Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-157 (Practical Christian Living)

HANDLING CRITICISM

Part Two: Receiving Correction

by Norman and Ann Bales

In our last installment [see CLM-3-151], we talked about guidelines we need to observe when we feel like we have an obligation to correct others. Today we go to the flip side and talk about receiving criticism.

How do you handle the critics? We’ve heard it said that ‘nothing is certain except death and taxes’. We wouldn’t be too far off the mark if we added criticism as another certainty. How do we deal with the critics? We can’t shoot them. It’s against the law. Besides that, there are too many of them. You can’t outlive them. If one critic dies, two or three will rise up to take his place. Criticism is as inevitable as ants at a picnic. So how do we deal with it? Married couples will inevitably receive comments from their partners. How do you handle it? Here are some suggestions.

* Profit from it. Sometimes our enemies help us more than our friends. Our friends often tell us what we want to hear because they don’t want to endanger the friendship. Perhaps that’s sometimes true of our spouses. Our enemies aren’t interested in being our friends, so they tell us what we don’t want to hear. On occasion they may speak the truth. Many years ago, two staff writers left a controversial periodical and accepted positions with an opposing journal. Their previous employer wrote a scathing denunciation of his former scribes. When the two defectors received their copy of the tirade, one stormed into the office of his colleague. He was irate. He shouted, “The editor said we were liars.” His friend said, “That’s not what bothers me. I thought he proved it.” If another person speaks truth to us, we need to profit from it, even though the critic does not have our best interests in mind.

* Be discerning. When we hear negative criticism, we often choose to ignore it. Sometimes that’s the best course of action. If we’re criticized unjustly, we rightly ask, “Who owns the problem?” On the other hand when we hear just criticism, we need to avoid rationalizations, excuses, explanations and counter attacks. But how do you know the difference between the unjust criticism and the just criticism? It takes a certain level of maturity to recognize the difference. The writer of Hebrews said, “But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

Sometimes the context of the criticism makes all the difference in the world. As writers we have submitted manuscripts, which have been rejected. Occasionally an editor will send the manuscript back with numerous negative comments. Those criticisms don’t get under our skin, but that’s the nature of the writer-editor relationship. If editors mark up your manuscript and write multiple negative statements, it usually means they think you’re good and they’re trying to help you improve. At that point you have to decide whether the editor has a point or doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. In any case, if the editor didn’t think you had some potential he wouldn’t bother. On the other hand, there are those critics who don’t know what they’re talking about, who react out of pure bias and who simply do not like us. We need to ignore that kind of critic. Wisdom requires us to know the difference between an editor and adversary.

* Don’t dwell on it and don’t let a critic talk your out of doing good things. Nobody kicks a dead dog. Jack Dempsey was the greatest heavyweight champion in the twenties. Some think he was the greatest boxer of all time. When he fought Louis Firpo, his opponent hit him so hard that he knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Dempsey jumped up, climbed back in the ring and spoke to Firpo. He said, “Is that as hard as you can hit?” Dempsey won the fight.

The worst thing you can do is let the critic get under your skin and stop you from doing well. When you’re criticized, your first reaction may be to stop what you’re doing. If a husband complains about his wife’s cooking, she may say, “All right, Buster. From now on you can cook your own meals. I’m going to a restaurant.”

Maybe the husband had that coming, but sometimes people stop doing noble tasks at the first sign of opposition. That happened to the prophet Elijah. When Jezebel sought to have him killed, Elijah fled. God was determined that the conflict wouldn’t end that way. He gave Elijah more work to do and assured him, “I have seven thousand in Israel – all whose knees have not bowed to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18). You can’t throw in the towel just because somebody doesn’t like what you’re doing.

* Don’t allow yourself to become embittered. A bitter spirit is extremely destructive. Cynicism is poison. It drives wedges between husbands and wife, brothers and sisters, parents and children. Always be ready to rebuild broken relationships. If there’s a broken friendship, always look for any sign of movement toward healing the breach.

We all need God’s help when we are attacked by critics. We need to pray for the critics and our own responses to them. We need to ask God to give us tender hearts, open minds and thicker skin.

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