I became a Christian about the same time I became a Boy Scout, and I made the assumption that God grades like the Boy Scouts do on a merit system.

Good Scouts move up, good people go to heaven.

This is Max Locato.

So I resolved to amass a multitude of spiritual badges.

I worked toward the day when God, amid falling confetti and dancing cherubim,

would drape my badge-laden sash across my chest and welcome me into his eternal kingdom,

where I would humbly display my badges for eternity. But some thorny questions surfaced. How many badges

does he require? How good is good? And then I was

corrected. Ephesians 2.8 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,

it is the gift of God. Unearned. A gift. Our merits merit nothing. So let grace happen for heaven's sakes.