Almost, But Not Quite
by Oliver Carlos
I was as a hard luck kid, not just once, but twice. I didn’t make the academic achievers’ recognition cut-off by a hairline, both in high school and in college. In UP Rural High School, the honor roll would begin at 85.0. When I graduated in 1989, my general average was 84.5, I missed graduating with honors by just .5 point. If I’m not mistaken, there were 13 honor graduates that year, those who got 85 and better. I was the 14th person on our batch’s grade list.
My college graduation was similar. Although I graduated cum laude, I wasn’t the top graduate that year. I missed the top spot by just .01 point! The top graduate of the UP College of Human Ecology had a General Weighted Average (GWA) of 1.62, mine was 1.63. The top graduate had the distinction of wearing a very large medal and marching ahead of everybody else in the commencement exercises. I walked behind the top graduate.
My adviser, Prof. Delia Mariano tried her best to dig through all my subjects, recomputing my GWA over and over again. I admired her for doing that, and I’m also grateful to her, for believing in me. She must have thought there must be an error, and perhaps her advisee was the top graduate. But she would always end up with 1.63.
During those days, I really didn’t mind so much my “almost but not quite” experiences. Graduating with a laude was already a big blessing from God, and it called for a big celebration. I wasn’t really that upset.
But when I became a professor myself, that’s when I got a better picture of those missed situations. When I was teaching at the UPLB College of Development Communication in the early 2000s, I had an advisee who missed being a cum laude by .001 point. The university rule says that for a student to graduate cum laude, s/he must have a GWA of 1.750. My advisee’s GWA was 1.751.
Like Prof. Mariano, I also recomputed my advisee’s GWA a hundred times over. I always ended up with 1.751. My advisee was so heart broken. The cum laude tag would have been a permanent suffix on her name in her CV and in many other documents. I thought that if only she could have gotten a grade that is 0.25 higher in any of her past subjects, she would have crossed the cum laude line. We couldn’t do anything anymore as I already gave her the maximum grade of flat one (1.0 grade) semesters ago when she was my student, and there’s no more subject to take now to pull her grade up. I really felt so sad for my advisee. This may sound hard and harsh, but it’s the reality: In the university, rules are rules. If you fall short even by the tiniest of a fraction, it won’t be rounded off, you still fall short of the standard.
Same thing in life. God has a standard on who can be in heaven. God is holy and that place is holy, so no one who is not holy can be there. Sin is the thing that makes a person unholy. Sadly, everybody has sinned, including me and you. And so everybody falls short of God’s standard of holiness. We can read it in Romans 3:23 (NLT):
“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
By not meeting God’s standard because of our sin, we can’t be in heaven. Where will we be? In eternal death, which is hell. Romans 6:23 (ERV) says that.
“When people sin, they earn what sin pays — death. But God gives his people a free gift — eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We have good news. Notice the second part of that verse. God provided a way out for us sinners. Jesus’ death on the cross paid our debt. It has cancelled our death sentence, and it’s for free! We don’t need to pay for it, nor work for it. We just have to receive it.
Yes, rules are rules; but there is also forgiveness. God will pardon those who asked for a pardon, and those who wanted a renewed life, those who are sincere in their repentance and acceptance of Christ. Do you want to receive the eternal life God is offering you? Let’s pray this short prayer wholeheartedly:
Dear Jesus, forgive me for all the sins I have committed. I acknowledge that your sacrifice on the cross is the one and only way to bail me out of eternal death. Come into my heart and wash away my sins. Renew me. Take over my life. Amen.
