Cheating and the Wise and Foolish Virgins: A guided meditation for teachers

 I must begin by saying I have not used this particular meditation with students.  It has been a few years since I was in a traditional academic setting and just came up with it this morning:)

That being said, I have done scriptural meditation with the youngest child all the way up through high school.  I am always amazed at their willingness to think deeply and honestly when they approach scripture in this way.

Recent news reports about academic cheating at the highest levels of our ivory towers and the dangers of AI to education have made me think about this issue of late.  If you try it out with your students, let me know how it goes!

Read together Matthew 25: 1-13

It should be explained that what you are doing is prayer.  That God speaks to us through scripture, and we can learn to hear him if we listen.

I find it helpful to have older students read together and out loud.

After reading, you may ask:  What did you hear?  Sometimes with younger students, it helps to ask questions that allows them to retell the story.

Wonder questions:

Wonder questions are not answered by the teacher.  The students' answers should always guide the conversation.  As I wrote these questions, I was thinking of middle and high school age students.  I have anticipated answers here, but you may end up in a completely different direction. 

Clearly Jesus would not be instructing us not to share.  So, this oil must be something “you must go and get on your own.”

What might this oil represent in our lives?  What do we have that we can’t simply hand off to another?

Examples might include (experience, relationship, talent, sacrament, knowledge)

What do these things have in common?

Examples might include 

(Time, effort, personal gift)

If you could tell the foolish bridesmaids anything before the story begins that might convince them to get their own oil, what might you say?

(You are going to need this, this is important…)

If they heard this advice and still chose to go unprepared, why might this be, why wouldn’t they listen you?

(Don’t believe you, don’t care…)

Let’s say they do actually believe you, but still show up without oil?  Why might this be? 

(Too busy, more important things…)

I want to think about this dilemma with regard to academic cheating.

Why do you think this is so common in our current culture:  from first grade-phd, many many people have no problem taking someone else’s work as their own?  Even quite moral people in most regards, people who would never rob a bank, plagiarize or cheat on a test or homework?  Why?

(Answers might include: good grades are more important than knowledge, assignments are stupid, too busy, more important things…)

Think about when you have cheated.  Which reason is usually the most common for you?

(This may be done silently)

Let’s look more deeply at these reasons:

It’s a stupid, worthless assignment:  

What if your wrong, what is the consequence?

What if your right and it is stupid.  You cheat and get the grade.  Are there any consequences?  

(Answers might include it is unfair or hurts those who studied or did the work)

More important things to do:

When it is actually true and what you are doing is objectively more important, What might these things be?

When this happens, what are our choices:

Go unprepared, cheat.  Is there a third option?

But often it isn't objectively more important just that we want to do it more?  Like what?

Too Busy:

If we are too busy to do our work, is there anything we can do?

(Answers will vary, time management ideas)

If we work on trying to manage our time rather than cheat, do we benefit more or less in the long run?  Why?

Let’s think back to the parable:  who is the bridegroom what is the feast?

(Answers will probably be Jesus is the Bridegroom, Heaven is the feast)

When we think about this destination, heaven, could NOT cheating, even when it’s a dumb assignment or our obligations are real, be this oil?  We might call it honesty. How is honesty something that is ours that we really can't share?

Can honesty benefit us more in the long run in our academic career than cheating in the short term?  How?

(Answers may include becoming more honest in other areas, becoming a better student...)

How can we orient ourselves to living this, striving to achieve this goal of academic honesty in a culture of cheating?

Let's think about those who were prepared.  How do you think the prepared bridesmaids felt being asked?

(Angry, bad for not being able to help, glad they were prepared...)

How many have you have been the wise virgin before:  Asked to give your work to someone else? Let’s face it, this is HARD!  Everyone is so used to the cheating culture you feel mean or stupid for not wanting to share your work.  But maybe you don’t even mind.

(Allow to share experiences if they wish)

Let’s examine this in light of true friendship.

If you love your friend, you want what is best for them. So,

Why isn’t it ok to ask?  Why isn't it ok to allow?

This probably sounds wrong to some of you.  Many of us believe friendship would require us to share our work, right?  Can you try and convince me* why this is true?

(It is better to get two kids with differing views into discussion.)

or another way to get at the same discussion:

Pretend like you are me.  You see academic honesty in large and small things as this oil we cannot share, that is ours, that is important.  That sharing hurts us and the unprepared.  That asking hurts us and the prepared.

Not simply the knowledge it is intended to teach, but something far more valuable.

What might you say to convince me it is true?

Grades are a major factor in your life, I get it.  You need them for the next step.  You need them for success.  They are an important reflection of our knowledge and work when they are ours.  But their importance to the point of needing to cheat is overblown.  This is done by our culture.  We put such a heavy emphasis on grades its sometimes easy to forget they are not the ultimate goal, even of education. Integrity is far more important, whether we believe it or not. Maybe you are in the middle, maybe you think, sure I cheat now and again, but I’d never cheat when it is really important.  Maybe it’s true.

But what if the bridegroom comes before college or before a job, before the big test or whatever you mean by really important.

What will your flame look like then?  Will it have enough of the oil you can't get from someone else?

Let's read the parable again.  As we read, I want you to listen for what God is saying to you, what God is asking of you?

Reread the parable together and out loud.  Go around the room and let each person share what God is asking of them.  You should also answer this question.  The sharing is not a time for discussion of any kind, just sharing.  If your students are not comfortable having this kind of personal discussion with each other, you may ask them to write down what they think God is asking instead.  Collect these and read them.  You may be floored at how deep they have gone!

The Pearl

 I have thought about the parables for many years.

With the three to six year old child I see that the kingdom grows like a mustard seed or flour leavened with yeast. It is precious like a pearl, valuable like a treasure.

With the six to twelve year old child I see it requires we work, like the man who planted and the woman who mixes and kneads.  It requires we rest, like the man who sleeps as the seed grows.  Sometimes we must search for it, like a Pearl, others come across it by chance like a hidden treasure.

Sometimes the “child” helps me to see new things.  I asked my own college age atria bambini: but the language is not the kingdom is like a Pearl, it says the kingdom is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.  To which one responded:  oh, then we are the Pearl and Jesus is the merchant, he gives up everything.  The other: it is the found sheep in a new way.

Last week in a review with the older children, a new child to the atrium when asked what Jesus might have meant by comparing the kingdom to a Pearl said thoughtfully:  well pearls are very precious jewelry.  And…They take a long time to form.  This prompted a discussion on how pearls are formed over time.  And in my later reflection I saw something I’d never seen before.

In the parable of the Precious Pearl, is the mystery of suffering in the kingdom.  The value of the Pearl comes from an irritant.  It is through a painful grain of sand that the Pearl is formed over time.  

Which makes me think again of how the children for years have been trying to teach me.

The youngest child was drawn to the idea that a bigger Pearl must be more valuable.  I tried to steer them away from this worldly association by using a smaller but real Pearl.  They liked that.  

But perhaps, no not perhaps, they intuitively knew that bigger is better here, for it is how they love: big or not at all.

And it is how Christ loves, and how he lived, and how he died, and how he Rose to life again.

The mystery of suffering is not easy to grasp.  It is not easy to be grateful for.  But from the children, I have learned to hear his call in a new way:  

Pick up your Pearl and follow me.

The Story

God wants us to know Him.  He wants us to choose Him!  It is for this reason that he reveals himself in all of His creation. Through its order and through its beauty, we see Him if we look.  But what about in that which He didn’t create?

-Listen children.  I want to tell you a story.  In the beginning God created man.  In His image and likeness, He created them.  

-But who is He that we image?  

-He is Trinity.  

-And what does it mean to be like Him, what does He do?  

-Well God the Father loves the Son.  And God the Son loves the Father.  

-And the Spirit?  

-Ah, yes, The Spirit.  He IS their love.

-And He created us to be like Him?

-Yes, the Father wants you to love the Son.  And the Son wants you to love the Father

-And the Spirit?

-Ah yes, The Spirit.  He wants to live in you as He lives in the Father and Son

-So what happened next after the beginning?

-Well the devil is a clever one and he figured something out.  To be like God means to choose like God, and through his own personal experiment he realized this meant you could choose to NOT be like God.  It’s the way choice works.

-I don’t like the devil 

-That’s good, he’s not to be trusted. But like any good liar, he twists the truth.  He told Adam and Eve to be like God all they had to do was choose to eat from the One tree God had forbidden.

-Why did God forbid that tree?

-That is a good question.  But the answer to why God does anything is always the same.  Because He loved them.

-Did they forget that?

-They must have because they believed the devil that it is choosing that makes us like God.  But it’s not so much choosing, but what we choose that makes us like God.  But they fell for it hook, line and sinker and the whole world fell with them.

-That is sad

-It is.  Because all of creation was given for us to know and love God and with that first sin came suffering and death, the consequence of sin. And because it was released by man collaborating with the devil, He didn’t create it, so we couldn’t find Him there.

-And the devil had won?

-It appeared so.  What was God to do?  There was suffering and death all over his beautiful world, that stuff spreads like wild fire. But unlike fire, it spread darkness.  No one could find Him in all that suffering, and He was not in the death that was now part of His creation.  The devil had really put Him between a rock and a hard place:  we needed choice to be like God.  But to choose wrongly made it impossible for us to know and love Him through all that suffering and death.

-And?

-And what?

-That certainly can’t be the end

-Yes, you are a smart one.  The devil is a clever one.  But God, He is brilliance!  

The Father said to The Son, “We can’t take their choice.”

“No,” The Son said, “that won’t work at all.”

“Most certainly it will not,” said The Spirit. “But we could take the consequences.”

“No,” said The Father, “that’s the same thing.”

“The way I see it,” said The Son, “the real problem is that in the consequences, they can’t see Us.  We need to claim the consequences, not take them away.”

“That’s what I said,” quipped The Spirit.

“Yes, my Boy, that seems to hit the nail on the head.”

And with that word nail, the Son got very quiet, for they all saw exactly what must be done.  

-What? What was to be done.

-The Son had to leave His Father and enter as a light into the world filled with the darkness of suffering and death. And while He lived, He spent every moment of His earthly life choosing to love His Father as He had always done.  But, He chose to suffer the consequences of not choosing God anyway.

-He suffered?

-Yes, he suffered and he suffered and he suffered and then He died. Don’t cry.  He wanted to do it.  

-Why?

-Now that is a good question.  But the answer to why God does anything is always the same.  

-Because He loves us. Yes, yes.  I forgot that but remember now.

-And on the third day, when His friends went to find His dead body it was gone.

-What?  Gone?

-Yep.  He is alive!  He had conquered death, the devil’s greatest victory.  Now in death itself, we find God!

-Hooray! But not the suffering, how did He conquer that part?

-Well, He couldn’t take it away, right?

-No, that’d be the same as taking away the choice that lets us be like God

-You are exactly right.  He didn’t take it away, He entered it so that in suffering, we can find Him.  

-Because that was the problem all along.  He wasn’t in the suffering or death, but now He IS!

-That’s right, He IS, not was.  From now until the end of time, in that very stuff, we find Him most. You are very good listeners.

-Well, it’s a good story.

-Yes, the greatest story ever told!