"Thou shall not steal" is one of the ten commandments, but it isn't respected even in God's House.

A rather strange phenomenon is fast gaining ground in our society these days. Gangsters and hoodlums prey on churches, mosques and other holy places of worship as fertile grounds for stealing and cheating. They all appear to have ignored one of the ten commandments which says, "Thou shall not steal". During the last Moslem feast of the Ram on December 30, 2006, the Imam of Yaounde devoted more than 45 minutes of his sermon condemning the theft from the mosque of hundreds of copies of the Holy Koran, mobile phones, shoes and other personal effects of the faithful who come to worship. At the Catholic church in Molyko, Buea, it was reported that the sound system has been stolen twice as well as many small articles. Bibles, hymnals and other holy things are stolen often and again from various places of worship. In all big gatherings of worshippers, pick-pockets are most active, cell phones and jewellery get missing and even money is taken out of the alms basket. The hooliganism and desecration has even gone beyond reasonable limits. On Friday 5th January 2007, unknown persons broke into the Molyko Catholic church, destroyed all the statues, collected all linen coverings and musical instruments and set them on fire in front of the tabernacle. Such acts of disdain and disrespect for places of worship leave one with much worry. It is increasingly becoming evident that some of those who throng to churches and mosques do so for other motives. In primary school, we were taught that God is omnipresent, so for anybody to go into the house of worship to steal or cheat indicates the extend to which our moral values have collapsed. Yet it is common to find that the thieves even pray to their God that they may not be caught in their dishonest acts. The Bible has evidence that cheating has been an age-old phenomenon. Acts 5: 1-11 recounts how Saphira and Ananias cheated the church and got punished. Some people have argued that the rise in crime wave in our society is due to the absence of religious education in schools. But the argument is simplistic when one observes what goes on around our places of worship. It is known that some American children go through the ritual of prayers before class and end up committing some of the most heinous crimes in school. During the war in Bosnia, more than 12,000 mosques and 400 Christian churches were deliberately destroyed. In Rwanda, some of the most horrible massacres were carried out on hundreds of helpless persons who sought refuge in churches and other places of worship. People who commit such acts stand as anti-witnesses to the gospel message of truth and love. In fact, some religious authorities hold the view that those situations flow from lack of understanding and lack of faith. They consider that the lack of the fear of God is due to the secularisation of society. There is also the aspect of poverty. According to Rev. Father Andrew Nkea of Small Soppo, Buea, "Poverty can push people to any length — occult groups are trying to banalise the church and trying to profane the sacred". He adds, "The proliferation of sects has made churches lose the awe and respect they used to have and some people see churches from a business aspect." Whatever the explanation for such deviant behaviour, one fact stands out glaringly — our society is morally bankrupt and only moral rearmament can redeem us.