{"id":2161,"date":"2022-11-23T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2022-11-23T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T13:00:10","slug":"giving-credit-where-credit-is-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/23\/giving-credit-where-credit-is-due\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Credit Where Credit is Due"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
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We seem to be in the middle of a plague of plagiarism.\u00a0
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And it\u2019s far more pervasive than a few high school students copying articles out of Wikipedia and submitting them as original term papers.\u00a0
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Several works of highly regarded historians, including Stephen Ambrose and Joseph J. Ellis, have been shown to be at least partially lifted, without credit, from other sources.\u00a0 New York Times<\/em> columnist Maureen Dowd admitted a few years ago that she had somehow inserted 43 consecutive words from another op-ed piece into one of her own.
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Plagiarism cuts across political lines.\u00a0 Joe Biden had to suspend his first run for president in 1988 because of the intense scrutiny brought to bear on his habit of \u201cborrowing\u201d the catchphrases of other famous speakers, and his admission that he used five pages from a previously published law review article in an article of his own \u2013 but without quotation or attribution.\u00a0 A part of Melania Trump\u2019s speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention was an excerpt from Michelle Obama\u2019s speech to the Democratic National Convention eight years earlier.\u00a0 Ms. Obama\u2019s contributions, unsurprisingly, were not acknowledged.
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Alex Haley, Helen Keller, Jane Goodall, and Martin Luther King Jr. \u2013 all deserving of being in a 20th<\/sup> Century Writers Hall of Fame \u2013 have each been shown to have used other writers\u2019 words as their own.
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In the realm of pop music, George Harrison and Johnny Cash were both taken to task (and to court) over plagiarized melodies.\u00a0 The Beach Boys ultimately admitted that their megahit Surfin\u2019 USA<\/em> was a rip-off of Chuck Berry\u2019s Sweet Little Sixteen<\/em>, and generously gave him not only credit but a share of the royalties.\u00a0
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Pastors playfully acknowledge the three stages of using someone else\u2019s great quote.\u00a0 Stage 1: \u201cAs So-and-So once said\u2026\u201d Stage 2: \u201cIt has been said…\u201d\u00a0 Stage 3: \u201cAs I always say\u2026\u201d
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To be fair, it\u2019s easy for those who speak and write a great deal, if they fail to keep good notes, to lose track of their sources.\u00a0 Although some plagiarism is no doubt intentional, other \u201cborrowings\u201d are probably accidental.
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But passing off someone else\u2019s work as one\u2019s own is always a serious matter.
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Why is this so?\u00a0 As author and pastor Tim Keller points out in his book Prayer<\/em>, plagiarism is a particular kind of theft.\u00a0 It is stealing praise from the creator who actually deserves attention and praise.\u00a0
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This should get our full attention on the day before Thanksgiving.
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Keller steers us to Paul\u2019s letter to the church at Rome, where the apostle declares that humanity\u2019s failure to give thanks to God is one of the primary reasons we live in a God-defying, God-ignoring culture (Romans 1:21).\u00a0 We rob God of the thanks and praise that he alone deserves.\u00a0 \u201cCosmic ingratitude,\u201d writes Keller, \u201cis living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient.\u201d
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It\u2019s easy to get into the habit of thinking we are the managers of our own lives.\u00a0
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After all, we went out and interviewed for the job that allowed us to work hard and make the money to buy the turkey and pumpkin pie that cost a whole lot more this year.\u00a0 We\u2019ve knocked ourselves out so everyone can enjoy the traditional feast on Thursday.
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But all of those things are gifts.\u00a0 Gifts from God.\u00a0 God alone is the Giver of our skills, our job opportunities, our energy, our bank accounts, our health, and our loved ones \u2013 and yes, even the next life-sustaining breath that we\u2019ll take without so much as a second thought before we reach the end of this sentence.\u00a0
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So give thanks to the Lord.\u00a0 Bless his name.\u00a0 Give credit where credit is due.\u00a0 No more spiritual plagiarizing \u2013 the kind where we subtly steal some of the credit for the wonders of life that the Creator alone can provide.
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We can be thankful because, as I always say, \u201cnothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d\u00a0
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Although it\u2019s possible I first read that in the Bible.
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Somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0We seem to be in the middle of a plague of plagiarism.\u00a0\u00a0And it\u2019s far more pervasive than a few high school students copying articles out of Wikipedia and submitting them as original term papers.\u00a0\u00a0Several works of highly regarded historians, including Stephen Ambrose and Joseph J. Ellis, have been shown to be at… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[362],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions\/2163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}