Homespun Advice: On Receiving Criticism

__________________________________________________________________________________________
You didn't ask for it, but I'm going to dole out some free, homespun advice here.

If I am given the privilege of one day walking my (currently in utero) child through adolesence and the teen years, I am going to tell her this:

Learn how to accept and receive criticism, but do not think that is enough. When your work is critiqued and your character judged, the ability to receive that criticism is good, but the constancy to receive it and yet refuse to complain is even better.

Here's why. Usually we are receiving criticism from someone with superior acumen and experience. And even when such correction is given in a tactful way, it is natural to chafe at the abrasion and to find solace in complaining to our colleagues who are in the same place (think high school and college). Indeed, it is often the default posture upon receiving correction to immediately whine about the faults or style of the corrector, but if whining becomes the ordinary reaction to criticism, two problems arise.

One, we simply do not develop the backbone to handle it. We get used to pandering to our own bruised psyches by lying to ourselves about the merits of our work. We blame the critics and the crude systems that give such luddites the power to give correction and generally assume an intellectual fetal position on the couch of self-pity. This process is a sure-fire way to create small, perpetually provoked people with little capacity for dialectic learning and accountability.

Two, when that time comes wherein an authority figure does give some plainly bad or undeserved correction, we have no grid with which to discern such faulty advice. The years of knee-jerk rejection of any criticism has left us bereft of discernment and unable to actually differentiate between bad advice and good advice poorly given. The internalization of some criticism is inevitable, and even while complaining, we usually are considering and sometimes heeding correction. But the whining retards our growth in discernment. Discernment and complaining have a polar repulsion that makes the exercise of one the abandonment of the other.

But there is an even deeper problem inherent in complaining and, conversely, a greater glory than simply being able to handle criticism. Read this from Philippians 2:

(14) Do all things without grumbling or questioning, (15) that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world

It's interesting that the criteria for "shin[ing] in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation" is, in this passage, simply to not bellyache or question. Do you want to shine out in this depraved and darkened world? Then do stuff without complaining. Obviously, the list is not exhaustive, but it does serve to remind us that our refusal to complain is meant to set us apart in this generation. Our ability to display the glory of God, in a significant way, is contingent on our willingness to shut up, be grateful, and not complain when we are criticized at work or school or in friendships. So, in light of this, I leave you with my amplified version of the well-loved "Serenity Prayer":

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed,the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other, and the strength to simply shut up and learn from criticism. Amen.

__________________________________________________________________________________________