Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - How to Receive Critical Feedback

Episode Date: April 18, 2021

Alan received some harsh feedback from a recent event. He explains three steps he takes when he gets these kinds of critical comments.

Is it possible to learn something from other people's hostile and critical feedback? Well, that's what I want to explore on this April 2021 episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schliemann. So I spoke at an event recently, and after the event, there was an organization that performed a feedback evaluation of the event. And so people were able to give their honest feedback of my presentation and just how the whole conference went. And so I got some of those feedback forms. In fact, I got them all and was able to read them. And in one particular student, this was a high school, a Christian high school. And one particular student had, let's just say, very honest and

critical feedback about my presentation. And they didn't mince words at all. They said, Alan is homophobic. There are two other feedback forms that included a very similar sentiment, but there's one particular feedback form and I'll quote to you what they said in a little bit more detail here, just because it's relevant for what I want to talk about. They said this, quote, please avoid being so judgmental next time. And if you ever speak to teens again, tweak the presentation to apply to us. Stop talking about other people's sin. This was a waste of time judging other Christians, which Jesus taught us not to do, end quote. Now that's, that's pretty harsh feedback, right? And so the question then I'm faced with is, okay, should I just ignore what they wrote?

Should I retire early? Should I just abandon this whole ministry? What do you do when you receive critical feedback? Now, to provide proper context, there were 270 students at this event, and only four of those students gave negative feedback. But still, I don't want to ignore what they wrote, because I think it's possible that I can learn something from their responses. I mean, after all, I want to be a person who pursues truth. And even if that truth entails critical feedback about my ideas or about the manner in which I communicated those ideas. And I would

argue that this requires humility, which, well, it isn't always easy to practice humility, okay? It isn't always easy to practice humility, okay? So I thought about these responses, and it occurred to me that when I get these kinds of critical feedback, here's three steps that I take, and I just wanted to pass these three steps on to you, all right? So here's the first step, and I guess this is less of a step than it is more, it's more of an attitude, I guess. But the first thing is to realize you won't please everyone. In other words, if your expectations are too high, you'll often be disappointed. Because you can say the most truthful comment and in the most gracious way, but someone will still get angry.

Now, I'm not claiming that what I said and how I said it was perfect, but I need to set realistic expectations. And so some things that you say are going to rile people up, no matter how graciously and compassionately you say them. Now, your job then is to ensure that you don't add unnecessary offense to what you say. So, I mean, even Jesus' perfect responses weren't met with universal praise, so therefore don't expect yours will be either. Okay, second step,

and that is to discern the truth from the error, all right? So, sure, it's possible that someone is just simply angry with me and isn't being fair with their feedback. But it's also possible that there's validity to what they're saying. And so being a person who's committed to the truth requires that I'm willing to investigate whether there's any sort of legitimacy to what they're saying. And this was actually the case with the early church as well. They had a very similar task. I'm reminded of what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5, 21 through 22. He said this, examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, and abstain from every form of

evil. So in other words, you know, many claims can contain truth and error. All right. And so it's very prudent for us to be able to discern one from the other. Right. Another important, I think, verse from scripture that addresses this comes from 1 John 4, verse 1. It says, says, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. In other words, not everything that first century believers heard was true. And so they had to discern whether something was from

the Holy Spirit or from the spirit of the Antichrist. You know, this is a further point that is made later on in the passage. And of course, whether it's from the Holy Spirit or whether it's a spirit of the Antichrist, of course, was a critical distinction. And so in the context of assessing feedback, our job is to discover whether there's any merit to the critique. And so in addition to my own honest introspection about my presentation, it's also valuable, I think, to solicit, you know, candid feedback from another person to corroborate or contradict the student's assessment. And so when asked, others who

were present during my presentations felt the charge of homophobia was unfounded. You know, in fact, to be honest, I didn't even speak about homosexuality, even though I spoke, I think I gave like four different presentations during that week I was there. But it just happened to be during a Q&A session, somebody asked me questions about homosexuality. And of course, I gave what I thought was a biblically informed answer. Okay. But still, when I asked other people about how they felt, I answered the question. I said, look, I really want an honest answer. And they're like, no, no, no. You weren't being homophobic. You may have been giving, you know, answers that people didn't like, right? But you weren't being homophobic about it, right? And I'd also just add, to me, it's often unclear what is meant by the statement,

Alan is homophobic, right? Because again, it could just mean that they disagreed with my claim that scripture says that homosexual sex is a sin, right? And so using terms with the suffix phobic, right, is just simply, not always, but oftentimes I'd say, just a form of name calling. And it's often used as a substitute for a legitimate argument. All right. Now, I also consider the charge that I was wrong to judge other Christians, especially since the student claimed that Jesus taught us not to judge. Now, I mean, to be fair or to be honest here, I think this claim is just obviously false.

Because not only did Jesus support judging people, he also taught his followers how to judge other people. This is Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20. He describes the methodology in detail of how to judge other people, specifically other believers. And even Jesus' oft-cited words, do not judge, lest you also be judged, kind of thing, that statement, that even doesn't support the student's claim, since Jesus follows up his statement with an explanation of how to properly judge a brother. This is Matthew chapter 7, the first five verses or so.

Now, perhaps the feedback that had merit was the students' request for me to, quote unquote, tweak the presentation to apply to teens. Now, I'll say I always try to adapt my content to fit my audience's demographic, you know? So I typically do that every time, at least I attempt to. And it's possible, you know, to be honest here, that maybe I didn't do enough, all right? You know, but seriously, it's hard for me to know exactly what is meant by the request. But I'm still trying to take that feedback to heart and honestly review my presentation. In fact, I'm creating a new presentation right now on a different topic. And I'm being very mindful of the fact that this presentation will be given to sixth, seventh and eighth graders. So again, very different audience and say adults, or even high schoolers. Okay. Because again, I try to take my craft seriously and, you know, think about who is going to

be hearing my presentation and try to adapt my material and presentation style to them. All right. Anyways, but with regards to that particular material I gave, I am going to be teaching on that content again, actually in a few weeks as well. And I'll honestly take a look at it and see, is there any way I can adapt my material if I'm presenting again to teens? But again, bottom line here is I'm looking for any truth in this critical feedback where I can improve what I'm saying or doing. And then the third step when it comes to critical feedback is to stay faithful. And by that, I mean, it's tempting to be discouraged when people are critical, right?

If I were to throw in the towel at the first negative comment, I would have given up a long, long time ago, like 15 or whatever, 17 years ago when I first started doing this, because you get critical feedback right away. So don't let the criticism paralyze you. You need to embrace the feedback in the sense that, you know, you make changes where necessary and then you press on, right? Remember, your job is to be faithful, to present the truth in a clear and gracious way, truth in a clear and gracious way, and then just leave the results up to God.

Okay, there you have it. Three steps to take when you receive critical feedback, all right? That's all I have for you today. Again, if you enjoy my thoughts on these topics of apologetics and theology and hermeneutics or whatever I happen to be talking about at the time, I want to encourage you to rate or review my podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast on. And I want to thank you again for listening and I will talk to you next time. Bye.