Focus On the Score, Lose the Game 

We are a competitive species by nature. It seems that everywhere we look there are point systems that grade everything we take into consideration. This scoring is for everything from products to personalities.

Competition is such a big part of who we are, we tend to ingrain that mindset into most parts of our lives. How many people have not tried to rush through a test at school trying to be the first one done? What about in driving – who hasn’t tried to ‘race to the red light’? I can’t tell you how many times I have caught myself in a ‘walking contest’ with any of my kids…

Striving to be the best at what it is we like to do. Some of us strive to be the center of attention. Still, some will try to undermine someone else to make themselves look good.

Scoring religious points

Most of us relate our Christian walks by tallying our blessings versus our curses. We tend to go through life worrying about each little step we take, whether it will bring or block our blessings.  

There are times when we are planning to do something, but it falls through. We end up marking that down as a “should not have done that, it brought on a curse”.  

What about the other times when we are looking to be blessed, and for that reason we walk a little more on the straight and narrow. We have in mind the benefits we are looking for, and that becomes our motivation. As if to say, “if I do this, then I will be blessed with that”. 

This is keeping score

What we are doing is keeping score. We are saying that if we do this, we will remain in His graces. But if we do that, He will turn His back to us, then we will be living under a curse until we repent. I didn’t even really know what it means to repent until recently, we’ll get more into that a little later. 

When we go around trying to keep score, it keeps us in a mindset of a competition. It gets us to think about what I can do to just get by, like finding a cheat code, and just go through the motions. Not to mention it conditions an image of a relationship with Christ that is far from the truth.

How we are keeping score

Here are a few of the ways we try to keep score, starting with what we do socially. 

How many times have we seen friends compete with each other trying to get attention? Friends bad-mouthing other friends for one reason or another. We can’t forget the fact that many of us try to one-up each other as if to compete for some kind of expert status with each other. 

The same thing applies with siblings, or even children. I can’t count how many time I have tried to show affection to my wife only to have our daughter wedge herself between us forcing the ‘love’ on her. As loving and sweet as that sounds it boils down to them trying to command the attention one is trying to give someone else. 

We can’t forget about work. I have had the privilege of working in many different environments and I have seen similar actions at each. Co-workers who will go behind their backs to underplay someone else’s work. Even those that rush through their directives just enough to ‘check an item off the list’. Doing barely enough just to say that it was done.

How it really works

When we are tallying our good deeds against our bad, we are doing nothing but self-justifying ourselves. This leads to pride, which one of the Proverbs written by Solomon states, goes before destruction (NET). Not to mention, pride is one of the flavors of sin. 

The more we compare the good with the bad, the more it looks like a profit and loss stock chart. I’m doing good so I’m in the green! Wait, I just messed up so now I’m back in the red… We tend to look at our Christianity as a candlestick stock chart. This is not how it works.

It’s about grace

Where we fail is the consideration of grace. What is grace anyways? The simplest way to explain it is in comparison with the word mercy. Mercy is us not getting what we deserve, while grace is us getting what we don’t deserve.  

Even dictionary.com defines it as “the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God”. How beautiful! Look what Paul writes to the Romans: 

What he is telling the Christians in Rome is that we are not to depend on our works but to find comfort and confidence in grace. It is God’s grace that is sufficient and there are no deeds great enough that we can do that God would even think to be impressed by.

Beware our pride

We become boastful and full of pride when we depend on our own works. Worse yet, when we fail, we become discouraged and even want to give up. Grace is the key here. God’s grace supersedes our works by infinite and beyond! 

Let’s bring this back to the point system we have ourselves on. As we take score and focus in on our own goods and bads, we are ignoring the power and sufficiency of God’s grace. We are not considering the great vastness of His grace – we are trying to do it on our own terms based on our own emotions. 

So, if it is about the grace of God and not our own, what then? No matter what we do, God’s grace will still cover us? Let’s see what Paul goes on to say to the Romans: 

Here we are now living and receiving grace but yet there are still expectations. This is where repentance comes in. This again begs the question, what is repentance?

Repentance is what closes the loop

How many people have seen the movie Monte Python and the Holy Grail? There is a scene where King Arthur has just assembled his Knights of the Round Table and they are traveling across the land.  

A vision of God stops them to instruct on a sacred mission. Before he gets to the point, Arthur and his men are bowing, hiding their eyes and so forth. God eventually says, “Every time I try to talk to someone it’s always ‘sorry this’ or ‘forgive me that’”.  

It seems that every time we do something wrong, as in sin, we want to apologize. That’s all good and fine but what are apologies? Good for the receiver for ear candy but for the most part shallow. Apologies can clutter us so much that they are essentially rendered worthless.

What repentance is

This is John the Baptist ‘preparing the way’ for the coming Messiah. He was telling people to repent, which to them was a new concept. They were used to the Law and were condemned by the Law. It was basically a sort of point system. 

What he was saying was to turn away from their sins. It was about change, about turning away and filling the gap with that which is about our Messiah.  

Paul, while witnessing to King Agrippa and his court, preached repentance as not only belief or faith, but performing the deeds to back it up.

Finally

When we go about worried about every little thing that we do right or wrong, our focus remains on ourselves. This directs us to trust in ourselves rather than receiving His grace. When we trust in ourselves, we feed our pride; and so on… 

What is another reason to not take score? I’m glad you asked! I know in my experience and some I have informally counseled, when we focus on making sure we do right and put ourselves down when we do wrong, we see that we always seem to fall short, which opens up one of three things, it: 

1. Cripples us to the point of lukewarmness or spiritually ineffective 

2. Opens the door for us to self-justify (make excuses) and feeds our pride 

3. Motivates us toward real change – true repentance

Closing

Unless we turn and trust in God and truly repent, we are only hurting ourselves. Sure, we may believe in Christ risen and that God sent him for us, but even the devils believe. That’s the easy part.  

Stop taking score, stop focusing on every little mistake you make. Doing so hurts more than it helps. Even more, it says that God’s grace is not sufficient. That is part of the biggest mistake of all.

The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved.