Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Encouragement

A friend in New York City who teaches at a prep school lamented to me: “The faculty never speak a word of encouragement. It’s always the same thing — criticize, criticize, criticize. It’s enough to make me quit my job.”

Why is it that we often find it easier to criticize rather than to encourage one another? The 19th century writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, wrote, “Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” My own experience agrees with this wisdom.

After speaking with my friend in New York City, I’ve been wondering if we criticize others to make ourselves feel better. I’ve also been wondering what our critical assessment of other people says about our image of God, by which I mean how we understand God’s character or personality.
It’s my opinion that there is a strong connection between a person’s image of God as a heavenly critic and his or her own criticism of other people. If God is always looking at your faults, then you might be more eager to look at the faults of other people.

But here’s the thing: God is not always looking at our faults. I know of no primary religious text in any major world religion that suggests God is always out to get us. I know of no sacred writing that imagines God as a Being who unyieldingly criticizes humanity. Rather, God is the great encourager.
Of course, it is not just people of religious faith who are critical rather than encouraging of others. But, as a pastor-theologian, I have to ask: Why do many of us religious types swiftly criticize other people rather than encourage them? Doesn’t our religious faith inspire the best in us, which should lead us to inspire the best in other people?

As someone who is privy to the inner lives of many people, I am struck by the lack of encouragement that people feel in daily life. Our culture is swimming in aspersions. To paraphrase the black country music star Charlie Pride, who felt the sting of criticism from both white and black detractors, “What we don’t need… is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgment of what belongs and what doesn’t.”

Ask any psychologist and he or she will tell you that encouragement is what’s needed to thrive. As the famous American writer Harper Lee said in an interview, “I never expected any sort of success with ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.”

Even the greatest among us need encouragement. And if the greatest among us need encouragement, how much more so you and me and those for whom life has been a series of failures and bad starts?
So, dear readers, stop overly criticizing other people — or yourself. Rather, take the perspective of a verse from the Christian New Testament: “Encourage one another and build up each other.”