Dear LFTP: shoplifting, gift cards, and restitution
- Is it wise to confess past shoplifting to a corporation in order to make restitution?
A listener who shoplifted from a major corporation and returned goods for gift cards asks whether to confess in order to make restitution. The hosts debate owning it versus the practicality — there is no human victim at a corporation, and a store manager would likely just call the police — and land on praying it through with the Holy Spirit and being open to the consequences, whatever management can or cannot do with a confession. Tangents include belated apologies sent by Facebook message, a stolen piece of work equipment replaced with a new one and returned, and a six-hour call-center career ended by a 'press 7' joke. Secular's advice: what's in the past is in the past; leave it be.
More on Forgiveness
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Dear LFTP: the $4,200 loan that never came back
- How do I get past the sadness over the $4,200 loan my friend never repaid — do I just let it go?
The final Dear LFTP letter: a year ago a supposed friend asked to borrow money — her husband had left the country to renew his visa, her car was repossessed, she had no way to get to work.
From No. 603 · Found Out
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Dear LFTP: the stolen college fund and telling the 90-year-olds
- Should I tell my 90-year-old parents that their grandson stole my granddaughter's college fund?
Ben hands to Mike, who reads a grandmother's letter: her son helped himself to the college money the great-grandparents set aside for her granddaughter; she fears telling her parents, in their nineties, could shock them into a stroke.
From No. 586 · Nothing Personal
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Dear LFTP: forty years of a cheating wife and a temptation
- Would it be wrong to rekindle an old friendship for intimacy when my wife has cheated for forty years?
A man approaching his fortieth anniversary writes that his wife has always been a serial cheater, a secret he kept to protect the children's view of her; with retirement and a sexless marriage he asks whether rekindling things with old female friends would be wrong.
From No. 581 · Silly Rabbit | Christianity, Culture, and Navigating Social Expectations
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Dear LFTP: the stalker ex-girlfriend
- How do I get my stalker ex-girlfriend to leave me alone?
Mike reads a letter from a man whose ex-girlfriend keeps trying to get him back, even stalking him, after he blocked her number.