Do you Question? Part 2

I fear that one of the things we are inclined to do, is to place our favored teachers or pastors up on a pedestal, and then make it our personal mission to somehow come to their defense whenever they are criticized, and that criticism may or may not be just. But I contend that if we are offended when some teacher we like comes under attack by a critic that is because they, having been set up on a pedestal, they become an idol in our lives. As if one should not ‘dare’ to touch such an ‘anointed one’. The case may be that it’s the critic is the one sent by God to correct bad doctrine.

Whenever a criticism is made, we should first examine that criticism in the light of scripture. Do the criticisms have merit and weight when we do this? If not, we can begin to dismiss the criticism, but that does not alleviate us from our responsibility in this matter, because the need for criticism may be valid, but the remedy of the critic may not be valid.

For example, imagine you work in a bookstore and your coworker is loading a shelf with a new shipment of books, and he decides that we will sort the books by size, when company policy is to sort them in alphabetical order by author. Now, another coworker comes along and says that they must stop sorting the book like that, because sorting them by size is incorrect.

Are they right in pointing out that what the first person is doing is incorrect according to the instructions given? Absolutely! The correction is quite valid. Now assume, this second coworker follows up their valid criticism and says the proper way to sort the book is by color. Now you’re in a situation where the need to be corrected was right, but the remedy offered was also incorrect and one must refer back to the company policy to find the truth in the matter. In our case, the scripture is our truth that everything must be compared against.

So even though we may test what our teachers say in the name of God to the word of God, we need to be careful that our criticisms are correct as well. While it is a good thing to point out doctrinal error, we actually end up compounding the problem if we pull those who will hear us out of one ditch, only to place them in another ditch. A critic must scrutinize their corrections with as much or even greater vigor than they used in identifying the issue in the first place.