Is Cheating Really Wrong?

Jan 17 2007

Question: Is cheating in class really wrong? I’m in high school, and it seems like everyone does it.  If I don’t cheat, I’ll end up cheating myself out of a better grade, won’t I?

Billy Graham’s Answer:

Cheating is wrong in God’s eye. Don’t lower your standards (no matter what anyone else is doing) and don’t allow yourself to get into a pattern of behavior that could wreck your life.  Why is it wrong? For one thing, cheating always involves taking something that isn’t really yours. In other words, when you cheat, you’re stealing something that doesn’t rightfully belong to you.  Cheating also involves lying; because you are falsely claiming that the work you did is yours and not someone else’s.  But lying is wrong and you only end up hurting yourself in the long wrong.  I challenge you instead to give your life to Jesus and begin to follow him.

 Jen’s Response:

Cheating in class is wrong not only for the reasons Billy states.  The biggest reason not to succumb to the urge to cheat is because you end up cheating yourself out of an education, and that isn’t something you can easily reclaim.  There is value to being educated.  If you cheat, you aren’t learning the things you are supposed to learn, and instead of becoming an educated person, you become an ignorant person.  This is a really stupid trade off.  Ignorant people have a harder time getting through life, and why would you want to handicap yourself that way?  Again, that is just stupid.  It isn’t hard to learn, you just need to apply yourself.  And if you do, you will get good grades and you will be smarter then the people who cheated, so double plus good. 

Finally, I will leave you with an anecdote.  One time when I was in high school, I had to make up a test.  It was the only time I had to do this.  I ended up taking my make up test in a level 3 class the same teacher was teaching.  They were also taking a test, although obviously different from the one I was taking.  The most amazing thing was going on – everyone single one of these level 3 people where cheating.  And, the lengths they went to to cheat was amazing.  Honestly, if they had spent 1/3rd of the time they spent preparing to cheat on actually learning the material, they would have passed the test easily on their own.  I came away with the feeling that the reason these kids were in the lowest level classes was because they were cheating instead of learning the material, and because of that, their grades were crap.  So, the lesson for today is that cheating doesn’t give you good grades and it cheats you out of your education.  Don’t yield to temptation, not because God doesn’t approve, but because you expect more from yourself then your classmates do.