How Do You Humbly Receive Harsh Feedback?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.320 | We close out a full week with a really good question from a podcast listener named Matt.
00:00:09.400 | "Hello Pastor John, how have you dealt with receiving feedback and criticism from people
00:00:14.240 | you don't really respect, even if what they're saying has some truthfulness in it?"
00:00:19.720 | Or another way of asking it is this, "How have you dealt with receiving feedback and
00:00:23.960 | criticism from people who are just simply not good at giving feedback in a loving and
00:00:29.320 | encouraging way?"
00:00:30.880 | What would you say?
00:00:33.440 | Good question.
00:00:36.340 | No criticism is pleasant to receive, and all of us have a great spiritual work to do in
00:00:45.880 | our hearts, in humbling ourselves under God's mighty hand, as Peter says in chapter 5 of
00:00:54.120 | his first letter, and as Philippians 2 says, counting others more significant than ourselves
00:01:01.000 | and taking thought for the interests of others, not just our own, and emptying ourselves the
00:01:07.320 | way Christ emptied himself to become a servant.
00:01:11.580 | So we need to overcome our pride that makes it so difficult to be corrected.
00:01:16.960 | Ooh, how we hate to be corrected.
00:01:19.600 | It is emotionally, it just feels so bad, and yet it's so good for us sometimes.
00:01:27.160 | If we don't overcome that pride, we will lose our usefulness in God's service, we'll never
00:01:34.880 | grow beyond the mistakes we make, and we might even make shipwreck of our faith.
00:01:43.340 | But if I understand Matt's question correctly, and I could be wrong here, is that he's not
00:01:50.360 | just asking how we can be humble enough to receive criticism and profit from it, he's
00:01:57.120 | asking about that particular relationship where the criticism is delivered in a way
00:02:04.160 | that is not encouraging or hopeful or loving, as far as he can tell.
00:02:10.800 | And my guess is, it's just a guess, that he is asking this about a relationship with someone
00:02:17.460 | who is close to him, because the criticism that comes to us from a distance, say through
00:02:24.940 | social media, isn't usually as painful as the criticism that comes from a family member
00:02:31.440 | or a friend or a colleague at work or church.
00:02:36.440 | And I think I understand the situation, because I know there are people who seem incapable
00:02:44.120 | of joyful, spontaneous affirmation, but are spring-loaded to give spontaneous correction.
00:02:54.040 | It's just their personality.
00:02:56.560 | They would have to work at saying anything positive, and the most natural thing in the
00:03:02.120 | world is to say something negative.
00:03:06.400 | The first thing I would say is that in a good long-term closer relationship, it would be
00:03:14.760 | fitting at some point to approach the other person and tell him or her how you perceive
00:03:23.600 | that and how you experience that correction or criticism.
00:03:27.840 | And of course, that's a very delicate thing, and it runs the risk of making the relationship
00:03:33.080 | harder instead of better, although it could make the relationship way better if God intervenes.
00:03:41.840 | And of course, when you do that, when you approach someone, you follow Jesus' counsel
00:03:46.200 | to take the log out of your eye so that you can see clearly, to take the speck out of
00:03:51.120 | your brother's eye.
00:03:52.120 | In other words, he should feel, that person you're going to should feel that you are coming
00:03:57.900 | to him in a spirit of humility, with a clear sense of your own inadequacies and failures
00:04:04.280 | and the ways you may have hurt him or the way you even do now annoy him.
00:04:10.640 | And you keep in mind Galatians 6, 1, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in transgression, you
00:04:16.800 | who are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
00:04:20.480 | Keep watch over yourself, lest you too be tempted."
00:04:25.040 | And you tell him that you think your relationship would be better if he mingled more affirmation
00:04:33.920 | with his corrections, and if you spoke more gently, perhaps, whatever it is, you explain
00:04:40.840 | to him about his words that are off-putting to you or hurtful to you.
00:04:47.120 | And then, with hope, you leave it, and you go on your way doing your business, modeling
00:04:54.440 | for him as much affirmation as you can without being flattering or manipulative.
00:05:01.480 | And if no change comes about, and my guess is that's where he is, it's where many of
00:05:08.960 | us are, in fact, everybody probably in some relationship, if no change comes about, then
00:05:14.960 | we have our work cut out for us.
00:05:17.520 | In the New Testament, it is replete with instructions about how Christians should respond to those
00:05:25.960 | who mistreat them, whether it's huge mistreatment like persecution or death, or whether it's
00:05:32.280 | tiny little mistreatment like excessive criticism or insensitive and repeated correction.
00:05:40.400 | So here are four simple brief pointers that I have found helpful, even though I don't
00:05:48.560 | think I've arrived in my own ability to handle these things the way I would like, but here's
00:05:54.480 | how I'm working at it.
00:05:55.840 | Number one, remember that there are words for the wind.
00:06:02.320 | Job says in Job 626, "Do you think that you can reprove words when the speech of a
00:06:11.600 | despairing man is wind?"
00:06:15.280 | In other words, always be alert that there are probably elements of brokenness and pain
00:06:23.840 | in a person's life that may cause them to have broken patterns of communication with
00:06:30.160 | others, so that the brokenness, which feels damaging and offensive to us, is more about
00:06:38.520 | their own woundedness than about your deficiencies.
00:06:44.380 | Keep that possibility in mind.
00:06:45.800 | That was certainly the case with Job as he spoke words that they then jumped on, and
00:06:52.240 | he said, "Look, don't you realize that a despairing man sometimes says things that
00:06:57.640 | he wished he hadn't said?"
00:06:59.760 | Number two, remember that Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13 as longsuffering.
00:07:07.840 | Love suffers long, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
00:07:13.760 | things.
00:07:14.760 | So there's longsuffering, there's bearing all things, there's enduring all things.
00:07:18.640 | So just when you think you have borne this criticism, as long as you can, as long as
00:07:24.720 | you can, the Holy Spirit will enable you to bear the fruit of patience and endure it another
00:07:32.160 | day, and then another day, and then another day, because we're called to be longsuffering.
00:07:40.480 | Third, when Peter gave Jesus as an example of how he did not revile when reviled, or
00:07:47.960 | we could say did not criticize when criticized, Peter said he did not threaten but continued
00:07:54.880 | entrusting himself to the one who judges justly, that is, to God.
00:07:58.640 | In other words, God is the final judge about whether you are being mistreated, and he will
00:08:03.360 | settle the matter perfectly.
00:08:05.440 | You may feel sometimes a righteous indignation, but Peter is telling us you don't need to
00:08:10.960 | act on that.
00:08:12.640 | You can keep turning, returning good for evil, and leave the matter to God.
00:08:20.240 | And finally, in order to keep your bearings in a relationship that seems unduly critical,
00:08:27.040 | you need a fellowship of godly people around you who give you both godly affirmation for
00:08:34.680 | the evidences of God's grace in your life and loving criticism.
00:08:39.360 | Proverbs 11:14 says, "In the abundance of counselors there is safety."
00:08:44.400 | And one of the implications of that, I think, is that the plurality of godly people in your
00:08:50.160 | life tend to give you a more realistic echo of your virtues and your faults than if you
00:08:59.000 | only have one person responding to you.
00:09:02.360 | And that'll help you, I think, it sure helps me, to maintain our emotional stability in
00:09:08.720 | the face of a few people in your life who are unduly critical.
00:09:14.760 | And I would just end this by giving thanks for people that God has surrounded me with
00:09:22.120 | over the years who have been able to give balanced biblical assessment of my strengths
00:09:29.080 | and weaknesses, my virtues and my sins, the things that I do that are helpful to others,
00:09:37.400 | and the habits I have that are not helpful to others.
00:09:40.680 | So I would just encourage everybody, find such a fellowship of friends.
00:09:46.240 | Yes, thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for modeling this accountability for us all.
00:09:52.400 | Well for more information about the podcast or to find our most recent or our most popular
00:09:56.960 | episodes, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:59.640 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:10:04.040 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper.
00:10:08.440 | Have a great weekend and we will return on Monday.
00:10:11.480 | [END]
00:10:12.480 | 1
00:10:12.480 | Desiring God's Preciousness for the Eternal Life of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
00:10:19.480 | [BLANK_AUDIO]