In the early 2000s, more than 150 teachers in Georgia public schools faced a dilemma with two options:
- Change student test answers to improve scores or
- Lose your job.
Schools were under serious pressure to show student improvement. Administrators saw the solution in simply having teachers erase and fix score sheets. The scandal led to criminal charges being filed at all levels of Georgia schools.
Imagine the thought process of the individual teacher. The stack of answers sits on your desk and next to it, a sharpened pencil with an eraser. You know cheating is wrong (morally and legally). You know you could have always done more to help your students (their scores reflect back on you). You know what comes with rising test scores (funding and acclaim). You know you want to keep your job (who wouldn’t?). Dozens of teachers in over forty schools gave in to the pressure to cheat.
God promises us that every temptation has a way out (I Corinthians 10:13). Following the temptation leads to sin while taking the way out leads to righteousness and glorifies God. In the moments of testing, Satan wants to convince you that God’s way will either be bad for you or at least dull in comparison to the temptation.
In the case of these teachers, all of the benefits seemed to be arrayed on his side. You’ll keep your job! Your school won’t lose its funding! Your students will look like scholars!
God’s escape route – the way out – could promise very little. You’ll enrage the administrators. You might lose your job. But you’ll be in God’s hands making a choice that honors Him.
Giving in to sin is to doubt the security of God’s hand. If faith is the trusting step into God’s care through unknown outcomes, sin is the opposite. Sin is the fearful grasping for the easy, safe, or pleasurable solution. Under social and professional pressure, cheating became the easy way for these educators. They found themselves breaking their own moral code but keeping their jobs safe. The right way – the way out from this temptation – was the more dangerous option.
We don’t like to think of ourselves as scoffers, but whenever we (like the teachers described above) give in to temptation, we scoff at the goodness of God. We tell God by our actions that we know better than Him. We tell God by our choices that His way is not the best thing for us.
Adultery, deceit, malice, greed – name any sin and it will connect to the thought that the way of holiness is second best. We might not be expressing our derision for God’s way out, but in rejecting it, we are saying enough.
Reread the first psalm. It is a song recounting the blessing of choosing God’s way. David writes:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:1-2, ESV
Even if they pull up a chair (and they will) don’t sit in the seat of scoffers. That is the easy, broad path. Delight in being in God’s hand – come what may.