P.S.-Marilyn

I always like to check out Marilyn’s weekly column in Parade magazine. It’s always good to hear something from what the Guiness Book of World Records says is the person with the highest IQ.

This week she added a postscript to her column that I thought was particularly profound:

What you sometimes mistake for a person who takes criticism well is simply a person who is convinced that you’re dead wrong and not worth correcting.

One of my favorite topics in this blog is that when we believe our justification by faith in Christ, we won’t make excuses but be willing to take criticism well. As I struggle with this myself I notice that sometimes I feign to take a criticism from someone, but really I am blowing them off- just like Marilyn suggests.

This is, perhaps, greatest with the one person in my life who loves me the most- my wife. It’s a real struggle to take criticism productively from someone with whom you have a context- and sometime a hurtful context. Like any marriage, sometimes my wife and I have a spat. Within those spats we sometimes say things we later regret. We might apologize for them but they sometimes stick around anyway. When, later, we try to offer productive criticism it is taken in the context of the hurtful things that have been said. That’s when we have a choice- to be defensive or take it constructively. Sometimes we opt for the third option, that Marilyn is suggesting here, and appear to take the criticism but really blow it off.

Before we got married someone reminded us that God is giving us to each other. He suggested that we always think of the other as God’s gift to us- especially when the difficult times come (kind of a Proverbs 27.6 thing). If this is true, then I can take my wife’s criticism without being defensive or blowing her off. After all, my wife loves me and is God’s gift to me- and he gives good gifts, even if I don’t want to hear it.

This is helpful but it is even more powerful when we consider the Cross. Only through Christ’s alien righteousness can we begin to listen to someone’s criticism without doing like Marilyn suggests. The power of the Gospel allows me to take criticism even if I am not particularly convinced of my wife’s love in the middle (or after) a spat because I can be convinced of having God’s love and therefore his gift and any constructive criticism that might come as a result.