Week 19 Sunday
Week 19 Sunday
Another Road with a Dead End—Criticism
Matthew 7:1-5
Another road with a dead end, a way that is not-the-way—the way of criticism of others.
It is an enticing way, for criticism seems to provide satisfaction in two directions: (1) toward the one criticized, in that it is done for the person’s good, and (2) toward oneself in the self-satisfaction of being superior to the one criticized. It ends in hurt to both. It is not-the-way. It is the way of Pharisaism. It ends in self-righteousness instead of self-realization.
The Pharisees actually believed that it was their moral duty to try to correct people and make them good by criticism. When they held aloof from people, they did it for the sake of the wrongdoer. It was salvation by isolation. The sinner must be shown that sin estranges, and the Pharisee was the agent to embody and proclaim that estrangement, the embodiment of the Moral Order that pronounced judgment. There was a truth in that attitude, a truth that made the attitude float—for a while. And then it sank. A Chinese interpreter in Malaya interrupted me when I used the word Pharisee, “What sea was that?” I might have answered, “The Dead Sea.” For the attitude of Pharisaism produced nothing but “Dead Sea fruit.” Jesus warned his disciples, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees”; beware of letting their spirit get into you and produce the Pharisee instead of the Christian. For they are quite distinct.
A good many Christians think that the Christian task is to give the Christian criticism of life. If so, we are on the edge of a vortex of Pharisaism. This makes the Christian faith a judgment seat from which life is criticized and judged. But the center of the Christian faith is not a judgment seat but a cross, a cross where people are not merely criticized but died for. The center is not a sideline criticism but an identification with humanity, which makes human sin its own and in the process cries, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Redemption is by suffering with and for and instead of, rather than by pointing out sin by criticism from the sidelines. People are not converted by criticism. They are converted by a cross.
O Christ, I thank you that you did not approach me as the divine Pharisee, else I would have hardened and revolted. You came to me silently bearing my sins, and lo, I am melted and redeemed. Help me to take your attitudes toward others. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “So do not criticize at all” (1 Cor. 4:5 Moffatt).
Week 19 Monday
Not the Judge of All the Earth
Romans 14:1-4
Yesterday we ended by saying that the center of the Christian faith is not a judgment throne but a cross. And yet that cross becomes the most awful judgment throne imaginable. Jesus said, “Now is this world to be judged. . . . But I, when I am lifted up from the earth [on a cross], will draw all men to myself” (John 12:31-32 Moffatt). The judgment of the world took place from a cross. And yet it was a judgment that drew people to itself. In one act, Christ judges and draws, criticizes and converts. Nothing but divine love and divine wisdom could have put those two things together.
I think I could stand up pretty well to a judgment seat out of sheer bravado, but I cannot stand up to a cross; it melts me, sends me to my knees in broken penitence, judges me to my depths. Nothing is more terrible than the judgment of the cross.
The business of the Christians, then, is simple. We are not to go around judging people, pointing out flaws here and picking motes there, trying to save the world by judgment and criticism. It was a great relief to me to find that I was not the judge of all the earth. In my early days, I was trying to decide who was going where. Then I saw that was not my business; it was God’s. I was not good enough or wise enough to judge others. When that assumed responsibility was taken from my shoulders, I felt a great sense of relief and freedom. My task was simple: live and preach redemption, and leave judgment to God.
A group of self-appointed judges of all the earth sat with me one day. They took seriously their responsibility. Their brows were knitted; their souls were tense; they were weighted down with their responsibility; they were out to convert by criticism. If it hadn’t been serious, it would have been laughable. Their religion was a burden instead of a blessing; they were jittery instead of joyous. They were being slowly made into perfect Pharisees and into very poor Christians. Their Christianity was being criticized out of them.
They waved aside the command of Jesus, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1), and the echo by Paul, “So do not criticize at all” (1 Cor. 4:5 Moffatt). We are not God Almighty.
O Christ, all your judgments are redemptive, for there is a cross at the heart of them. All my judgments of others are hardening, producing self-defense and resistance. Help me, then, to suffer for and with others, but leave judgment to you. May I give out love and only love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Judge not, that you may not be judged yourselves” (Matt. 7:1 Moffatt).
Week 19 Tuesday
The Disgruntled
Romans 14:10-13
Every Sunday morning just before he preached, a prominent minister of a great church received from another prominent minister a telegram denouncing him. It was his Christian duty to straighten out the other man! The critic’s wife, dying, said to him, “My dear, I think we have been on the wrong track.” In the light of a dawning eternity, she saw their pettiness, their sin. The husband, telling another minister what his wife had said, rolled on the floor in an agony of remorse. But it was too late. The minister who had been criticized was beyond criticism; he had passed on, leaving behind a man who had wasted his powers and was left with a lump of remorse in his bosom.
A disgruntled preacher didn’t like the attention being given to Dwight Moody* as a local committee prepared for him. “Has Moody a monopoly of the Holy Spirit?” he asked. Someone quietly replied, “No, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly of Moody.” One attitude ended with criticisms, and the other with conversions. Another man criticized Moody’s method of conducting a revival but did nothing himself. Moody’s reply was quiet and simple, “I like my way of doing things better than your way of not doing things.”
The only valid criticism is the criticism of a better deed. Our words of criticism must become flesh in a better deed; then the criticism is vital and redemptive instead of verbal and resistive. Jesus said that the way of trying to correct people by picking motes is not-the-way. The Way is, “Take the plank out of your own eye first”—right your own life—“and then you will see properly how to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5 Moffatt).
The people who influence you are not the people who are always trying to correct you by criticism, but the people who believe in you, who love you and inspire you. A minister heard a certain Christian speak and in telling about it afterward said, “After hearing him speak, I came away feeling I wanted to throw away something. I reached in my pocket, found some cigars, threw them away, and I’ve never touched them since.” Come in contact with Christ, and though he says not a word, you feel you want to throw away something.
O Christ, whenever I see you I see myself, and in the contrast I want to throw away something—my pride, my self, my fear, my pettiness. Without a word your love strips me, strips me of all ugliness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Who are you to criticize the servant of Another? It is for his Master to say whether he stands or falls” (Rom. 14:4 Moffatt).
*Dwight L. Moody (1837–99) was an American evangelist and publisher. He founded what is now the Moody Bible Institute.
Week 19 Wednesday
Steps Out of Critical Attitudes
2 Timothy 2:24-26; 4:16
We come now to the steps for overcoming critical attitudes:
(1) Make up your mind that the way of criticism is not-the-way, is fruitless and futile. It defeats its own purpose. Instead of begetting reform it begets resistance. The criticized becomes critical of the criticizer. Two criticisms never made a fellowship.
(2) When tempted to criticize, switch your mind to all the good things you can find in the person. Repeat them to yourself and to others. Someone asked about a glass on a table. One person said, “It is half empty.” The other said, “It is half full.” One speaker was negative; the other was positive.
(3) Negative people never have any following; people will follow only the positive, appreciative person. If you are critical, your friends will drop away. A porcupine is an uncomfortable bedfellow. The Pharisees withdrew from the people in criticism; the people withdrew from the Pharisees and left them high and dry—mostly dry.
(4) Never repeat a criticism of others that you may have heard. Bury it in the love of God in your heart. Repeat that criticism only to the person concerned, and when you do, do it in love. Let your heart be a graveyard for gossip.
(5) Meet every critical thought with a barrage of prayer. If there is a basis for the criticism, prayer will lead you to help the person.
(6) Project yourself in love; put yourself in the other person’s position and see why this criticism has arisen. When you know all, perhaps you will forgive all. Someone said, “We don’t understand each other; therefore we cannot stand each other.” When you understand the other person, perhaps you can stand that person.
(7) Even if you don’t like the other person, you can love others. Christians are people who love the people they don’t like.
(8) Keep in close touch with Christ; the closer the touch, the less the criticism. I find I am loving to the degree that I am in touch with Christ, and critical to the degree that I am not in touch. Remember the words, “It is the faith he inspires which has made the man thus hale and whole” (Acts 3:16 Moffatt). Christ inspires faith in people.
O Christ, you gave out love and only love. Help me to give out love and only love. I know that love will quicken new life in dead hearts, and a desire for goodness in the bad. Help me to be a faith-inspiring person. For you have faith in me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The measure of my spirit of criticism is the measure of my distance from Christ.
Week 19 Thursday
Another Road with a Dead End—Oversensitivity
Acts 15:37-40
We have considered the person who criticizes. Now we must think of the person criticized. Our reaction to criticism is important; it may make or break us.
Oversensitivity is a road with a dead end—it is not-the-way. And yet the thing at the base of our progress is sensitivity. In the onward march of life, the oyster did an apparently wise thing: it put its skeleton on the outside—the shell is the skeleton—and the nervous system on the inside. The oyster would protect itself from all suffering. It fastens upon a rock and stays there. Life sweeps on past. It never develops. We humans did a dangerous thing: we put our skeleton on the inside and our nervous system on the outside. That means that we are capable of great sensitivity, hence great suffering, but also great development.
Someone has defined life as “sensitivity.” The lowest life is sensitive only to itself. The higher in the scale of life you come, the wider range and deeper depth of sensitivity you find. The highest range of life was where Jesus said, “I was hungry” (Matt. 25:35); every person’s hunger was his hunger. He was infinitely sensitized, and therefore had infinite life, for life is sensitivity. It is the secret of our rise. It can also be the secret of our downfall. If we are sensitive, we rise; if we are oversensitive, we fall. Perhaps to say oversensitive is wrong, for you cannot be oversensitive; you can be wrongly sensitive, sensitive toward yourself. Sensitivity directed outward toward others is the secret of developing life; sensitivity directed toward yourself is the cause of disrupted life.
Someone gave a prominent man a jack-in-the-box for Christmas. When he opened the present, the toy jumped into his face. It offended his dignity. He became resentful, lost what religion he had. In some places, the Kiwanians give the new member an “Eleventh Commandment,” “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
O universally sensitized Christ, so open to all the winds that blow, and yet so utterly un-self-conscious and hence so healthy-minded, give me that sensitivity that makes me self-forgetful and healthy-minded. For I would grow and grow and grow—in sensitivity. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: An oversensitive ego makes me what native Africans call “a small-time man.”
Week 19 Friday
Ask Two Questions about Criticism
1 Thessalonians 5:13-22
As a public man, I am subjected to a great deal of criticism. People think that because I have learned to smile I must be a very thick-skinned individual. On the contrary, my skin has been very thin. I remember staying in my stateroom on my way to India the first time, lest if I walked on deck someone should say something about me. Believe it or not, I was shy! Now I’ve had to thicken my skin until I sometimes wonder if it isn’t a rhinoceros hide. I’ve had to do so to survive.
When criticism comes, I ask, is it true? If it is true, I will change. I am only a Christian in the making, and I’ll let this criticism make me. Therefore I owe much to my critics; they are the unpaid watchmen of my soul. Bless them! But suppose it isn’t true. Suppose the criticism is unfair and unjust. I have determined that I would not change my attitudes toward the criticizer. I would not let those actions determine mine. As far as I know, I have no enemies. I have no enemies because I have no enmity. It is an easy way to get rid of your enemies: have no enmity and your enemies have gone! Someone remarked, “I don’t believe you know when you are insulted.” In either case, whether the criticism is true or untrue, you win, provided you take the Way!
Dr. Paul Dubois, the psychiatrist, says:
In all these patients, you will observe the difficulty of adapting themselves to life as it is given to us, of supporting its vicissitudes with patience and courage. . . .
It is in this insufficiency of the intelligence, particularly in the ethical domain, that one has to recognize the primary trouble. . . . The patient may be gifted in other ways, be very intelligent, have many admirable qualities of mind and heart; he lacks that good sort of stoicism necessary to the struggle of life.*
William James divides people into the tough-minded and the tender-minded.** Perhaps it would be better to put it as someone has done: be tough-minded toward yourself and tender-minded toward others. In other words, don’t let your sensitivity become ingrown. Keep it directed outward toward others, and you will grow to the degree that your sensitivity grows. For life is sensitivity.
O Christ, pull up the adhesions of self-centered sensitivity that have been thrown around my inner life, and make me free to love widely and deeply. Help me to be free from constant self-reference. Deepen my other-reference. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My critics are my correctors. I use them. They make me.
*Paul Dubois, Nervous States, Their Nature and Causes (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1910), 83.
**See William James, Pragmatism and Other Writings (New York: Longmans, Green, 1925).
Week 19 Saturday
Steps Out of Oversensitivity
1 Peter 3:13-17
We now come to the steps we must take in overcoming sensitivity:
(1) Remember the end of the Christian redemption; it is to save you from yourself. “He died for all in order to have the living live no longer for themselves” (2 Cor. 5:15 Moffatt). The center of our problem is ourselves. The center of Christ’s redemption is to save us from ourselves. If we are not saved from ourselves, we are not saved.
(2) As a Christian you are committed to seek first the kingdom, not yourself. What happens to you is of secondary concern. What happens to the kingdom is the primary concern. Paul, in prison, could say, “My affairs have really tended to advance the gospel. . . . Over that I rejoice; yes, and over that I will rejoice” (Phil. 1:12, 18 Moffatt).
(3) Dedicate your sensitivity to God; it is your greatest kingdom asset. I know a person who is as sensitive as an Aeolian harp* on a mountaintop. Her sensitivity drove her to distraction. She took to liquor, to smoking, to drugs—anything to deaden this distracted sensitivity. But to no avail. Then she surrendered her sensitive self to God. Now her sensitivity is not distracted but directed. She has the makings of a saint. Paul was such a person. Before his conversion, his sensitivity became disrupted, distracted, and destructive. After his surrender to Christ, he was still sensitive, but now constructively so. Dedicate your sensitivity to God.
(4) Become so interested in your life cause that you do not feel life hurts. Fighting a forest fire for ten hours in the Himalayas, I only afterward noticed a smashed toe. I could not even remember when it happened. Be so wrapped up in your task that you do not notice the personal hurts. Livingstone did just that. When his wife died in Africa, he went out to assuage his grief by seeking to heal Africa’s wounds.
(5) Don’t allow a toehold of self-pity to get hold of you. Laugh it out of court at the very threshold. If a sensitive self knows that it is going to be laughed at every time it appears, then it will lie low and behave itself. It can’t stand being laughed at. It thrives on being coddled.
O Christ, you took your sensitive soul and dedicated it to heal the wounds of others. Give me power to dedicate my sensibilities to you. You have them; they are not mine. Use them. And let me smile at the hurts that come. You can use them too. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: A self-pitying self is a pitiful self.
*An Aeolian harp is a musical instrument that is played by the wind. It is named after Aeolus, the ancient Greek god of the wind.