Small Ears

I've been thinking a lot about how to respond to criticism, both in personal and professional arenas. My cousin Tim wrote an insightful blog post that boiled people's motivation for criticism down to two things: the truly inappropriate, and the merely unexpected. For example, when I taught 6th graders, I once assigned a controversial "journal assignment": a two-page, thought-provoking, prompted creative writing piece on abortion. I got a whole spectrum of responses from parents, ranging from feelings that it was inappropriate to have 6th graders being made to think about abortion, all the way to gratefulness for providing an opportunity for parents to discuss abortion with their kids. And there were certainly some who were both surprised and uncertain about whether these kids were ready for an assignment like that. I had to think hard about whether the assignment itself was actually and truly inappropriate, or if people simply needed to get used to the idea of kids writing about such a weighty topic. And either way, I needed to learn how to better respond to people when they weren't happy with me. When a student told me he hated me and thought I was a terrible teacher, I had a choice whether to respond with arrogance, with people-pleasing fear, or with God-honoring humility.

And this choice has continued into my new job as a worship director... there are very often people who are not happy with me, and I very often have to listen to criticism that I feel is groundless or delivered from an immature viewpoint. I've been challenged to keep in mind that the bottom line of my passion for worship is rooted in loving God, which means loving people- and if I want to love people, I need to look deeper. People may lack perspective, they may not care about the bigger picture, they may be selfish and petty and small. I've come to realize that small people need to be listened to with small ears- and a big heart. I have to look past their smallness to the heart that God loves, I have to listen more to how they feel and less to what they say, and I have to value them as people God loves even as I balance their opinion against my calling to lead worship. It's difficult, sometimes, not to take the criticism personally... but the more my identity is rooted in Christ, the more I'm able to see that whether the criticism is based in something inappropriate that I do have some control over or a change that needed to be made that a person is not yet comfortable with, I can draw back into His Spirit and respond to HIM rather than circumstance. "He is my rock, my strength, my shield..." If I'm honestly and in all reality pursuing His will, enacting His calling in my life... then why should a little public opinion shake me? What doesn't kill me, God will use to grow me- and maybe even what DOES kill me. :) 

Now I'm bracing myself, because I have a hunch that God does not have me thinking about all this for no reason- I feel as though I'm being prepared for something. Criticism is sometimes good, but for me, it has never been what I would call easy. I rest, yet again, in God's faithfulness.