I find myself falling into a trap that I think most (if not all) Christians fall into on a regular basis. I try to evaluate my faith with a "score card" mentality. That is, on any given day/week/month/whatever I'll think, "Well, in terms of reading my Bible, A-. In terms of loving my neighbor, D-. In terms of worship, C+. In terms of seeking justice, F." And so forth.
This is an extremely legalistic way of looking at our faith, and it is very unhealthy. Not only does it evaluate our faith based on a comparison mentality, but it also misses the point.
Thinking about our faith in these terms simplifies it to a "if I do enough of the right things, I'm good" and "if I don't do enough of the right things (or do too many of the wrong things), I'm bad" mentality. And that misses the whole point of grace.
Grace tells us that we will never be able to do enough of the right things, and we will always do too many of the wrong things, but that God made a way for us to be made acceptable in his sight anyway. As such, our score card should only ever look like this:
Final Score:
Jesus: 1
Sin/Death: 0
End of story.
