Situational ethics in real life

I spent the day outside yesterday raking and cleaning out flower beds. At one point the neighbor man stopped by and chatted for a few minutes. During this conversation he mentioned our apple trees and how loaded they had been. I shared that we had canned applesauce, pie filling, and dehydrated over 300 pounds of apples. He smiled and as calm as you please he mentioned that he had taken some of our apples. He didn't figure that we would mind because we had so much. He didn't figure that we would miss them. What does one say when your neighbor informs you without remorse that he has stolen from you and thinks it was perfectly okay because, well you had so much. This man came onto our property, and took apples out of trees that we own. Our neighbor did not ask our permission nor by his own admission did he see anything wrong with what he had done.

In sharing this story with people I have come to discover that people are completely disconnected from the concept of food production as a means to provide food for a family. We live in town and every year increase the amount of food that we produce to provide for our family on our lot. It is not a hobby to us. It is a serious undertaking to provide healthy food for our own family. All of which is actually irrelevant. The entire point could and should stand on ownership. The apples belong to us. PERIOD.

This is a perfect example of situational ethics which by definition is a system of ethics that evaluates acts in light of their situational context rather than by the application of moral absolutes. One lady told us a story of how she was walking down a sidewalk and she saw several large red tomatoes hanging over a fence. They were virtually over ripe and about to fall off so she took one. She did not understand why the person who owned the tomato plant felt she had done anything wrong. He hadn't harvested the tomato's yet and the plant had grown over the fence. Another example of this in news lately was a comment made by our now presidential elect when he said that it was not wrong to steal food if you were hungry.

It would be fun to go out into the world and actually try to apply this in real life. For instance I wanted to buy a hot dog with cheese at a local craft show but I had limited cash and alas was a quarter short to add the cheese to my dog. They have so much cheese, I have no cheese, therefore I should be able to just take the cheese. They did not think so. What if I had just reached over and taken a piece of cheese. Following my neighbors logic, I was hungry, I had no cheese, they had more than they would need so there was nothing wrong with me helping myself to the bounty. Can you imagine what Walmart would think if their customers used that logic when attempting to get items that they felt they needed.

Really, what is the world coming to? Stealing used to be stealing. A basic underpinning of a Christian culture that is now in demise and the world is all the uglier for it.