Trophies

I was listening to the radio this morning and there was a lot of conversation about how many schools are doing away with valedictorian and salutatorian designations and instead just "honoring" the top students. The reasons given were because of mental health - that some students pushed too hard to be the best and others were hurt because they missed it by a few decimal points. The conversation then turned to the "everybody gets a trophy" generation and how this again fits right into that culture. No need to work hard, everyone gets rewarded.

Then I got a revelation, is this how most people approach Christianity? Is this type of thought pattern part of the same mindset that leads people to believe that if they are just a good person then they will get to heaven? No need to fully accept Jesus in my heart, no need to work hard to avoid the temptation of sin, no need to follow the teachings of the bible, no need to repent, no need to give grace to others - if I just do a little then I can still get the "trophy." If I just go to church, be a good person, and say I read the bible, then I can still go to heaven.

Author Jean M. Twenge, of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement says, “... the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ mentality basically says that you’re going to get rewarded just for showing up. That won’t build true self-esteem; instead, it builds this empty sense of ‘I’m just fantastic, not because I did anything but just because I’m here.’”

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (1 COR 9:24 NIV)

C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters played out this very demonic scenario:

“The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. … Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma – Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. …

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows?”

Jesus is the only way to heaven. You cannot rip out the pages of the bible you do not like. You cannot just know a few popular verses and say you know the bible. Such an restrictive position may confuse or even offend, but it is the truth. The Bible teaches that there is no other way to salvation than through Jesus Christ. He is not a way, as in one of many; He is the way, as in the one and only. No one, regardless of "being a good person" or "just doing some of the Christian things" can come to God the Father except through Jesus.

Jesus gives us the answer, the one answer, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6 NIV)

But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God. (Acts 20:24 NLT)