I just asked my ten-year-old daughter the question about stealing the loaf of bread. She was sitting on the kitchen table in her footie pajamas eating Apple Jacks and watching Pokemon on TV. Here’s how the conversation went:
“I have a question for you. Suppose a person’s family is starving and he steals a loaf of bread to survive. Would that be wrong?”
She thought for a bit. “What kind of bread was it and where did he steal it from?”
“It’s a hypothetical question. Can you explain how that would make a difference?”
“Well, if he stole fancy bread from a fancy restaurant, that would be wrong. But if it was just plain bread it wouldn’t be.”
“You mean that if he stole more than just what he needed to keep his family from starving, that would be wrong?”
“Yeah. Or if he stole plain bread from another poor family that really needed it. That would be wrong too.”
Hmmmm … sounds like pretty sophisticated moral reasoning to me. So much for ten-year-olds not being capable of understanding shades of gray … .
So I asked Bricker Jr this question, and he said: “It’s sort of wrong, because whoever had the bread should get to keep it, but a good man could still be good and steal it. You know, like Jean Valjean did.”
(I should point out that Les Miserables is on my iPod, and gets played when he’s in the car, so he knows the whole story – or at least the whole story from the musical.)
