Responding To Criticism

Another excellent article from the blog of Tullian Tchividjian.

As many of you know, my family and I were recently faced with the painful challenge of how to handle public criticism. It forced me to carefully think through how the gospel should inform and shape our response to public, personal attack.

Well, the other day I found great help (and healing) from Carl Trueman’s thoughts on how Christian’s should respond if they are criticized or defamed (specifically on the web). His gospel-drenched insights are right on the money:

"The answer is simple: for myself, I do not believe that it is appropriate that I spend my time defending my name. My name is nothing—who really cares about it? And I am not called to waste precious hours and energy in fighting off every person with a laptop who wants to have a pop at me. As a Christian, I am not meant to engage in self-justification any more than self-promotion; I am called rather to defend the name of Christ; and, to be honest, I have yet to see a criticism of me, true or untrue, to which I could justifiably respond on the grounds that it was Christ’s honour, and not simply my ego, which was being damaged. I am called to spend my time in being a husband, a father, a minister in my denomination, a member of my church, a good friend to those around me, and a conscientious employee. These things, these people, these locations and contexts, are to shape my priorities and my allocation of time. Hitting back in anger at those who, justly or unjustly, do not like me and for some reason think the world needs to know what they think of me is no part of my God-given vocation. God will look after my reputation if needs be; He has given me other work to do."