Thought of the Day 02.17.10

“I’m better than that guy over there because I go to church, pay my tithe, support my family, and usually tell the truth.”

Now, no one who’s been around church for any significant amount of time would ever say this out loud, but let’s be honest: we think it. We look at how our lives measure up to what we call an absolute standard and notice that we’re a lot closer than other people. This makes us feel better about ourselves and also allows us to look down on them a little (or a lot).

But what if God judges us not by how we compare to others as they are but by how we compare to ourselves as we could be? What if every sermon we hear and every Bible passage we read just serves to increase the standard applied to us because we now know that much more?

As every parents knows, the standards used to evaluate the behavior of a teenager, a fourth grader, and a toddler are all quite different. Holding all of them to any single standard would be unfair. Yet, if God is a perfectly fair judge and parent, why would we think He wouldn’t understand this concept?