The Liars’ Club

In his book, The Cheating Culture, David Callahan argues that cheating, once the domain of the unscrupulous, has now gone mainstream. What’s going on? Even Jesus seems to applaud the shady, middle-management steward in a cryptic story of greed and cunning.

Thou shalt commit adultery.

Repeat: Thou shalt commit adultery. That’s what the Bible says. You can look it up.

Of course, you’d have to look it up in the King James Version of 1631, in which the word “not” was accidentally omitted. This typo so infuriated King Charles that he commanded that all copies be destroyed, and he fined every printer who had anything to do with the scandalous edition.

Because of the loss of a word, this version became known as “The Wicked Bible.”

Unfortunately, it appears that more and more people today are leaving the “nots” out of their Ten Commandments. Either that, or they are simply ignoring them. Commandment number nine seems to be suffering the worst in our contemporary culture: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16, KJV). This commandment demands that the truth be told, especially in a court of law, and it forbids anyone to tell a lie in order to gain an...