Video Transcript: Cheating and Plagiarism

Cheating and Plagiarism

Hi, I'm David Feddes, and I'm president of Christian Leaders College and provost of Christian Leaders Institute. I love what I do. I love the opportunity to speak the Word of God, help equip others, preach the Word of God, and to encourage people in a life of Christian discipleship, and raise up revival leaders. I love what I do. And there is one part of my job that I don't enjoy very much - and that is catching cheaters. 

Over my time at Christian Leaders, I've had to kick a number of people out - people who are no longer allowed to be students with Christian Leaders. And cheating takes a couple of forms. One is people who cheat on quizzes. They find ways to get answers to quizzes, perhaps from another student or perhaps from having multiple accounts where they go in under one email and then take quizzes under a different email. Well, they get caught because we have ways of detecting students who are using the same server or who are using information to cheat on quizzes. And we can track that with our computers and with our various techniques. And so, we're checking from time to time to see who has been cheating. And when people are caught cheating on a quiz, they get expelled. Because when people are not doing the work, and when they're not showing themselves to be people of integrity, then they can't yet be trusted to be Christian leaders. 

So, my suggestion is a very strong, "Don't cheat!". Don't cheat because if you do, you're likely to get caught and to get kicked out. But even more importantly, don't cheat because God has a calling on your life. He didn't ask you to take a shortcut and use the devil's methods of stealing and lying in order to be a success. Don't steal answers from somewhere else. Don't lie about how you got an answer on a quiz. 

Another form of cheating is plagiarism - using someone else's material and just copying it and putting it into a paper you write without saying where that material came from. It's plagiarism to use direct quotes and not actually quote it and say who gave it but instead write it as though it's your own, pretending it's your own ideas and your own language. 

It's also plagiarism if you get lots of ideas from somewhere else, and you might not quote it exactly, but you're still not giving the source of where it came. Now, sometimes, that's hard to do when we're putting together sermons. I don't quote every commentary or say here are the seven commentaries I used and studied while I was working on this sermon. But especially in academic writing, you must cite the sources that you get your material from. And even in preaching, don't copy a sermon. Don't get a sermon you really like, and just make it your own and preach it without saying where it came from.

I've preached, basically, a sermon that came from Jonathan Edwards, but I didn't try to pretend that it was mine. I just said, okay, I'm not using his wording anymore because he wrote long ago. But the basic outline of this sermon comes from Jonathan Edwards, and here it is. So, it's okay to preach with someone else's ideas if you say where they came from. Then it's not plagiarism anymore. You're just saying, "It's not mine. It's his. And it was really helpful for me, and I hope it's helpful for you."

Now, if you take that approach on a paper, where the professor has assigned you to write a paper, and you say, "Here's a really good paper that I found on the subject, and I liked it, Professor. And I hope you like it too. Here's the paper," you're going to get an F just because it's not your paper even if you did give the other author credit. But it's even worse, of course, if you give no credit and you plagiarize and present it as though you had all these thoughts. 

I've seen papers before that I knew instantly it was not the student's own paper. The language was different. The whole style was different. These things aren't always that hard to detect. And when in doubt, you know what I can do? Very often, you can just go on Google and start googling a few phrases, and those phrases pop up. And there, you found the source of where the student plagiarized from.

So, again, a strong suggestion - don't cheat and don't plagiarize. Because you're likely to get caught. And the consequences are very severe. We have students who, after being caught, begin to beg and say, "You should be merciful and be like Jesus and let me back in." But let me just tell, the standard for being a leader in the church is different than a standard for just being a part of a church and struggling along. The Bible itself says not many of you should aspire to be teachers because we who teach will be judged more strictly. When you're studying these classes, you're aspiring to be a teacher of others. And if by your own behavior, you show that you're willing to cut corners, you're willing to cheat, you're willing to lie, you're willing to steal other people's work without giving them credit in order to fulfill assignments, you are not ready to be a Christian leader of others.

So, be a person of integrity. I'd rather have you get an honest C than a crooked A. And remember that even if you don't get caught by our computer techniques or by those of us who are supervising or by me or by our registrar, you're here to serve the Lord. And the Lord knows how you do everything. And so, do it with gladness. Do it with your best efforts. That's all you can do. Don't try to be somebody else. Do not cheat your way to measuring somebody else's standard. If God called you into ministry, he knows who you are. He knows your abilities. He knows where your abilities might be lacking. That's okay. He'll use you as you are. 

If you do okay on a quiz, it's great to do okay if okay was your best. If you're writing a paper, okay is good enough if that was what you were able to do and if it's really your work. So, again, don't cheat. Do everything you do, including writing papers and taking quizzes, to the glory of God. And don't cheat yourself because you don't learn much when you're cheating your way through. You learn a lot when you're studying your way through.

I don't care. You can get a C- on a paper. But if you learned a lot in the course of preparing that paper, then it was of tremendous benefit to you, and get out there and serve the Lord with what you learned. Be honest. Be glad in his service.