Everybody's a Critic (Friday Devotional)

“My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

- Galatians 6:1-2

Everybody’s a critic, the expression says. Give somebody the opportunity and they’re rarely shy about telling you why they don’t like what they’ve observed—why a movie is terrible, why their workplace is terrible, why a political party is terrible. Criticism comes naturally, and seldom are we shy about expressing it.

Such criticism gets both quieter and more intense when it is directed at a specific person. It’s one thing to pinpoint the faults of a work of art, quite another to do so to a human being—such criticism is automatically more personal, and so generally more hurtful. But it seems we can’t help ourselves—when somebody acts outside your expectations of reasonable behavior, it takes every ounce of self-control you have not to speak up.

A cursory glance of Galatians 6:1 seems to give license to the Christian critic: “if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one”. In other words, if anyone messes up, it’s your duty to criticize them, to correct them, perhaps even to shame them. It’s what Jesus would want!

But a closer look at that verse and the one that follows it reveals that the Christian response to wrongdoing is not criticism from afar, but accountability that walks beside the one who has fallen. The believer in Christ does not approach sinners with self-righteousness, but “a spirit of gentleness”, seeking not to shame them with harangues and lectures, but to restore them to faithfulness. The goal of Christian accountability is not for the saint to feel superior to the sinner, but for the sinner be raised to righteousness in Christ.

It is in this spirit that Paul reminds us what ultimately separates the Christian from the critic—holding a brother or sister accountable means not only do you recognize when they have done wrong, but that you walk alongside them in their struggle, that you “bear one another’s burdens.” Hurling condemnations from a distance is not a luxury afforded to the Christian, because faith binds you not only to Christ but to his church. When one struggles, we share in that struggle.

Think about someone in your life who’s easy to criticize—someone who’s unreliable, who takes more than they give, who can never seem to get their life in order. What is your response to that person—to invest in them, bearing their burdens and pointing them to Christ in a spirit of gentleness, or to criticize them from a safe distance? May you respond to wrongdoing as Christ does—not fearfully separating yourself from sinners in a spirit of self-righteous criticism, but drawing closer to them in a spirit of righteous love.