{"id":3653,"date":"2024-05-14T08:44:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T12:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2024-05-14T08:44:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T12:44:44","slug":"black-flagged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/14\/black-flagged\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Flagged"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Last May, Josef Newgarden won his first Indianapolis \u201c500\u201d \u2013 arguably the highest achievement in motorsports.

Defending champs generally return to Indy 12 months later and savor a month of public adulation.

Not this year.

Newgarden recently admitted that he cheated earlier this spring during Indycar\u2019s first race of the season in St. Petersburg, Florida. His car \u2013 and those of his two stablemates on Team Penske \u2013 were fitted with an illegal \u201cpush-to-pass\u201d capability that allowed them to achieve greater horsepower on restarts during the race, something that is expressly forbidden.\u00a0

Josef won that race, in part because he was able to pull away at key moments from his competition. When the unfair advantage was discovered, Indycar\u2019s governing board stripped him of the victory and severely penalized Team Penske.

Worst of all, for Newgarden, is that his reputation as one of the sport\u2019s \u201cgood guys\u201d has been severely tarnished. Winning back the trust of his fellow racers \u2013 in a sport that requires an extraordinary amount of trust at 225 mph \u2013 is not going to be easy.

In an emotional press conference a few weeks ago, Newgarden admitted he had cheated, but did it unknowingly. \u201cI\u2019m not a liar,\u201d he insisted. Most of his competitors are finding that hard to believe.\u00a0

What we know for sure that Americans lie, cheat, and steal.\u00a0A lot.<\/em>

That\u2019s been repeatedly confirmed by behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his colleagues, as documented in his book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty:\u00a0How We Lie to Everyone \u2013 Especially Ourselves. <\/em>Ariely wonders if there is any realistic way to close our culture\u2019s integrity gap.

He tells the story of eight-year-old Jeremy, who came home with a distressing note from his teacher: \u201cJeremey stole a pencil from the boy who sits next to him.\u201d

Jeremy\u2019s father was beside himself.\u00a0 He promptly grounded his son for two weeks.\u00a0Then he lectured him up and down about the value of integrity. Finally he sighed and said, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you just ask me?\u00a0You know very well I can bring home dozens of pencils from work.\u201d

As long as we see other people bending the rules, most of us will feel drawn to do the same.

What can be done? Ariely has conducted a set of social experiments that provide some fascinating insights.

He regularly recruits hundreds of college students to take a simple test whereby they can earn modest amounts of money for performing well. Some of the tests are scored by proctors.\u00a0Others are scored by the students themselves, who then report their own results.

Do the self-scoring students perform better, and thus earn more money?\u00a0Sadly, yes.\u00a0When given the opportunity to cheat a little (because no one is looking), college students routinely do so.

Then Ariely introduced a new factor.

He asked one-half of a group of 450 students to write down the names of ten books they had read in high school.\u00a0He asked the other half to write down the Ten Commandments.

The first group displayed the typical moderate amount of cheating.\u00a0But not one person in the second group cheated \u2013 even though not a single student was able to remember all ten of the commandments.

\u201cThis result was very intriguing,\u201d writes Ariely.\u00a0\u201cIt seemed that merely trying to recall moral standards was enough to improve moral behavior.\u201d

In a follow-up, the economist asked a group of self-proclaimed atheists to swear on a Bible before the test.\u00a0When given an opportunity to cheat, even though none of them affirmed the actual validity of the Bible, none did so.

Do moral reminders and honor codes really work? To learn more, Ariely tested groups of students at MIT and Yale.\u00a0Half of those who participated were given no special instructions.\u00a0They cheated at the normal rate.

The other half were asked to sign this statement before beginning:\u00a0\u201cI understand that this experiment falls under the guidelines of the MIT \/ Yale honor code.\u201d\u00a0Not one of those students cheated.

Here\u2019s the really interesting part:\u00a0Neither MIT nor Yale has an honor code.\u00a0<\/em>

Ariely\u2019s conclusions?\u00a0\u201cThe good news is that people seem to want to be honest\u2026 When we are simply reminded of ethical standards, we behave more honorably.\u201d\u00a0

Christians sometimes wonder if the Ten Commandments still matter. After all, we\u2019re spiritually rescued by Jesus\u2019 free gift of grace, not by earnest moral performance.

But Jesus himself makes it clear that God\u2019s primary ethical code has no expiration date:

\u201cDon\u2019t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures\u2014either God\u2019s Law or the Prophets. I\u2019m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God\u2019s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God\u2019s Law will be alive and working <\/em>(Matthew 5:16-17, The Message).\u00a0

It\u2019s hard to overlook the power of reminding our children \u2013 and our ourselves \u2013 that the universe has an enduring moral framework, one that human beings are apparently hard-wired to acknowledge.

After all, none of us should want to end up in a press conference admitting that we ourselves were ultimately the reason we didn\u2019t make it to the finish line of God\u2019s race.

And that\u2019s the honest truth.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Last May, Josef Newgarden won his first Indianapolis \u201c500\u201d \u2013 arguably the highest achievement in motorsports. Defending champs generally return to Indy 12 months later and savor a month of public adulation. Not this year. Newgarden recently admitted that he cheated earlier this spring during Indycar\u2019s first race of the season… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[526,231,589],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-honesty","tag-integrity","tag-ten-commandments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","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=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3655,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}