The Logic of Evaluation

Sundown in the Adirondacks : An encounter with beauty -- image © adventuresingoodcompany.com

Romans 6:12-23 Matthew 10:40-42

“Mr. Montgomery,” my students often ask me, “is this going to be on the test?”

The question betrays the reality that my students are often less interested in learning the material than they are in performing to meet a standard. My desire – as a teacher – is for my students to be captured by the material, engaged in the beauty and complexity of it all, such that they put in the effort to learn not because they “have to” but because they appreciate the intrinsic value of the task at hand.

Alas, high school students have a way of keeping us honest. The “is-this-going-to-be-on-the-test” question reminds me that we are all caught up in a system of extrinsic motivators that carry real weight and force. And, although I may wax eloquent on the merits of learning for learning’s sake – truth be told – I am not outside this system either. My own success is measured, evaluated, and rewarded in ways that shape me more than I would like to admit. We have all become so accustomed to evaluating ourselves and those around us that we cannot imagine life outside the logic of evaluation.

The dynamic between grades and learning in a classroom is a close parallel to what Paul is describing in the portion of his letter to the Romans that we just heard. Paul is talking about something much deeper than a list of good and bad behaviors. He is describing two fundamentally different ways of living. Listen again to his question: "What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" At first glance, it sounds like an odd question, but it should sound familiar.

Imagine I respond to one of my students by saying, "Stop making grades your ultimate goal, and make learning your goal instead. If you truly learn the material, you'll be prepared for the test, and the grades will take care of themselves." Now imagine the student replies, "So you're saying grades don't matter anymore? Great! Then I don't have to study." That is exactly the misunderstanding Paul anticipates. The student has mistaken a change in motivation for the abandonment of the task itself.

To draw out our classroom illustration further, we might say that sin is like a school culture where everything revolves around grades, achievement, comparison, and fear of failure. The Law, then, is like a report card. The report card doesn't create the problem, but it does reveal what has imprisoned our hearts. The point is not that our actions no longer matter. The point is that our hearts have begun to change. Grace, by way of contrast to sin, is both God's gift into a different way of being and God’s power to create that new reality. This new reality is where our lives are no longer governed by fear, guilt, and the need to prove ourselves, but by the love of God who has already claimed us as his own.

Every now and then, we are provided glimpses of this different way of living. The Adirondack North Woods are rich with these glimpses because the beauty and the relationships that we encounter here are often not attached to a report card. For many of us, this is a place where we read books for ourselves, paddle or walk without a destination in mind, and carry cash around to buy soft serve ice cream at a moment’s notice without worrying about the calories because – we all know – Donelly’s ice cream is divinely inspired and magically calorie free. Here we occasionally remember what it feels like to enjoy something simply because it is beautiful.

Those glimpses help us to recognize the Good News of the Gospel. Not unlike my students who can’t stop worrying about grades, the most common misconception about the religious enterprise in general – and Christianity in particular – is that it is about being a “good” person, where “goodness” functions like a report card, fueling our fear and self-justification. To say the same thing slightly differently, the “is-this-going-to-be-on-the-test-question” is eerily similar to “is-this-what-I-need-to-do-to-get-into-heaven” question. I would suggest that they are actually the same question. Paul’s point is that it is the wrong question.

Each one of us entered our sanctuary this morning carrying the weight of our fears, which are fueled by the brokenness of the world and the endless report cards that we receive. Every day someone or something is telling us whether we measure up. Sometimes it’s a formal performance review. Other times it’s a parenting comparison, an aging body, a bank balance, or a social media feed. It’s always something. We waste away our lives when we spend them worrying about these proverbial report cards; in fact, to live in such a way is hardly a life at all, which is why Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Good News is that today – and everyday – we are being invited into a whole new way of being through God’s gracious initiative. Imagine a student who finally forgets to ask whether something will be on the test because she has become so delighted by the subject that she is no longer preoccupied with herself. That is something like what Grace does. Grace doesn't simply teach us to behave differently. It frees us from the exhausting logic of evaluation in which we need to prove that we deserve to belong. Grace is what finally frees us to stop asking, "Will this be on the test?" and start asking, "What is beautiful? What is true? What is worth giving my life to?"

Amen.