WORST EVER ACT OF CHEATING
It was, apparently, a deliberate crash. Nelson Piquet Jr. was driving for Renault in the Singapore Grand Prix. It is alleged that he was instructed by the team bosses, and he agreed, to crash during the race to ensure that his team mate win the race. This has caused an absolute furore across the world of sport and even wider afield. People are amazed that someone could be so irresponsible as this.
In deliberately crashing, Piquet put himself at great danger. He was going very fast and he could not have been sure what the outcome might have been. Other drivers around him were imperilled as were the marshals around the track and even the spectators. The possible damage that might have been done is awful to contemplate. And why did he do it? To win a single race and gain points in the drivers’ championship for his team mate; to make money through winning; to get sporting prestige to the team; fame and glory. People’s lives risked for such transient rewards.
But is this the worst cheating in sport? Perhaps it is but it is not unique. There is the recent ‘bloodgate’ scandal in rugby which has ruined several people’s careers. Then there are the allegations of diving and simulation in soccer. In the past there was the infamous ‘hand of God’ of Diego Maradona in the world cup of football, and the spear tackle of the All Black rugby players against Brian O’Driscoll. Ben Johnson wickedly cheated to win an Olympic gold medal by taking drugs, and other have done the same. Perhaps no single act of cheating has imperilled so many lives, but cheating in modern sport is all too frequent.
But then cheating is all too common in life. People try to cheat, and some succeed, when it comes to examinations. In the workplace people will manoeuvre and cheat to get promotion or a plum job. If we are given the wrong change in a shop too many of us take it as a ‘stroke of luck’ and cheat the poor shop assistant who made the mistake. Then in families husbands and wives cheat on each other and engage in illicit relationships with others. Men cheat on their wives by watching pornography and engaging in lustful thoughts after other women. Cheating is dreadful when we see it so starkly displayed as in Nelson Piquet Jr.’s crash, but it is sadly a feature of much of life which we tend to accept rather easily.
Above all else we all cheat on God. That is the sad and yet most prominent feature of life. We owe God for every good thing we have and every benefit we discover in this world. Yet we do not thank Him nor do we give Him the respect and love which He deserves. We treat His laws and justice with disdain and choose to do things our own way with scant regard to His rights and requirements. Worst of all we ignore His great display of love and mercy in Jesus Christ and treat what Jesus did in dying for us as a matter of scarcely no consequence. Indeed in our land at this very time increasing numbers of Local Authorities are showing such disdain as they ignore the religious festival of Easter and introduce a Spring holiday instead.
It has been the universal response of sports writers and editorials that Nelson Piquet Jr. and the Renault team should be punished. Such criminal irresponsibility and blatant flaunting of the rules demands it. Yet when it is suggested that mankind must come under God’s judgement because of the way we have all cheated God and disobeyed His rules there is a howl of dissent. Is justice in sport acceptable but not in the greater and more important things of our relationship with God?
The solemn truth is that God will judge us. He has appointed a day1 the Bible says when He will judge the world. And He has appointed a Man to judge us all. His name is Jesus2. Why is He qualified to judge us? Because He has first of all done everything necessary to deliver us from judgement. He came into the world with that express purpose. He lived a perfect life so that He could represent sinful men and women when He went to the Cross. In His death He paid the punishment that Divine Justice demanded from impotent sinners. And when He rose from the dead in new life He demonstrated that He was who He said He was and that He had satisfied God’s justice on behalf of all who would trust in Him. There is a wonderful way of forgiveness for you if you will turn from your sin (your cheating God) and believe on Jesus Christ (accept that He died for you).
So here is the worst act of cheating in the world. It occurs when anyone rejects the fact that they have cheated God and deserve God’s judgement, and then go on to reject Jesus as their Saviour even though He has died for people just like them. Such actions are ultimately the greatest act of cheating of all. For it is the ultimate cheating of God and involves cheating yourself and condemning yourself to a judgement from God that you need never face.
1 Acts 17:31
2 Acts 17:31 and John 5:22 & 26-27