Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Recently, five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlson resigned a match with 19-year-old Hans

Neiman and accused his opponent of cheating. His allegations have since been substantiated. And in professional

poker, a relative newcomer was accused of cheating in a game in which she won over $260,000.

And also recently, the CRLG, which is the world's largest competitive Irish dancing organization,

launched a widespread investigation of cheating, which included offering sexual favors to presiding judges.

And then, in a video gone viral, about eight pounds of lead weights were removed from the bellies of Ohio wall eyes that were caught in a professional fishing tournament.

This string of cheating scandals points to a reality of the human condition after the fall,

a reality that spans time and place, not to mention cultures and sports, that range from

popular to the less than popular.

At the Olympic Games of 388 BC, which was the 98th Olympic Games, a boxer named Upolis

of Thessaly bribed three opponents to throw the match. In response, the

Greeks raised statues of Zeus along the route to the competition, with lightning bolts raised to punish

those who would bribe or cheat their way to victory. Of course, the irony was that Zeus, called the

oath giver, was a notorious oath breaker, cheating again and again on his wife, Hara. And, lest we pick on

professional fishing, we might remember Deflate Gate and the 2018 Houston Astros. Even so,

what's odd about our time and place is the outrage over lead weights and dead fish,

and our simultaneous shrugs over affairs, open marriages, and no-fault divorce. A recent U-Gov poll found that

roughly a quarter of Americans were interested in an open relationship. According to Gallup polling,

though the divorce rate has actually dipped in recent years, the social acceptability of divorce,

that's at an all-time high. And while rates of marital infidelity are difficult to track,

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