by Joel Hilliker

He tries to smile, but his cheeks are hot with shame.

His dad is peering over the rims of his glasses at the report card when a broad smile spreads across his face. “Great job, Daniel,” he says, setting the card down. “I knew you had it in you. Quite an improvement over last quarter!”

“Thanks dad,” Daniel answers.

What is the matter? These are the best grades he’s had in over a year. It should be an occasion to celebrate. But Daniel can’t really enjoy the success.

He knows he doesn’t deserve it.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. And it worked: He aced his finals, and no one saw him—at least, not that he knows of. It wasn’t hard to pull off.

Cheating had its benefits.

Daniel puts it out of his mind. No big deal. It would have taken forever to learn all that stuff for those tests, and the information wasn’t important anyway.

But wait. Daniel shouldn’t let himself off the hook so easily. Let’s think this through. Cheating comes with its problems too—big problems.

“To get something by dishonesty or deception”—that’s how the dictionary defines cheating.

Daniel managed to dupe his teacher, his dad and everyone else into believing he knew more than he did.

Rather than mastering the knowledge his classes were giving him, Daniel merely picked up the false impression that sometimes, dishonesty and deception pays.

Rather than getting excited about his education, Daniel rationalized his failure to meet its challenges by convincing himself it “wasn’t important.”

Rather than gaining confidence in his ability to work hard for a worthwhile goal, the best Daniel can manage is to gain confidence in his ability to cheat and get away with it.

Being a teenager, Daniel’s mind is very absorbent: He can learn things easier now than later in life. That includes the knowledge a good education would give him. Cheating robs him of his chance to learn from his schoolwork—knowledge that, down the road, he may wish he knew better.

But even more important, Daniel is learning habits that will probably stick with him for years.

When we study hard and succeed because of hard work, the rewards are great. We can enjoy well-earned success (Ecclesiastes 5:18). That is the kind of habit we want to establish while we’re young—a habit that will serve us well throughout life.

Daniel’s success comes with a heavier price. Unless he changes his mind and firmly decides never to do it again, the fact that he cheated once will make it easier to cheat again. Soon it will be a bad habit that he’ll find very hard to break.

The tendency to cheat will spill over into other areas of Daniel’s life. He will find it easier to justify using false means to make himself look good and get what he wants—in school, on the job, even with friends and family. He will begin to lack sincerity in his relationships. People will notice, and he will be a difficult person to trust. They’ll know that he may not be the person he appears to be.

And, at some point, probably when even more is at stake, Daniel will actually get caught.

Having thought about some of the consequences of what Daniel did, it’s easier to understand why God forbids cheating: He doesn’t want anyone to have to live with those consequences. Cheating is stealing, which breaks one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:15). It is taking something that you haven’t worked for—in this case, the answers to a test or school assignment. (And a cheater usually must lie to cover it up, which breaks another commandment—verse 16.)

In a recent survey by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 80 percent of high schoolers with good grades admitted to cheating. Half said they didn’t even think it was wrong! Another study showed 98 percent of high schoolers cheating. But the fact that it is so terribly common doesn’t make it less terrible. If you are part of that majority, determine to stop immediately!