Years ago, when I was working on my bachelor’s degree at Westwood College, my literature instructor was in favor of a pass/fail grading system as opposed to letter grades, A, B, C, D, F, etc. He had bought into the idea that letter grades created more stress for students and did not necessarily reflect their actual ability. I disagree with this thinking on a couple of points. I do think pass/fail may be acceptable for certain subjects, say like basket weaving… etc.… (Ok, I’m being facetious.)
I asked Curt (the instructor) a question after class.
“Curt, if you were having open heart surgery, would you want a doctor that got straight A’s at Harvard Medical School, or would you want some guy that just passed his classes at John Doe State University?”
After thinking about it for a second, Curt agreed that there should probably be a grading system for certain courses.
Do you think?
Accountability matters. Accountability shows up in many ways. It can be a recording of your income and expenses. That’s pretty important when you want to know your financial situation, whether personal or business. It can be counting the number of people who enter a sporting event, necessary to know due to fire regulations. Or it can be the number of non-citizens allowed to enter your country.
Accountability is also necessary when disciplining your children. Failure to hold your children accountable for their disobedience leads to adults who will be disobedient. I think we can all see how that’s going today. Well, many of us anyway.
It used to be that your WORD mattered. The Bible says that you do not need to “swear an oath” on anything, but let your Yes be Yes and your No be No. But if you do not hold yourself accountable for what you tell people you will do, your WORD will not be worth anything. Nobody will believe or trust you. That makes life much more difficult.
As mentioned in my conversation with Curt, there are times where accountability may not be as important as other times. This is where some common sense is needed. Today we seem too often to allow people to make excuses for their shortcomings and failures. Sometimes it may be ok to excuse someone for being late for work, or for breaking something, etc. But when we allow someone to regularly make mistakes, or even worse, to intentionally do wrong, or evil, then accountability is out the window, and the consequences will be much worse for all involved.
As a Christian, I believe that Jesus died for my sins. God gives me grace and overlooks my shortcomings. But, as Paul says in the New Testament, does that mean I can just keep on sinning? Of course not. I am supposed to learn from my mistakes and try to do better. We are all imperfect and are going to screw up at times, maybe many times. But instead of beating us up for our failures, we need to learn from them, be accountable to what we are supposed to do or be and keep trying to improve.
If you do that, I am quite sure you will be able to look back at your journey with a better attitude and celebrate your successes.
I will be further discussing Accountability and Common Sense in Episode 78 redux, of Coach Mike Now livestream on Rumble.com.