Keeping Score

We love to keep score. Whether we’re playing Monopoly, watching baseball, or tossing a Frisbee, we want to know who won. Usually, we can laugh about it afterward. Yet the habit of keeping score can follow us into places where it does real harm.

We learn it early. We compare ourselves with siblings, classmates, and friends. At a ball game, we celebrate when our team does well and may hear someone shout insults when a player makes a mistake. I would never want to be a referee. Someone always seems ready to count every call they believe you got wrong.

The trouble begins when we keep that kind of score with one another.

Someone misspeaks, and we rush to correct them. Someone disappoints us, and we remember it for years. We may say we’ve forgiven them yet bring the mistake back the next time we disagree.

I remember disagreeing with someone who responded by listing ways I had failed them over the years. I apologized for those things and believed we had made peace. Hearing them all again showed me how long a hurt can remain when we haven’t truly dealt with it.

My wife and I have seen this in years of marriage and relationship counseling. A mistake that might have been addressed with honesty and mercy is brought up repeatedly. Unforgiveness can be like a splinter under the skin. At first, it seems small, but left there, it grows tender. Before long, every touch hurts.

Scripture tells us that God is faithful to forgive when we confess our sins. Jesus also calls us to forgive others as He forgives us. That can be difficult. Forgiveness does not mean pretending a hurt never happened, and it does not always mean trust is restored immediately. But it does ask us to stop using a person’s past as a weapon. When we are still dealing with the need to forgive, go back to God and admit that you have a problem and seek His help and healing. Many times, we don’t even remember the “slight” and yet, the reoccurring concern keeps growing and becoming larger than it originally was. Remember that forgiving others removes the underlying anger or frustration and sets us free of the misery we silently carry.

Keeping score can also turn into gossip. We rehearse someone’s failures with another person, sometimes long after the person has apologized. The more often we tell the story, the harder it can become to see anything else about them.

A man once told me, “I respect you, even though you’re a Christian.”

I thanked him, then asked what he meant. He told me he had heard Christians speak about love in public, only to hear them bicker, blame, and speak harshly to each other at home. He wondered why he would want to become like them.

His words were painful, but I needed to hear them. People notice how we treat one another. If we speak of God’s mercy while refusing to show mercy, we make His love harder for others to recognize.

I learned another lesson about this as a new believer. Our little church had a coffee house where young people could gather. One regular visitor brought his younger brother, a boy of about thirteen. He was awkward, asked questions at the wrong moments, and seemed unsure how to fit in. What he wanted, more than anything, was to belong.

One day he came to me and said, “I think I’ve found my ministry.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The ministry of fault-finding.”

When I asked where he found that in Scripture, he said he had seen it in the people at church. He had heard our pastor say that our lives were a sermon others could read. The boy had been reading ours.

I have never forgotten that conversation. He saw a habit we had grown so used to that we barely noticed ourselves.

I also must admit that fault-finding was a problem for me, especially when I was a newer believer. Over the years, God has helped me see that it is not my job to play God. My job is to represent Him as a humble servant.

When a hurt keeps returning to mind, I can bring it to God: “Lord, this still bothers me. Forgive me for trying to do your job which is making me miserable.  Help me see clearly. Show me whether I need to speak with this person, make something right, or let go of a debt I keep collecting.”

If you recognize yourself in this article, I hope you will hear an invitation, not a verdict. We can confess our own failures to God, receive His forgiveness, and ask Him to teach us a different way to treat one another. We can be honest and tender hearted about hurt without making it someone’s permanent identity.

Keep score in bingo, hockey, or soccer. With people, let us make room for mercy. Let us forgive as we have been forgiven and let the love of Jesus be something others can see in the way we live.