Criticism

There are few things I like less than criticism.

A desperate people pleaser and oldest child, I always want not only for people to approve of me, but for them to actually like me. In fact, if I find out that someone doesn’t like me I will go to great lengths to correct their obvious misunderstanding of my shimmering, sparkling self. If that sounds a prideful, that’s because it is.

Sure, I don’t mind being teased for being scattered or chided for being spacey. Those are both aspects of my personality that, though maybe not ideal, are understandable and even endearing. Go on, feel free to mock my stick figure artwork or cooking skills. Since I am self-aware and (somewhat) self-deprecating about these traits, I control the bounds of criticism. I’m not a perfectionist apparently, just a narcissist.

This morning I had a meeting that ended with the words, “Don’t be demoralized by my comments.” If that needs to be said, it’s typically not a good sign.

A professor had very calmly and astutely pointed out flaws in a paper I had written, questions I had left unaddressed and issues that needed to be raised. And, honestly, it was fine. And it got me thinking about the nature of criticism. Now, it could be that I simply don’t care about my academic career in the same way that I don’t care about the fact that my desk is completely unorganized. Or, it could be a sign of God’s grace in my life. In the past few years, I’ve had to come face to face with my own inadequacy in several areas. Graduating from college and pretending to be a grown up will do that pretty fast. Nothing like overwithdrawing from your checking account because you’re too lazy to take several months of paychecks to the bank to reinforce one’s fundamental incompetency. Or housesitting and leaving the back door wide open. But these past two years have also included some very good and important biblical teaching that is somehow making its way into my dense mind.

As Christians, we have an opportunity to face criticism differently, even to embrace it, unpleasant as it may be to our sensibilities. The core of Christianity is a whole understanding of our essential brokenness, an acceptance that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s favor, the recognition that “every inclination of our hearts is only evil all the time.” And guess what? Because of Jesus Christ, that is not crushing, it’s liberating. I can’t do it. He did. There is a deep and abiding peace, born not of performance or parental approval or relational love, but born of the assurance that I am righteous and accepted by the God of all Gods because of the life, death and resurrection of another, namely Jesus.

Criticism and failure are no longer cataclysmic events, they are transformed into sanctifying moments in which we remind ourselves of Jesus’ adequacy to atone for our mess, to justify us anyway. God graciously shows us our sins in His Word and in the words of others, to bring us to the end of ourselves and to Him. Sandra McCracken sings of this in her song “In the Secret of His Presence,”:“Do you think He ne’er reproves me?/What a false friend He would be./If He never, never told me/ Of the sin which He must see/Of the sin which He must see.”

Better than being better, more perfect than being perfect, more likeable than being liked is to be sanctified by the Spirit, to be totally righteous in Jesus, and to be incomprehensibly loved by God.

So, bring on the criticism. I am a sinner, but Jesus rose from the dead.