An Antidote for a Critical Spirit

Good evening.

Sounds like you're all wide awake this evening. That's good.

This evening I would like to talk about an antidote for a critical spirit.

Two taxidermists stopped before a window in which an owl was on display. They immediately began to criticize the way it was mounted. Its eyes were not natural, its wings were not in proportion with its head, its feathers were not neatly arranged, and its feet could be improved.

When they had finished with their criticism, the old owl turned his head and winked at them.

Isn't that somehow how it is? Here, they were all critical, and it was the original, the live thing. Can't improve on something that's alive, can you?

Well, what is a critical spirit?

And I think this is somebody who reflexively criticizes.

They don't give it much thought at all. When you do something that's reflexive, like if you have a lot of reflexes, and if you would get up here and get close to my eye, I would do something reflexive.

And there was one time that somebody jumped out and scared me pretty bad, and I pretty well got close to socking them one because it was a reflex. I did not think about it at all. So that's what reflexive is.

And so if you've got a critical spirit, when you come up against something that you don't like, you make a criticism of it. Well, criticizing is judging and finding fault. We probably all know that, but that's the dictionary definition. Well, maybe you don't think you're a critical person. I would like to think that I'm not a critical person. But I want to challenge you to think about how often you find fault with something or someone versus how often you find something to praise about. And I think you're going to probably find out that it's a lot easier to criticize. Maybe you're interested in a skillet or a piece of a tool or something, and start reading the review.

And after a while, you're going to say, "Well, this thing's a piece of junk. I don't want it because nobody has anything good to say about it." And then if you think about that objectively, well, I mean, what can a skillet do?

So I think we're going to have to be pretty careful. And

in 2 Timothy 3, Paul talks about the kind of people that are going to surround us in the last days. And I'm just going to read that, 2 Timothy 3:1, "But know this: that in the last days, perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power, and from such people turn away."

I don't think that the word criticism is found in the Bible. I couldn't find it. Maybe if I looked in the right version, I would be able to. But if you despise what is good, if you're unthankful and unloving, that describes someone who does a lot of criticizing.

And we've

come to the point where it's pretty easy to criticize anything. Food, that's a big one. Food. It's got to be done just this way and with the right sauce and the right marinade. And otherwise, it's just ordinary.

There's nothing wrong with making nice food. But the only reason that we get to enjoy that is because, really, we're pretty well off, and we can afford to do all of those things with our food. And I don't know that that makes us any more content with it than if we just could put salt and pepper on. And you can. Any area: clothing, cars, home decor, whatever.

We can get pretty critical. We go look at somebody's house or whatever. Wow, they did this and not that. And we just have so many options, so many options. And again, I don't think it's wrong to make your house look good or to have a particular kind of car, maybe. But are we quick to be critical? What about people? I mean, my food doesn't care if I criticize it or not. It's not going to hurt the food by saying what I think about it. But what about when we start to criticize each other? Well, what are the effects of a critical spirit?

A survey asked mothers to keep track of how many times they made negative compared with positive comments to their children. They admitted they criticized 10 times for every time they said something favorable. A three-year study in one city's schools found that the teachers were 75% negative. The study indicated that it takes four positive statements from a teacher to offset the effects of one negative statement to a child.

That's sobering, isn't it?

And also, I have some excerpts from an article that I found that talked about the effects of criticism. And this article was written to married couples, but I think it probably applies in a very general way with any relationship. Habitual criticism can erode the very foundation of a relationship, and that's not an overstatement. In fact, criticism is so damaging that relationship researcher John Gottman identified it as one of the top predictors of divorce.

Though it could spell disaster for non-married couples, too.

And then I just made some excerpts. I'm not going to read the whole article. Criticism is when a complaint is expressed as a character flaw. Zach Brittle, a Seattle-based couples therapist and host of the podcast Marriage Therapy Radio, told HuffPost. And HuffPost is the one that published the article. So a complaint that's expressed as a character flaw.

And if you want to know if you're constructively voicing a complaint or just criticizing your partner, consider the language you're using. Criticism is frequently doled out in the form of "you always" or "you never" statements. And that's from the article, "Criticism is the toxic habit that can slowly ruin your relationships," by Kelsey Borison.

And in the article, they had some ways that criticism damages relationships. It chips away at your partner's self-esteem. It erodes trust. It destroys intimacy. And it belittles your partner while making you seem superior. And I think this is true in any relationship. If there's a consistent amount of criticism, it's going to erode trust, and it's going to destroy the close part of the relationship.

Well, what's the cause? What's the cause of a critical spirit?

And I think there's probably many causes, many things that you could chalk it up to. And some of them would include pride. When we're making a critical comment, it's trying to jack me up by putting somebody else down.

And I think probably that's the most often reason why we make these comments. If you have discontentment, if you're discontent, then it's pretty easy to make these critical statements because you're constantly looking for ways to express how you feel and to make sure that everybody knows that you're not happy.

And then if you're frustrated or your stress level is high, then it gets pretty easy to make these comments. And I'm kind of glad that the engineers that design cars aren't around me sometimes when I'm working on them because it's pretty easy to say, "Well, that is so ignorant. Why would you put that there where I have to take all this stuff apart or where I have to beat my hands up to get there? Surely you could have done this." Well, I don't know if that's sinful or not, but it might not be a good attitude to have.

These are heart issues, aren't they?

As with many, I think probably all sin is rooted deep inside our hearts. And Jesus talks about that in Luke 6:43, "For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks."

And some versions translate that, "For out of the overflow of his heart, his mouth speaks." And so if things are coming out of your mouth that aren't good, then we need to examine the heart and find out what's in there.

And when we do that, sometimes we're appalled at what's down there. So we've talked about the definition of a critical spirit and the effects and the cause. So what's the cure? What's the antidote for a critical spirit? Well, if the problem's in our heart, we need to do something about our heart, right?

And I was just thinking about that. Can I change my heart? And I'm not prepared to get into a theological discussion about it because I haven't thought about it very deeply. But I really wonder if we can actually change our heart. I don't think so.

God's in the business of changing hearts, right? But there is something that we can change, and that's called our mind. We can change our mind. And I think if we change our mind, then God can change our heart.

And so, well, how do we change our mind about these things? And I think we do this by changing our diet, our mind's diet, that is. And I just want to read a passage in Philippians 4, and we'll see if we can back that conclusion up. Philippians 4, beginning in verse 4, he says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there's any virtue and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things, the things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you."

So he's talking about what we put into our mind. And I just want to discuss that a little bit. And we're going to start back up at the beginning. He talks about the first thing he says is, "Rejoice." Well, if I'm rejoicing, I don't know if there's ever been a time that I was rejoicing, that I made a critical comment about that.

I think it's pretty much impossible to do. If you're rejoicing about something, not going to be very critical.

Are you going to make mean critical remarks while you're being gentle and thinking about gentle things? Let your gentleness be known to all men. And why? Because God's right beside us. That's what it means. If I have my tools at hand, they're right here where I can pick them up and use them. And God's right here.

The Lord's at hand. And then he talks about dealing with this frustration and stress. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known.

If you're thankful, you're not going to be critical either.

I think that's a real key to be thankful. And then he talks about how the peace of God coming into our hearts actually guards our hearts and our minds. And when we make our peace with God, then we really can start to put the right kinds of things into our hearts and minds, and it's effective.

And then he gives us a list of things that we should meditate about. I don't know. Meditating is getting to be a lost art in our society, but Christians should maintain the practice, meditate on these things. And the definition I got for meditate is to think often and deeply. It's not just something that we pass over, but it's something that you sort of go over. They talk about how when you think a certain way, it makes a path in your mind, and then your mind goes down that rut and goes down that rut. And in relation to what Brandon was talking about this morning with immorality, when you start to think about those kinds of things, it burns this path in your brain.

I think they can almost see it on a brain scan. It's that. I mean, I know that Covenant Eyes has sent me articles, and they can do these scans of people that are watching this stuff and people that aren't. And you can actually see a physical difference in your brain.

Isn't that incredible? And so he's giving us a list of things to think about and to burn these paths into our brain, into our mind. Whatever things are true. So we're not going to spend a lot of time thinking about things that can't be proven, right?

I mean, there's things in here that we have to accept by faith, and they're eventually going to be proven to be true, 100% true if they haven't already. But conspiracy theories and things that just can't be proven, we're not going to waste a lot of time thinking about that because they're not true.

Whatever things are noble. Noble is having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals. So if you have a noble thought, when was the last time you had a noble thought?

Something that's going to put a high moral principle into your mind. Just what is right. There again, we're going to think about things that are right. And hopefully, we can bring justice into the vicinity right around us as we're doing that.

Pure, freedom from defilement. If you've got pure gold sitting up here, that means you could throw it in a fire and nothing would come off of it. It would still be pure gold when you were done. You wouldn't get any impurity out of it at all.

Whatever things are lovely. I don't use that word very much, but I think we need to start lovely, exquisitely beautiful.

So when you want to think about something that's exquisitely beautiful, maybe you think about a flower. Maybe you think about God's plan of redemption. That's exquisitely beautiful. Whatever things are of a good report, sometimes we hear bad reports, and we can't get away from them, but we shouldn't meditate on them.

But if we're going to meditate on a good report, we're going to focus on the good that we hear about some situation, whether that's in the news or the stories that we hear as we go through life. And then he says, if there's any virtue, and I don't know, the dictionary definition for virtue is excellence, but I think there's almost a little more power to virtue than that. Peter talks about adding to your faith virtue.

And if there's anything praiseworthy, and when I was thinking about this criticism, I guess my inspiration for this came from a conversation that my wife and I had about this topic.

Praiseworthy. If you're finding things that are praiseworthy, you're not finding things that are critical and wrong. And praise is to express warm approval or admiration of. Warm approval or admiration of. Let's find things that are praiseworthy to think about and get a nice warm feeling in your heart, maybe.

And let's burn a path of praise right through our mind so that when something happens, that's the first thing we think about. Praise, praise.

If you take a course about computer programming or do any kind of a tutorial about it, they're going to teach you this pretty quick. There's one principle that you always remember when you're working with a computer. You put garbage in, you get garbage out.

But it doesn't know. It doesn't know if you're giving it garbage or not. And when you finally, if you fill out these forms where they want you to put your phone number in in a certain way, the only reason that when you don't put it in that way and it puts that little red box up around there is because somebody spent a lot of time to say that a valid phone number looks like this. But if they didn't put that function in, you could put anything you wanted to in that box. And when it all came down to it, if they wanted to get a hold of you, they'd have no idea if that was a phone that, I mean, it wouldn't have a phone number.

Maybe it would say XYZ 217. That's garbage. We can't dial that. And so that's the way your mind works. You put garbage in, garbage comes out.

That's just where it is. And then I think that contentment is so linked with this criticism. If we're content and the things that are around us, if we're content with the kind of food that we have and so forth, we're not going to have that criticism, that critical attitude. And I find it interesting that if you keep on reading here in Philippians, and we will, Paul talks about that right away. He says, "But I rejoiced in the Lord." This is verse 10. "But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again, though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.

I know how to be obased, and I know how to abound everywhere in all things. I have learned to be both full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And if you take the advice that he gives in verse 8, then you're going to learn how to be content in verse 11.

I just thought that was interesting. I never made that connection before, and I know that that chapter has a lot of miscellaneous things sort of put together, but I think that's very true.

If we can learn to be content, this will greatly lessen our desire to be critical. Well, is there a place for criticism? I've been pretty hard on it. Is there a place for criticism? Well, there absolutely is. Criticism is part of the teaching and mentoring process, but it's not a mean kind of criticism.

And so I think that constructive criticism is intentional, not reflexive. So when we go into this teaching process or mentoring or discipling or whatever, however you want to say that, you're going to have to have some criticism. If my friends don't criticize me, how can iron sharpen iron?

But it's got to be done. I mean, this kind of a critical spirit is all about me. I don't care about you when I'm doing that kind of thing. It's all about me. It's pulling me up and putting you down, whereas constructive criticism is the other way. We're trying to pull you up, make you a better person. And so I think we're going to really think about how we present that criticism. We're going to be careful. We're going to try to say it at the right time and when it can actually do some good. So we need constructive criticism.

And then the other kind of criticism that we hear about is, what about critical thinking? Is it okay to think critically? I mean, I was pretty hard on criticism. Well, here's an article that talks about critical thinking. Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and make a judgment about what you read, hear, say, or write. The term critical comes from the Greek word kritikos, meaning able to judge or discern. Good critical thinking is about making reliable judgments based on reliable information.

Applying critical thinking does not mean being negative or focusing on faults. It means being able to clarify your thinking so that you can break down a problem or piece of information, interpret it, and use that interpretation to arrive at an informed decision or judgment, for example, designing a bridge, responding to an opinion piece, or understanding a political motivation.

So that's not the kind of criticism that tears people down. And it fits with some of the things that we're talking about because we're focusing on what's true and what we can prove to be true. And I hope that all of us learn to think critically. That's a high priority for me in the education of my children is to get them to think critically because otherwise, you're like a sheep that just gets led by the nose anywhere that someone wants to take you.

So we're not talking about that either. We're talking about the mean kind of criticism here that tears you down so I can go up. Well, in closing here, I hope that this study has inspired you to consider what you're feeding your mind. And maybe we can be honest about how much we criticize versus how much we can praise.

Let's enter this week with a commitment to find good and praise in as many things as we can. And I'm going to just close with another little story here. The Duke of Wellington, the British military leader who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, was not an easy man to serve under. He was brilliant, demanding, and not one to shower his subordinates with compliments. Yet even Wellington realized his methods left something to be desired.

In his old age, a young lady asked him what, if anything, he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. Wellington thought for a moment, then replied, "I give more praise." And I hope that when we end our lives.