. He will be transferred to the county jail upon his release from the Halifax Hospital Medical Center.

He was charged with grand theft auto, a felony, and driving on a license that was suspended in 2019. Bond has been set at $2,650.

This is not his first encounter with the long arm of the law. Johnson has an extensive criminal record, which includes convictions this year for trespass, obstruction, loitering, resisting, and grand theft. The last was for stealing a $1,500 bicycle. When reporters asked him why he had stolen the bike, Johnson answered:

I just felt like it.”

But God said …

“You shall not steal.”
Exodus 20:15

This, one of the Ten Commandments, has only two words in the Hebrew. Note that there is no object. So the verb refers to stealing of any kind and any thing: money, houses, BMWs, animals, intellectual property, ….

Said Luther:

A person steals not only when he robs a man’s strong box or his pocket, but also when he takes advantage of his neighbor at the market, in a grocery shop, butcher stall, wine and beer cellar, workshop, and, in short, wherever business is transacted and money is exchanged for goods or labor.”

Explained another theologian:

The thief robs his fellow Israelite, not merely of some of his economic prosperity, but [also] of part of what is his as a blessing and gift from God (as a person) and a part of his share in the inheritance of the people of Yahweh (as an Israelite). That is, stealing carries not only financial liabilities, but theological and spiritual liabilities as well.”

This prohibition underscores the fact that stealing, born out of the desire to possess illegitimately what one does not have, is greed and a form of idolatry.

And so we have another commandment:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house;
you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife
or his male servant, or his female slave, or his ox, or his donkey,
and all that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:17

This one prohibits one from even conceiving in his mind the notion of misappropriating anything that belongs to another.

Instead … give!

He who steals must no longer steal,
but rather he must labor, working with his own hands what is good,
so that he may have [something] to share with the one having need.
Ephesians 4:28

SOURCE: MedScape