Scorekeeper Quotes

Quit keeping score altogether and surrender yourself with all your sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.

It does not have to mean a literal fifty-fifty or a day-by-day score-keeping, but you’ll know when the child-care work is equally shared. You’ll know by your lack of resentment. Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist. And

I have not read most of the big 19th — century novels that people consider “essential,” nor most of the 20th-century ones for that matter. But this does not embarrass me. There are many films to see, many friends to visit, many walks to take, many playlists to assemble and many favorite books to reread. Life’s too short for anxious score-keeping. Also, my grandmother is illiterate, and she’s one of the best people I know. Reading is a deep personal consolation for me, but other things console, too.

God’s program is grace, not scorekeeping; free gift, not reward and punishment in this world.

I feel like he’s a guest at the hotel I’m running. I’m constantly taking a silent feminist stand to see if he’ll step up and lend a hand. The scorekeeping never ends.

because we are self-focused, we tend to be scorekeepers, constantly comparing our piles of stuff to the piles of others. It’s a life of discontentment and envy. Envy is always selfish.

It is tempting to measure how much you have meant to someone by the size of their reaction to your departure, but this reduces relationships to a scorecard. 1 Corinthians 13 is about as clear as you can get when it comes to love and scorekeeping: don’t do it. You matter, others matter; how this is expressed shouldn’t be the gauge of how much.

Listen to me carefully, Momma: score-keeping has no place in your marriage. The best thing you can do for yourself and for each other is to say “thank you” and “I love you” as much as possible. Be grateful. Be appreciative. Offer each other grace upon grace upon grace. You’ve never needed it this much.

There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the fall, is a near-constant manufacturing of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something we say or even think so much as something we exhale. You can smell it on people, though some of us are good at hiding it. And if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root, you don’t find childhood difficulties or a Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit. You find lack of felt awareness of Christ’s heart.

the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it? No, sir; I’m not their scorekeeper. Let them count themselves, if they’re so crazy mad after mathematics. Let them do their own dirty work. Coming around here, at this time of day, and asking me to count them!

The prize itself—an elite college admission—comes at a steep price. The cost of a four-year college degree from any of the top-twenty private colleges in the United States now exceeds a quarter of a million dollars, including room, board, books, and fees. The top-twenty public universities cost less, but even they average between $100,000 and $200,000 for a four-year degree, including room, board, books, and fees, depending on one’s state resident status. Society’s desire for early-blooming validation has led to—let’s be honest—price gouging by those official scorekeepers of early achievement, colleges and universities. The rest of us are stuck with big bills and massive debt. Since 1970, college tuition costs have risen three times faster than the rate of inflation. College debt in the United States is now $1.3 trillion, with an 11.5 percent default rate. By all measures, the rush to bloom early has helped create a potential bust bigger than the 2008 housing bubble.

Coonradt addressed the question, “Why would people pay for the privilege of working harder at their chosen sport or recreational pursuit than they would work at a job where they were being paid?” He then boiled it down to five conclusions that led to hobbies being more preferable to work. Clearly defined goals Better scorekeeping and scorecards More frequent feedback A higher degree of personal choice of methods Consistent coaching

A century ago, as physicians were slowly professionalizing and medicine was on the cusp of becoming scientific, a Boston doctor named Ernest Amory Codman had an idea similar in spirit to forecaster scorekeeping. He called it the End Result System. Hospitals should record what ailments incoming patients had, how they were treated, and—most important—the end result of each case. These records should be compiled and statistics released so consumers could choose hospitals on the basis of good evidence. Hospitals would respond to consumer pressure by hiring and promoting doctors on the same basis. Medicine would improve, to the benefit of all. “Codman’s plan disregarded a physician’s clinical reputation or social standing as well as bedside manner or technical skills,” noted the historian Ira Rutkow. “All that counted were the clinical consequences of a doctor’s effort.”8 Today, hospitals do much of what Codman demanded, and more, and physicians would find it flabbergasting if anyone suggested they stop. But the medical establishment saw it differently when Codman first proposed the idea.

the US Treasury instructs its bank, the Federal Reserve, to carry out the payment on its behalf. The Fed does this by marking up the numbers in Lockheed’s bank account. Congress doesn’t need to “find the money” to spend it. It needs to find the votes! Once it has the votes, it can authorize the spending. The rest is just accounting. As the checks go out, the Federal Reserve clears the payments by crediting the sellers’ account with the appropriate number of digital dollars, known as bank reserves.16 That’s why MMT sometimes describes the Fed as the scorekeeper for the dollar. The scorekeeper can’t run out of points.

Only the scorekeeper is different. Uncle Sam doesn’t need dollars. When he collects taxes from us, he’s just subtracting away some of our dollars. He doesn’t actually get any dollars.

It’s a tough lesson to learn, but try to only keep relationships where you are on the same plane of reciprocity. I am not suggesting score-keeping by any means, only an equal investment in the relationship. Take stock of your relationships. Are they two-way, or a little lopsided? Are you constantly chasing someone down, const

It’s a tough lesson to learn, but try to only keep relationships where you are on the same plane of reciprocity. I am not suggesting score-keeping by any means, only an equal investment in the relationship. Take stock of your relationships. Are they two-way, or a little lopsided? Are you constantly chasing someone down, constantly doing favors for them, or only wanted when it is convenient for them? These relationships are not healthy and erode self-confidence quickly. It is e

Another problem with concentrating on money and power as a mission and purpose is that you’re scorekeeping, and scorekeeping means you’re thinking about results over which you have no real control.

That’s the walkaway dilemma. If you take without giving, you’re a mooch. If you keep track of everyone else’s taking and giving, you’re a creep scorekeeper. It’s our version of Christian guilt—it’s impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you’re doing right.

In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio. Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie. He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?" So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks. PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?" His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?" Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend. "There's no body." "They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering. … The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols. He calls in one confirmed kill. ... Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade." "Yeah, we called that one in." "No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one." Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers. The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables. Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war.

Then, as now, there is a temptation to use prosperity as a measuring stick of devotion, as if God is a cosmic scorekeeper, dispensing favors based on faith...In a broken world, very bad things often happen to very good people. Job was faithful. Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful. And yet God allowed them to suffer for their good and His glory.

Religionists do not apparently wish to acknowledge the secularist’s claim that moral behavior is, or can be, a product of the individual’s rational decision as to what is honorable and conducive to the smooth running of society, or even the long-term advantage to oneself. They instead fear that the average person will “run amok” and be completely amoral without the impetus of religion – without, in other words, the heavy emotional burden of realizing that his or her actions are constantly being monitored by a supernatural scorekeeper who, upon the individual’s death, will make a tally and determine the person’s ultimate destination, either above or below.

There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the fall, is a near-constant manufacturing of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something we say or even think so much as something we exhale. You can smell it on people, though some of us are good at hiding it. And if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root, you don’t find childhood difficulties or a Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit. You find lack of felt awareness of Christ’s heart. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment are the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of law. The felt love of Christ really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom—that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you step in out of the storm of of-works-ness.

It would be one thing if such scorekeeping worked, but it never has and never will, not where the heart is concerned. When one person’s gain equals the other’s loss, the relationship between them always suffers. We become competitors rather than teammates. Moreover, like a husband pointing out the dishes he’s done in order to leverage some gratitude from his wife, the second we harness our good deeds for credit is the second they become less good. All of a sudden, a price tag is dangling off of what was supposed to be a gift. “If I knew that you’d require a ton of affirmation and thanks, or that you’d hold it over my head, I would’ve done the dishes myself!” And that’s just the petty stuff. The language of scorekeeping is the language of conditionality. “I’ll do this for you because you do that for me.” “I’ll hold up my end of the bargain as long as you hold up yours,” we say. However egalitarian our intention, that kind of nonassurance sets us up for a life of accounting. But what works at the office runs out of gas at home.

He narrows his eyes. “I see those wheels spinning. Fine, my gift isn’t that good. Go get whatever you’re getting. We both know you're only doing it to settle the score that only you are keeping.

you’re scorekeeping, and scorekeeping means you’re thinking about results over which you have no real control.

To comprehend the measure of one’s lovelessness, one need only contemplate the extent to which envy, spite, arrogance, anger, frustration, irritation, impatience, gossip, criticism, and scorekeeping characterize not only one’s behavior but also one’s thoughts, actions, and speech for where patience, equanimity, humility, forgiveness, graciousness, forbearance, optimism, hope, and endurance are absent, so, too, is love.

The solution Merton suggests is that we should quit keeping score altogether and surrender ourselves with all our sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.

to create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. You’ve got to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team.

reclusive, staying close to home. Clearly, some of what

Life’s an awfully tiring game,’ the second old man said philosophically one day. ‘That fellow above,’ he pointed at the sky, ‘is a mighty dangerous scorekeeper. No matter how many goals you score, he cancels them out in the end and you’re left with a big zero.’ ‘Have you started thinking about dying?’ ‘What good would dying do? Even if a tree stops flowering or bearing fruit, even if no leaves sprout on it, it’s still better that it stays put. If nothing else, at least snakes and squirrels can find refuge in it.

In deep sleep, everything perceivable and conceivable vanishes, as does the one who cares about all of this. Every night in deep sleep, the caretaker, the controller, the author, the observer, the scorekeeper, the seeker, the judge, the critic, the decider, the phantom helmsman is gone.

Over time, there can’t help but be a blurring of lines, a melding of one person into the other. Which in turn causes them to both consciously push away, acting in direct opposition for no other reason than to prove they can.