How do we grade ourselves spiritually?
There are a few ways to evaluate your standing in regards to education or training.
One way is by hands-on demonstration with a qualified evaluator. Another is by a set of standardized tests, many of which are based on the traditional scale of a perfect score equaling an A.
Every 10 percent reduction in scoring lowers the grade by one letter.
All students are graded equally by that measurement, but in recent educational efforts, grading on a curve has become vogue.
In simplistic terms, grading on a curve does away with 100 percent as the standard starting point for a perfect grade. It instead incorporates an average class score structure with all total scores averaged. Grade percentages are derived from that combined baseline.
So if everyone scored a 70 percent, that would then become the new “A” grade instead of everyone getting a C, which would have been the grade based on the traditional scale. Or, the average score becomes the average grade, and scores above or below that average are graded accordingly. There are variations of this across the educational spectrum, but that’s the jest of it.
The educational world has been is debate over the efficacy of grade absolutes and curving. While that conversation continues, it does raise eyebrows about something similar in our spiritual reality with Christian living.
How do we grade ourselves?
2 Cor 13:5 challenges us to; examine ourselves to see if we’re in the faith, and to test ourselves, with concern that we not fail the test. The concern is that too many Christians are grading their life on a curve.
We are measuring our character and holiness against everyone else instead of comparing ourselves against the life of Christ and the Word of God. We are justifying different levels of sin in our lives because we’re not as bad as someone else.
It’s OK if I cheat on my taxes since I would never rob a bank. It’s OK if I observe pornography since I would never commit physical adultery. It’s OK to be short tempered all the time since I would never commit murder. It’s OK to get drunk and make a fool of myself since I’m not a drug addict.
How many of us are living and doing things that we know are wrong but we continue because we rationalize that since we are not as bad as others, God will excuse or overlook our sins.
The excusers in this irony say, “Well, God knows my heart.” Yes he does, and “the heart is deceitful above all things.”
Jeremiah 17:9A. NIV We delude ourselves into an acceptable behavior or lifestyle by comparing against the backdrop of those worse than us, or what we do.
So the wrong that we do becomes the new normal.
This is lowering our standards and expectations because secretly we really don’t want to put out the effort to resist our sinful nature, or we’re willing to defend our wayward indulgences by the spiritual slippery slope of comparing it to those further down the righteous living scale than us. I’m not as bad as so and so, so therefore, I’m really not that bad.
2 Cor 10:12 ESV “Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding,”
While the education folks may grade on a curve, Christians need to have Christ and scripture as our 100 percent benchmark. That is where it starts and ends.
Considering a hands-on evaluation by Christ on how we live, would we pass?
1 Thess 4:7 NIV, “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.”
Look at Eph 4:20-32 any version, for more of this.
We may not get a perfect score for Christ, but have we studied and prepared to live by his standards instead of others?
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Blessings.