Sounds so Good

The other day I was listening to some old Jimmy Buffet cassettes. I have lots of them and I still have machines that can play them. Jimmy Buffet's music and lyrics have always fascinated me because his songs make a lot of references to faith, theology, the church, and humanity. He has a song about a young man who went to Paris looking for answers to the big questions of life and how life itself gets in the way of the search. There is a song about "What if the Hooky-Pooky's really what it is all about?" "God don't own a car. " There is his classic song about confession of sin, Margaritaville. He begins where we usually begin. Denial, "It's nobody's fault." Then he ponders some more and say "It may be my fault" and then he finally gets to an honest confession, "It's my own damn fault." That is a pretty good description of how most of us come to our confessions.

The song that caught my attention this time was an old song about "Who's going to steal the peanut butter?" It sounds like a group of college kids who have no money go into a Penny Mart and get what they need for supper, and they have this routine worked out. This is how they get food on a regular basis. Jimmy gives what can only be considered as classic justification for their stealing. It is the human desire not to acknowledge that we are doing anything wrong. The convict who wrote about In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, Neil White, who was convicted of check kiting, says he did nothing wrong. He did not steal any money. Check kiting was just a way to buy a little time. Jimmy and his friends have wonderful reasons why taking the peanut butter was not doing anything bad. "We only took what we could eat. There was plenty more on the shelf, and we all swore if we ever got rich, we would pay the Penny Mart back."

They were hungry. They only took what they needed. It was not like they were extravagant or wasteful. They did not take it like vandals who tear up stuff and just make a mess. They did not take a carton and throw it in the creek. They had a hunger, survival was at stake here. They needed food so they took peanut butter. That is a good line of defense. Of course, no one knows what they did with the money their parents gave them for food, or why they did not have food in their apartment. But it was hunger's fault. They had to have something to eat.

There were plenty more on the shelf. They did not deprive anybody else of peanut butter. It was not like somebody else would have to go hungry if they took this jar. The store had lots of jars. What difference did that one little jar make. There were so many jars. I think I feel something of that temptation every time I am in WalMart. There are so many plastic lawn chairs. there are so many footballs, there are so many color TV's; there are so many dresses, shoes, so many of everything. why don't they just give everybody one. There seems to be enough for everybody to have one. I can understand the thought. I never take any, but I do see how you could justify your thief by saying, "Well, they will never miss. Nobody will be deprived of one. they got so many." There are plenty more on the shelf.

And we are not really stealing. We are just borrowing. This jar is on loan. When we get rich we will pay the Penny Mart back. This is not stealing. We are getting it on credit. Charge it and we will pay when we get rich. Makes it all sound so nice and friendly. This is not a serious major problem for all retailers. This is just a little transaction that we will check up on in ten or twenty years. One has to wonder now that Jimmy Buffer is so rich how much he has paid the Penny Mart.

Jimmy and his friends could easily and quickly find a rationale to justify and make sound okay the stealing of peanut butter. The human heart can do that for most of our crimes and evils. Just listen to the way we explain why we go to wars. "Weapons of mass destruction"

Just listen to the way Wall Street defends its greed. Just listen to the way we rationalize our attitudes towards sex and marriage. We are as quick and as easy finding our rationales for our sins as Jimmy was for his. It is a human characteristic.