Guidelines For Living

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They called him the gentleman bandit. Few robbers were ever more kind to their victims. He would rob people, then mail the pictures of children and grandchildren back to their home addresses.

After pulling a gun and informing the victim that it was a robbery, on several occasions his heart would be touched by their stories of hardship if they lost their money, and he would actually put his gun in his pocket and walk away.

On one occasion, a man was so frightened that he had a heart attack, but the kind bandit called for an ambulance. He went so far as to sympathetically call the homes of victims later to see if they had recovered from the fright of being robbed.

When he finally gave himself up, police learned that he was almost 50 years of age, attended church regularly, and had no police record—not even a traffic ticket on the record. They also learned that the gun he was using wouldn't even fire; the hammer on it had long since frozen from disuse.

Lon Perry, the man whom I have been describing, had been a computer programmer, and with downsizing, lost his job. Behind on payments, he was about to lose his home. Pressed by mounting bills, he considered suicide, but finally decided upon a course of action which appeared to be totally inconsistent with his lifestyle and background. He began a life of crime.

And how was he finally apprehended? By a security guard as he robbed a bank? By someone who made a flying tackle as he turned to leave? No. Perry's crimes would probably have gone undetected; even his wife didn't know, apart from a conscience that wouldn't stop bothering him.

You see, it all came to a boil when Michael David Harvey was arrested the day after Perry's last robbery and charged with the crimes committed by the gentleman bandit. Perry couldn't stand the thought of an innocent man going to jail for what he had done. So he called the police and told them they had the wrong man.

Sure, just like that. Right, that's exactly what he did. And he talked things over with his minister and gave himself up. Long ago, Shakespeare described conscience as a horrible thing because it beggars the man who keeps it. Conscience.

The question, of course, is what caused a man who had been married for years to the same woman, who had been a church-going father of two, and had been a law-abiding citizen to go wrong. Yes, it can be explained that he went through a midlife crisis and snapped under the pressure.

The sad thing to me is that his conscience was powerful enough to destroy him but not strong enough to keep him from a life of crime. What is conscience? You can't program it like a computer. You can't X-ray it or define its specific gravity.

But anyone who has a knowledge of right and wrong has felt its stinging bite and heard its still but powerful voice. Some think of it as the voice of God within you telling you to do right. Others, however, point out that when some do certain things with a clear conscience, others do exactly the same thing as a matter of conscience, too.

Your conscience, friend, is only as valid as is the truth which has been absorbed by your mind. If the input is valid, your conscience is valid. And that's why a knowledge of God's word is so important.

Obviously, Lon Perry, the gentleman bandit, knew right from wrong but violated the voice of conscience—a mistake that sent him to prison. Before you condemn the gentleman bandit too severely, take inventory of how you have responded to your conscience this week, even today. It may well be that another bandit is on the loose.

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