Among those charged are 33 parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. Charges included "felony conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud."

The central player in the scheme known as "Operation Varsity Blues" was a man named William Singer, who, between 2011 and 2018, was paid roughly $25 million by wealthy parents seeking to secure their children a place at a prestigious college. The technicalities of the scam involved fraudulent SAT and ACT exam sittings, and even falsifying athletic credentials to gain entrance into elite colleges such as Stanford, Yale, UCLA and Georgetown.

"This is a case where they flaunted their wealth, sparing no expense to cheat to the system so they could set their children up for success with the best money can buy," Joseph Bonavolonta from the FBI Boston Field Office told Fox News. "Today's arrests should be a warning to others. You can't pay to play. You can't lie and cheat to get ahead."

It's a shocking case that is currently reverberating across the nation, the most damning detail of which has to be that the parents knowingly paid such extortionate sums in order to get ahead of the fair competition and take the place of a hardworking student. But aside from gawking at the juicy details of the scandal, this bombshell case should serve as a warning to us all of what happens when we put pride and success above integrity and discipline.

Keeping up appearances

We live in a world full of unhealthy, cutthroat competition. Whether in the sphere of academics, business, sports or otherwise, our culture champions and respects those who excel and achieve. While some respond to this competition in healthy ways, by working hard and assuring their identity is rooted in something much bigger, there are others who will do absolutely anything to get ahead of their rivals in a desperate bid to appear successful to those around them.

So, what is this behavior rooted in? Well, pride. When we get caught up in the perpetual hamster wheel that is worldly success and achievement, we relent ourselves to the prideful nature that exists inside each and every one of us. Careening headfirst down this path of material success, we actively choose to turn from humble service of God and our neighbor, and insist, at all costs, that the world must revolve around ourselves and our goals. Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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