Keeping Score

          God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. (Hebrews 6:10)

One of the temptations when the going gets rough is to think that God is somehow displeased with us and punishing us. Everything we’ve done hasn’t mattered to God at all. None of it is good enough. Somehow, we’ve done something so terribly wrong that nothing else matters – even though we can’t figure out what that thing is.

The problem of God being displeased with us and punishing us even though we don’t know what we did to deserve it is deal with in Job. Bad things happen to good people, period. We don’t know why, but we need to get past the silly notion that bad things don’t happen to good people, or that good things don’t happen to bad people. God gives grace to both and allows hardship to both. It’s not a contest.

But today’s passage deals with the other issue: the idea that everything we’ve done doesn’t matter to God. The reality is probably that we haven’t done as much as we think we have, and that we’ve done more than we think we have, but that God may not see the things we’ve done in the same way. But, putting the evaluation of what we’ve done aside, let’s consider.

How would you like it if someone made a habit of reminding you of what a great person they are (especially if you don’t agree)? What would your reaction be to someone who used what they’ve done for you as the means by which to demand that you do for them? How would you feel about a relationship built entirely on what amounts to business transactions? Would you really want to have to pay the cost of getting something good from God? Over and over?

And why would you want your life established on this basis? The mean reason that comes to mind is a comforting one – that it puts us in control of the situation. “OK, God, I helped that little old man across the road, now You have to increase my metabolism so that I can eat what I want to and not gain weight.” (Do we ever think that God is allowing our metabolism to be low so that we don’t have to eat so much to stay alive – thus saving us money? I’m not saying it’s so, just that there’s more than one way to look at things.)

More important than the simple transactionism, what should someone have to do to get God to give them something. Do we have a reasonable wage scale? If we do something good worth $1, what equivalent good should we expect from God. And what if, at the end of the day, we are in the negative range? Who gets to decide?

The wage scale was set, long ago. The wages of sin is death. No matter what sin. No matter what the provocation. No matter what. That’s what we deserve. All the good we do doesn’t erase that debt. But God doesn’t work on such a transactional basis. Once the debt has been wiped out, He doesn’t operate on a transactional basis, but on the basis of love, and so should we. He doesn’t forget the right we’ve done, but it’s not the basis of bargaining with Him. What we do matters, but not as a means of keeping score.