Signs of the Times

Robert H. Hamill

The Link

The Reverend Robert H. Hamill, D.D.
Dean of Marsh Chapel Boston University
in The Link, a Protestant magazine for Armed Forces personnel
Washington, District of Columbia

Morality on the modern campus may be no worse than in times past, but it is certainly different. ...Studies suggest that 40 to 80 percent of students cheat more or less....The cause of cheating is found in the nature of the moral revolution itself....Many students, as a result, come out with a sell-centered morality....

Thus when they ask. Shall we cheat on this exam? they answer either yes, because we need a better grade than we can earn, or no, because we might get caught and be embarrassed or expelled. In both cases, they appeal to self-interest; the case for cheating and and the case against it both rest on self-interest. It never occurs to them to ask whether there is a principle that governs regardless of its consequences....They seem unable to take seriously the thought that honesty is valid whether it pays or not!...

I see no escape from this, finally, except through religious faith. The Christian believes in God, God the living source of all good, God who creates and sustains all creation, God who loves, judges, forgives and rescues his people. This God calls on men to love him with all their being, and when they do this he makes them ready and able to love their fellowmen with real care and to love themselves wisely.

This is the only reason for being honest: we belong to God, and the purpose of life is to respond to him responsibly. Cheating of any kind means I am a fake person; ...but honesty is the quality of person, the nature of my manhood as a man before God....A genuine Christian...exposes himself continuously to the expectations and the help of the living God. If a student can respond to him as an authentic person of integrity, he will see cheating as a defiance of his whole nature and therefore lie will resist it; and when he fumbles and fails he will turn again to God who makes him a new man in Christ and sends him forth to the world again more than conqueror.

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