All loving parents try to teach their children how to fight this temptation and to respect the property of others. One of the hidden costs of every purchase we make is the storekeeper's loss through theft, passed on to his customers in higher prices. In fact, there are entire neighborhoods in our country without a single store because all the stores have been driven out of business by picking and stealing. Truth and justice demand effort, but so do their denial. And if picking and stealing can destroy a business or neighborhood, the refusal to be true and just can destroy an entire church, society, or nation.
People make mistakes, of course.
But honest people try to learn from their errors. The Prayer Book is right. I have no hope of teaching or even forcing you to be honest, until I have worked to keep my own hands from picking and stealing, until I have given my heart to God's justice and truth in all my dealings. We are all born into this world as hypocrites, so justice and truth are life-long pursuits of our sanctification in Christ, who even provides for our failures by offering us his Father's pardon any time we repent our sins. It was this same repentance that Christ sought from the Scribes and Pharisees in today's Gospel, even though they had come to trick him, and not to learn about justice and truth.