Monday: The Critics Get Criticized
WEEK 26
MONDAY
THE CRITICS GET CRITICIZED
Matthew7:1-5
Job and Ezekiel each sat seven days and nights before a problem, one of suffering, and the other of the waywardness of a people. When Ezekiel went to tell the captives of their sins, he said, “I went away, bitter and deeply angry” (Ezek 3:14); he was going to blister their souls. But God said, “No, Ezekiel, not yet. You sit where they sit. Learn their problems and temptations firsthand by experience. And then you can speak.” So he said, “I sat where they sat” (v. 15 KJV)—and learned their problems from within.
When Ezekiel did speak, there was tenderness in his voice, compassion in his heart. The people knew he understood and sympathized, so they heeded his words. Those words were deep speaking to deep. But when Job’s “friends” sat beside him and pondered his suffering, they arose critical and negative. They threw salt in his sores by telling him how evil he must be to have all this evil come upon him. They sat on the judgment throne beside God and handed out God’s judgment for him. But in the end God said, “I’m angry at you and your two friends because you haven’t spoken about me correctly as did my servant Job” (42:7). So the critics got criticized, the judges judged. Those who sat on Job got sat on. They reaped what they sowed.
I will punish the men growing fat
on the sediment of their wine,
those saying to themselves,
the LORD won’t do good or evil. (Zeph 1:12)
They were colorless and negative—the LORD won’t do either good or evil. They suffered from nonexpectancy. Result? They were “growing fat on the sediment of their wine.” They were suffering, not so much from the hardening of their arteries as from the “hardening of their categories.”
How different the atmosphere of Acts! There life was open, responsive, positive, creative. If they were critical, it was constructive. They took nothing away without substituting ten times as much. If they tore down with the left, they built up with the right.
O God, our Lord, help me this day to belong to those who build: build with appreciation, build with love, build with the positive. Help me to be creative. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I sit where people sit, I shall rise with love and sympathy and understanding.