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CRITICISM
"How dare you disagree with me?" "Don't you know that I have thought it through completely and there is absolutely positively no way I could be wrong and you could be right."
Sounds like a conversation in congress these days doesn't it?
Or during your last family gathering?
Or between you and your wife or husband or child? We humans do not on the whole take criticism too well and what a shame? What a terrible waste of ideas as time after time two or people major in speaking and minor in listening.
Pride? Indeed, are you ever guilty of having a love affair with yourself, walking down the highways and by-ways of life...holding your own hand.
Criticism can lift you up because you can learn things or it can drag you down.
Moses learned this and he didn't take to it too well. Here he was leading a people to the Promised Land and all they could do was argue about the menu. "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted but you brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death." (Exodus 16:3)
In Egypt everything had been going from bad to worse. Their children had been massacred. They had been oppressed as slaves and what was he getting for his trouble, criticism followed by criticism followed by more criticism and he grew tired of it.
He wanted appreciation. He wanted agreement. He wasn't getting either.
Have you ever been like Moses? Worked your heart out for family or at work and then felt you weren't appreciated? And what did you do? Did you try to get in the other person's frame of reference or did you in pouting and out of sorts inwardly demand they buy into yours.
Moses and maturity? For awhile there they weren't holding hands at all.
One reason people don't take criticism well is because most people are ready to admit that everyone deserves some. But certainly not themselves. And no one is always right that's for sure...but they don't buy into that truth.
Of course, there is a way to make it so you receive no criticism or very little. Somehow become a dictator like Chavez in Venezuela. If anybody dares to criticize him and it's off with their heads or their position as head of state or head of a television station that dares to say he has been wrong.
J. C. Penney wrote a book entitled What an Executive Should Know about Himself. He asked this question: "Can you take criticism?" Then he quoted Chicago department store magnate Marshall Field.
Those who enter to buy, support me.
Those who come to flatter, please me.
Those who complain, teach me how I may please others so that more will come.
Only those hurt me who are displeased but do not complain. They refuse me permission to correct my errors and thus improve my service and myself.
Praise is a wonderful "pick me up" but we don't learn as much from it.
There is a certain arrogance to not being able to take criticism. A not to subtle statement that says you are ALWAYS right.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.(Luke 14:11)
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
(Philippians 2:3)
(Philippians 2:3)
All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (1 Peter 5:5)
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