Many times the message of a chapel service never got to my heart because I was too busy counting the number of times a speaker would say “ah” or “um.” In club meetings, I relished my role as contrarian — the person who could find the problem in whatever motion came to the table.

Why was I so critical — so eager to hold everyone up to an impossible standard?

Looking back I see how much of my criticism was motivated by my own insecurities. Ever since I was young, I remember being teased frequently — for being a preacher’s kid, for being a little overweight or for being socially awkward. I thought everyone saw my faults. Why shouldn’t I hold others up to the same standard — especially those in leadership?

My critical nature got real ugly when I learned about deconstruction — a philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth. Deconstruction told me that perhaps my critical impulse was not only acceptable, but may also be valuable. It suggested that my role in life may just be to look for contradictions and to expose hidden agendas.

Deconstruction even gave me a means of deflecting criticism. Whenever I felt outmatched by someone, I looked for some kind of weakness or contradiction in their character that would bring them down to my level or lower.

Not until I started exploring postmodernism more deeply in graduate school did I recognize my bad habits. Too often, I found myself giving in to the postmodern temptation to produce nothing of my own, but to just define myself as what I was against. Kenneth Tynan, a British theater critic, once admitted: “A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.” I guess you could say I was becoming something of a philosophical pedestrian.

Seeing criticism from the other side

The beginning of the end for my critical nature started when I landed in leadership roles of my own — editing the yearbook and leading a service club. I remember running meetings where big decisions had to be made or deadlines met. I’d start working through the agenda but was constantly distracted by people whispering to each other or laughing over notes they traded. “Why can’t they be more supportive?” I thought. “Can’t they stop playing around long enough to make a decision or to get something done?” Even worse were the people who questioned every decision, as if they just wanted to hear their own voice. I felt like the dad who is destined to experience every torture he made his own parents endure.

It took a while, but in the first few years I spent trying to become a leader, I picked up two valuable lessons. First, I learned that I simply had to give others the same kind of grace I expected. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt” and Hebrews 13:17 encourages us to submit to the authority of leaders “so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.” I started tolerating leaders’ mistakes long enough to see the value of their work. I could hear speakers beyond their flaws. I could find intrinsic value in people I would have previously written off for their shortcomings.

Second, I conceded that leaders can expect to work with the kind of critic I had been. Frankly, I’m concerned that the hypercritical culture we live in has discouraged many good men and women from taking on positions of responsibility in the first place. They simply don’t want to be targets for gossip, rumor and character assassination. It’s just not attractive to know that, even when they give their best, someone is ready to pounce on any shortcoming, real or imagined.

But I believe God is calling a new generation of men and women who are willing to be targets — to be, as Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910, “in the arena”:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Zig Ziglar said it best when he observed, “there has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.” The real prize is for those who are willing to stand in the arena to which God has sent them.

Good news! Starting this week, Boundless is resuming weekly publishing for the new school year. Enjoy today's new articles and look for the next batch on Thursday, Aug. 28!