The truth about cheating
Cheating has gone high-tech; subsequently, so has the effort to thwart it. Multiple websites offer test, essay, and report compilations that can be bought, sold, bartered over, plagiarized, shared, and reproduced. IPods are outlawed, because students can record answers as sound files. Cell phones are verbotten because of the ability to text. Hats must be turned backward so answers can’t be written on the bills. Even chewing gum is a no-no, because it can mask the use of hands-free technology.
Despite all these efforts, cheating continues in an apparently escalating trend. It’s so common that even a (relatively) recent Price Is Right winner was accused of chicanery.
Cheating is a matter of violating rules to gain an unfair advantage. I wasn’t plagued with a cheating habit the way I was with its ugly fraternal twins of lying and stealing (those are childhood confessions to come later). That’s not to say I’ve never cheated.
My first cheating memory is deliberately miscounting a turn in chutes and ladders so I could climb toward victory instead of slide back toward defeat. In middle school, I know I wrote crib notes and used them, though I couldn’t tell you the subject much less the content. By the time I was in high school, I had less interest in illicitly acquiring information, but I had no problem sharing my homework on a daily basis. Literally, every day before school was a stock market of the previous night’s homework, with answers being traded on the common grounds floor, where those assignments represented the commodity of popularity for generously sharing your work with everyone else.
Even in writing this, I now recall changing my grade in the teacher’s gradebook in 9th grade English. I got caught on that one. How I wasn’t expelled or at least suspended I will never know…but then again, this happened in the class where the teacher would always write my older brother’s name on the board for detention (and neither of us ever showed for it, either). Thank goodness for technology today, where all grades are kept electronically, secured, safe from the crafty plots of kids whose neural connections haven’t fully formed.
In college, I don’t have any specific memory of cheating. There was a test archive in my fraternity. I know I never contributed to it, because I was an English major and the majority of my exams were written, creative, and difficult to reproduce. I don’t have a memory of using it for science, math, or business classes…I was on an Honors scholarship and I think I was properly motivated by the school’s honor code. And as a writer, I respected plagiarism guidelines implicitly (and to this day try to keep and give good record of appropriate attribution).
It was also in college where I became a Christian, and I was impacted significantly by a minister who was investing in me as a new believer, and who himself came under conviction for having cheated (ironically) in an Ethics class in seminary. He was compelled to go back to the school, confess his offense, and let the consequences come as they may. When I shortly thereafter went to seminary, I was highly motivated to proceed honestly, and even took the same ethics class with the same professor specifically because of the grace and mercy he demonstrated in forgiving this minister.
God directly commands “Don’t cheat” in Leviticus 19:13. In this command, he equates cheating your neighbor with robbing him.
In the modern language, “a cheat” isn’t someone who just breaks the rules of a game, but one who violates the rules of life, such as an unfaithful spouse. When a person cheats on a spouse, they “break the rules” of their marriage vows (whether spoken in a civil, legal union, or in the context of a spiritual promise before God). They are attempting to gain an unfair, inappropriate advantage of happiness (or fulfillment, gratification, or indulgence). Inevitably, they have to rob from their spouse’s joy to do it.
Tragically, too many people choose to sink in the mire of this bog of deception rather than just live in honest satisfaction. They do the very things that complicate their lives with untruth and betrayal, and then complain that their lives are no longer as simple as they once had been.
I’m convinced that God’s command against cheating isn’t just some kill-joy edict from On High. He knows the pain that cheating inflicts on self and others, and offers this protective warning against it. Like a runaway locomotive heading toward a canyon without a bridge, God knows that cheating is a train wreck waiting to happen. Its consequences can be devastating, tragic, even generational. God gives the command against cheating because he is good, loving, and kind. He wants you to enjoy the blessing of a life well-lived in truth and transparency.
Cheating is determining to pursue a lie and label it the truth, presenting a facade that you’re a winner playing by the same rules as everyone else (when in truth, you are not). Proverbs 23:23 says, “Buy the truth and do not sell it. Get wisdom, discipline, and understanding.” Commit to be a truth-liver.
