Lose the Scales

I've kept score a lot during my life.  My earliest memory is getting paid $1 to put old metal numbers on the scoreboard at church league softball games.  Soon Dad taught me how to keep the official scorebook at softball and basketball games. Since then, I've scored many little league and high school baseball games.  I’m still pondering whether learning to keep score was a "blessing" or a "curse."

Keeping score didn't fly with Jesus.  In Matthew 5, He referred to the Old Testament teaching of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." (Deuteronomy 19:21) Then He offered a better way: "But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also." (V.39)  " ... love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." (V.44)  Do what?  Love my enemies?  Bless those who curse me?  Do good to those who hate me?  Pray for those who use me and wish me harm?  So, what about the scales of justice?  Take a moment to consider justice: a blameless lamb standing in my place of punishment by death.  Now, about those scales of justice?  There was no justice -- there was only compassion and mercy.  Yet, daily I insist on taking up the scales -- dragging them around and passionately measuring how unfairly I am treated, demanding my “rights.”  I react with everything BUT mercy, compassion, love!  Christ's way demands less focus on me, and more focus on others – He says to love them, bless them, do good to them, pray for them.  We are called to lay down the scales (over and over again), and balance injustice with a lifestyles  of humility and love.  The reward? "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)  Yeah, lose the scales!