Thought of the Day 09.03.08

I’m always fascinated by the absurd things everybody says, especially children. My current favorite is, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Consider the implications. If someone finds my misplaced wallet or my stolen television or my lost child, they can just keep them? Tough luck for me, I guess. Or as another ridiculous phrase would say it, “Too bad, so sad.”

For my part, I was always taught that people have property rights even when they’re not there to enforce them. But put aside the endorsement of theft here. Both phrases completely discount the pain being suffered by another person after explicitly recognizing it as either sadness or weeping.

In contrast, the heart of Christian ethics is the Golden Rule, which tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And could anything be less golden than keeping someone else’s treasure while you callously tell them, “Finders keepers, losers weepers?” See, in reality, possession is zero tenths of the law.

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