From Bruce and Stan :
Stop judging others, and you will not be judged.
For others will treat you as you treat them.
Matthew 7:1-2 NLT
Jesus made a memorable statement about criticism when He compared it to a piece of sawdust in someone else’s eye while ignoring the log sticking out of your own eye.
Criticism always focuses on picky little things. Small stuff. We take something that bugs us about someone else—no matter how small—and blow it out of proportion (this is especially true of the people closest to us). Rarely is our criticism constructive.
The truth is that we don’t criticize others in order to help them. We criticize in order to make ourselves feel more important. We end up exaggerating the faults of others while excusing or ignoring our own shortcomings.
If we’re going to focus on the small stuff in anybody’s life, it ought to be our own. We’re not advocating morbid introspection, which can lead to all kinds of abnormal behavior, but honest self-evaluation. Ben Franklin used to keep a list of virtues—such as honesty, thriftiness, courage and kite-flying—that he wanted in his life, and every day he evaluated himself to see how he measured up.
Honest self-evaluation is really nothing more that letting God into the details of your life, whether it’s your stuff or your personality. When you do this you open yourself up to self-improvement. Here’s what’s going to happen: God will bring to your consciousness an awareness of areas where you need to improve; He will speak to you through His Word (as you read it, of course); and God will use people to give you honest (and sometimes painful) evaluations of your behavior.
Through all of these ways you will discover what God desires for you. And you will be less likely to criticize others.
. . .In the Small Stuff
- People of low ambition are overly critical because so much in life is beyond their reach.
- Motivate, don’t denigrate.
- Listening to gossip is as wrong as spreading it.
- Gossip should never be disguised as concern.
- “I’m sorry.” Two words with unlimited potential.
- If you agree to bury the hatchet, don’t leave the handle sticking out.
- Criticism and finding fault are not spiritual gifts.
- A word spoken in anger cannot be erased. It plays over and over again.
- Walk on soles, not on souls.
- Be generous with praise and stingy with criticism.
- To belittle is to be little.
- Appreciate differences instead of criticizing them.
- The urge to criticize someone usually comes from feelings of resentment.
- If you make an effort to overlook the faults in others, they’ll do the same for you.
- Rather than taking criticism personally, look at it objectively .
- Learn to distinguish between constructive and destructive criticism.
- It’s okay to give constructive criticism if it is done in love.
- It’s impossible to offer destructive criticism and love someone at the same time.
~Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz, God Is In The Small Stuff and It All Matters (Promised Press, Barbour Publishing, 1998)
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
