Kameel Majdali's Road Ahead

  The eighth commandment : You shall not steal. Sounds simple and straightforward, yet as you look at it closely, it becomes a deep well with almost no bottom. Dennis Prager convincingly argues that all the other nine commandments are contained in it. In other words, if you could only remember and keep one of the ten commandments, this would be it. Stealing does not just involve tangible things like money, jewels, and other valuables. It is possible to steal a person; we call this kidnapping. Or steal data; known as hacking. Or stealing a person’s virtue, it is called rape. Or steal a person’s identity; known as ‘identity theft.’ It involves equally, if not more, valuable intangibles like dignity, reputation, and/or trust. Intellectual Property: One of the great crimes of our time is the theft of intellectual property where words, ideas, music is obtained without compensation to the owner. The unpardonable sin of academia is a flagrant form of theft called plagiarism: stealing ...

… And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers — Malachi 4:6 (last verse in the Old Testament)   INTRODUCTION TO MALACHI   In the last book of the Old Testament, we have a message from a little-known prophet with some very strong convictions. He speaks in favor of honoring God’s covenantal conditions, criticizes automatic and hypocritical worship, idolatry, and divorce. Tithes and offerings are given a strong endorsement as part of faithfulness to God. By the time of Malachi there was a fully functioning second temple in Jerusalem with all the sacrifices reinstated. Despite this, both priests and people have backslid and are ripe for prophetic rebuke. This sounds familiar: Nehemiah had a similar observation when he came from Persia to visit Jerusalem: corrupt priests, unpaid tithes, intermarriage with heathen people. Then, in the very last chapter of the book, which is the last chapter of the Old Testament, it takes...