Joel Beeke, On Receiving Criticism with Humility

“Criticism will come; and when we don’t respond to it rightly, it will promote smugness, it promotes an unforgiving spirit, it promotes backbiting on our part. We tend to judge those who judge us. We tend to return evil for evil. We end up doing to others what others do to us. We binocularize their faults, bring them seven times closer and, when it comes to our own thoughts – because we become so self-defensive – we turn the binoculars around and we make our faults seven times smaller.” (Pastors and Their Critics)