As I write this blog, a video is making the rounds on certain news channels as well as YouTube. I am sure many of you have seen it.
The video starts with two young women going into various stores in California. They steal numerous items. When I was younger, my friends and I would sometimes steal candy from a store, but we did it secretly. In contrast, these two ladies do not try to hide their crimes. They simply pick up merchandise in different stores, put it in bags they obtained in those stores, and boldly walk out. In total, they stole over a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise each. After showing the girls visiting different stores and helping themselves to “free” stuff, the video ends with the two girls talking in the back of a police car.
In the back seat, they discuss what has happened to them. One girl cannot believe they were arrested. All they did was shoplift, after all. The other tells her friend that they are in Orange County, adding, “They don’t play in Orange County.” She informs her friend that what they did was a felony and that she was on probation last year for shoplifting. Last year, it was not a big deal. But California had passed a new law. Prison was the likely destination for both. Her friend incredulously repeats two words in the form of a question: “A felony?”
Most people are aware that in many California cities authorities will ignore shoplifting. If someone is arrested for doing so, the thief gets a slap on the wrist and a verbal scolding, but nothing more. This only encourages more theft. That appears to be the experience of the more informed of the two thieves in the back of the police car. That explains why there was no attempt to hide their crimes.
But things are different in Orange County. There, they take the new law seriously. One of the ladies was evidently unaware of the new situation and that Orange County was not like the area where she lived. The more experienced lady was more aware, but the way the law had treated her in the past made her think shoplifting was still no big deal. She found out, through experience, that “They don’t play” in Orange County.
I must admit, I find a lot of humor in the video. Some will say I have a hard heart. The reason California allowed theft to occur with no consequences is because many people there think we need to give grace to people like these young ladies. They have had a hard life. Punishing them will only add to their victimhood. Someone like me might be called an unmerciful jerk.
Well, I do not feel that way. I was glad to see the two young ladies handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser. I don’t feel sorry for them. If they were starving and I saw them stealing bread, I hope they would be given mercy. But they were stealing things like expensive make-up. They were taking advantage of a broken justice system.
It was that system, not unmerciful attitudes like mine, that was harming these ladies. That system told them they could steal with impunity. The most merciful thing that could have happened to those girls was to tell them, “We don’t play.”
Solomon says this in Prov 21:15. He writes, “It is a joy for the just to do justice, but destruction will come to the workers of iniquity.” The NET Bible points out that “dismay” or “terror” is a better way to understand the Hebrew word for destruction. The point of the verse is that when a society exercises justice, its citizens will be blessed. Those who practice iniquity can be shaken into reality because of the terror they might face.i The young ladies in the back of that car came face to face with reality. They were dismayed.
The enforcement of the new law in Orange County was good for everybody involved. For its citizens, and especially the owners of the stores robbed, it was a source of joy. Hopefully, for these girls, the dismay they felt will teach them a valuable lesson: Stealing other people’s stuff is not OK. Their actions have consequences. If so, even they will look back at what happened and be glad that Orange County did not play.
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i Editor’s note: The gift of everlasting life is not a license to sin. If an eternally-secure person departs from the path of righteousness, he will reap the consequence because God does not condone rebellion (e.g., Ps 23:3; Prov 2:20; Luke 15:11-32; 2 Pet 2:21).
