Grading Your Own Paper

Do you remember in elementary or junior high school when your teacher would let you grade your own paper?  Depending upon your personality, this either triggered a high five or a sigh of frustration.  The rule followers, like me, hated this. I had done my homework and wanted my effort to be rewarded. Those who had scribbled answers on their paper or left a few blank spaces were thrilled for the chance to benefit from the teacher’s grace. Somehow, almost everyone ends up with an A. The partially correct answer always looks dead-on when we are grading our own work. “That was what I meant” can often be heard in these scenarios.The truth is, no matter how meticulous we are, we are all lousy self-evaluators. We almost always believe the best about ourselves and are quick to assume the worst about others. In the Bible, we can tell that Jesus knows this about us too. In Luke 6, Jesus is telling us how to love our enemies. Immediately after He tells the crowd specific ways to treat others, He gives us a warning:³² “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. (Luke 6:32-34)It is as if God was reading our mail. Can’t you just see it! God uses Luke to call our bluff. We call ourselves obeying. We think we were obeying because we are “nice” especially compared to others. In reality, we were acting all sweet, doing good, loving, and lending to people… just not the ones that we dislike... or the one who competes with us… or the one we are jealous of! It is easy to say we treat people well, if we only look at the way we treat people we like. The question we must honestly evaluate: Is there really any difference in the way you treat your enemies than people who don’t follow Christ? God has called us to a better story.Most of us don’t have a long list of enemies. There are just a few people that make our stomach turn or our skin crawl. You know, the person that you decline when her number pops up on your phone. The person you avoid. What would it look like if you actually moved toward them? As long as there is no emotional or physical danger, we should extend kindness through the grace our King supplies to us. Who is one person you need to move towards?