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evotionals
Can Criticism Serve Any Useful Purpose?
(This is a Guest Post by Nan McKenzie Kosowan, a freelance journalist whose news, features and profiles have been published in Canada and the United States for over 50 years. She is the author the book, Listening to the Sound of His Voice from Childhood to Grandparenthood; you can find her at www.dovenan.com )It must have been an aside to the main point the visiting preacher was making when he commented, "Expect to be offended in this life, and include church as one of the places you will experience it."
I wasn't the only one in the congregation who looked startled at that statement. I waited with everyone else for what he would say next. But that's all he said on that subject. Today I remember that comment, though I can't remember anything else about his sermon.
What I do remember was the offense I evidently gave to the new singer who joined our (former church) choir. She had a beautiful, highly trained voice that could make a spiritual song warm a listener's heart with worship. We appreciated it at rehearsals when she'd pass on little singing tips to us.
When I found a wonderful piece of music in a Christian bookstore that I thought suited her moving style, I offered it to her one Sunday in the busy hall between services. She nodded as she checked it over. But when I offered to do the supporting alto line if she'd like that, she looked me up and down and said, "I don't think so!" and marched off.
What would you have felt? What would you have thought? I was horrified to think I had offended her. I had to hear what the Lord wanted from me now. Rushing into the ladies' thankfully empty washroom, I cried out to the Lord, "Father, what have I done? What can I do?"
The reply was simple, "You've done nothing. She's being reminded of something that has nothing to do with you. Just keep loving her."
A year later, when we were about to move to another city, she stopped me on our last Sunday in that same hall, threw her arms around me and said, "You just don't know what you've meant to me."
She was right. I didn't. But what I did know was that there's more than one way to handle criticism. We can deny it. We can get offended by slights. We can resent presumption. We can carry around annoyance after a demeaning incident. We can lose a friendship by turning our back on someone's unexpected, insensitive treatment of us.
Or we can choose to turn to the Lord to hear what He has to say, see what He has to see. He will show us what is going on inside our souls that He wants to deal with. He can use our overly sensitive reaction to someone's unkind remarks or the hurt we feel from someone's sharp reaction to a negative attitude we were unconsciously projecting. This can never turn into an exercise in self-centeredness but rather be an experience of new freedom under His wise and loving touch that blesses us to be a blessing to others.
A roundtable discussion with thoughtful Christian brothers and sisters might produce some reasons behind criticism as:
Some people just sound like that.
The enemy loves to make trouble.
Someone's facetious remark may not be intended to demean.
You might be picking up signals that aren't there.
The criticizer may not realize they're being rough with you.
The one who is criticizing may not be seeing you. Something in your manner, speech or looks may somehow trigger memories of someone who has bugged them in the past.
Some supporting scriptures for responding with God's way of doing things when we face unsettling personal situations can be found in Ephesians 5: Try to discover what the Lord wants of you … anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything that is illuminated turns into light. The Jerusalem Bible.
© Nan Kosowan 2010
