From a spiritual point of view, I believe the old saying is true: "cheaters never prosper." However, spiritual consequences are not necessarily obvious to most of us and we instead see so many people "getting away" with cheating.
While adultery is a form of cheating, the type cheating I am focusing on here involves violating rules dishonestly.[1] This issue came to me as I was watching Dr. Phil a while ago (don't judge, I'm fascinated by mental/emotional issues) and he was talking to a woman who had cheated to win a competition. As he talked to various guests who had cheated on this or that, they all believed that they were in the right to cheat. I was a little horrified! I couldn't believe how many people would do whatever they could to get ahead.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like I haven't witnessed cheating in university and college, or cheating in games and sports. As a bit of an optimist, I guess that I always hoped that people knew that cheating was bad but were under enough pressure to make bad decisions. To hear people say that they had no problem with cheating if it got them what they wanted just broke my heart.
I think that most people would agree that honesty is a key part of spirituality. You might be able to knit-pick at the definition of honesty and argue over white lies and such, but I can't see how you would explain cheating as anything but a choice to be dishonest.
Is it any wonder that society has so many problems when there are so many who do not care about the consequences of dishonesty? Would people make different choices if they could see, hear and feel what happens as a result of their choices? I wonder what I can do to change this trend, and the only thing I can come up with is that I should succeed in my life without cheating and try to teach my daughter what I think the consequences of cheating are.
How do you feel about cheating?
[1] Merriam-Webster, s.v. "Cheating," http://www.merriam-webster.com/ (accessed January 11, 2011).
No comments:
Post a Comment