Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - When Criticized, Respond this Way

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Alan was harshly criticized by students after an event. He explains three steps he takes whenever this happens.

When someone is critical of what you've said or written, how should you respond? Well, in this episode of my podcast, I want to explain the steps I take after I'm harshly critiqued. Several years ago, I spoke at a private Christian school, and one of the topics I was asked to address was homosexuality, which of course is a very controversial topic, right? I knew I was going to get a little bit of pushback. Now, after the event, the leadership solicited feedback from the students. They had them fill out a number of different forms. And then they made those forms available to me. Now, a few of the responses caught my attention. One student, for example, did not mince words on her evaluation on my talk and she said, or she wrote, Alan is homophobic.

All right. Now, two other feedback forms included basically the same sentiment, okay? And then another student had written this. They put, quote, please avoid being so judgmental next time. And if you ever have to 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. so yeah that was um let's just say pretty harsh feedback right uh the question then is really well okay so should i just simply ignore what they wrote um should i retire early should i um you know should i respond back to that person or try to uh what do you what do you do when you receive critical feedback now granted only four out of it was like 270 students gave negative feedback right But even though it was only four out of that many positive ones, I don't want to ignore what they wrote. Because after all, it's possible I can learn something from their responses. And I kind of want to be the kind of person who pursues truth, even if it's critical feedback about my ideas or about the manner in which I communicate those ideas.

Now, of course, I think that requires humility, which isn't easy, right? but it is something that we should probably nurture if we want to be an effective ambassador for Christ. And so let me offer three short and sort of quick steps to take when you receive critical feedback. This is basically what I try to do whenever I get this kind of feedback. So first is this. Realize you will not please everyone.

In other words, if you set your expectations too high, you're often going to be disappointed, right? Because, of course, you can say the most truthful comment and in the most gracious way possible, 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 some realistic expectations. Now, some things it turns out will rile people up no matter how graciously and no matter how compassionate you say them. So what your job really then is is to ensure that you don't add unnecessary offense, right? You don't want to add unnecessary offense to the things that you say. If you think about Jesus, right, he was the God man. He was the perfect

human being. And I think we could all say, yeah, he gave perfect responses every time he engaged somebody. But despite the fact that he gave the perfect responses, his responses were not met with universal praise. In fact, people tried to kill him. And of course, as you know, they eventually succeeded. So don't expect your responses to always be welcomed as well, right? You're not any better than Jesus. So you're obviously going to have some situations where you'll say something and it's not going to be received as well as you want it to be. So this is why I say you have to set appropriate expectations. Okay, second thing. Learn to discern the truth from the error. And what I mean by that is that, you know, okay, sure, it's possible someone is simply

angry with me. And as a result, they're not going to be fair with their feedback. But it's important to recognize that it's also possible. There's validity. There might be some validity to what they're saying. And so being committed to the truth requires, I investigate whether there's any legitimacy to the harsh critiques or feedback that they're giving. When you look at the early church, they were also charged with a very similar task. And I'm thinking about First Thessalonians. Ones 5, where, we're told, examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, and abstain from every form of evil. So, you know, many, many claims that are made can contain both truth and error. And it's prudent to be able to discern one from the other, right?

First John 4 talks about this. It 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, right? So in other words, even back in the first century, the believers, everything they heard wasn't necessarily true, right? They had to discern whether something was from the Holy Spirit or from the Spirit of the Antichrist.

And of course, this was a very critical distinction. Now, in the context of assessing feedback, your job is to discover whether there's any merit to the critique. And so, in addition to my own sort of honest introspection about my own presentation, which I often do. I'm, you know, one of my harshest critics myself of my own material. It's also valuable to try to solicit candid feedback from another person to either corroborate or contradict the student's assessment.

And of course, I did that. In fact, I was actually there with a group of other people and that I knew. And I asked them. I said, hey, you were there, right? you listen to everything I said. What's your honest opinion? You know, don't hold back. I just want to know the truth.

Now, when it came to the charge of homophobia, they said, no, they didn't feel that was fair. They didn't think it was accurate, right? So that was something they just said, well, no, I don't think there's any merit to that particular charge. Okay. And so what the conclusion was, was,

okay, it just seemed like a lot of these students simply disagreed rather vigorously with me and resorted. to the sort of usual, you know, homophobic slur that people use, right? And this is a common tactic, right? People will often use a term with a suffix phobic added to it. And this is really another form of name calling and using, you know, calling people names as a substitute for a legitimate argument. And besides, I'll just add, it's kind of unclear what is meant by the claim, Alan is homophobic. I mean, it could just mean they disagree with my claim that scripture

says homosexual sex is sin or it could mean that they think I'm bigoted against people who identifies gay or it could be something else right so of course in that case I would have to know more details and I really can't have any access to the person who wrote that particular criticism of me so but that would be ideal as if I could sort of evaluate okay what do you mean by that particular claim that you think I'm homophobic now I also considered the charge that I was wrong to judge other Christians because that was also mentioned in their critique, especially since the student claimed Jesus taught us not to judge. Now, with regards to that little kind of comment they added, of course, the claim is false. You know, anybody who studied the scriptures knows,

not only did Jesus judge people himself, but he also taught his followers how to judge other believers. And of course, this comes from Matthew 18, where Jesus pretty much lays out a multi-step process of how to judge a believer. And of course, we see some of that also expressed in 1st Corinthians 5 with the Apostle Paul. Now, in Matthew 7, of course, we're also familiar with a common phrase that people love to cite, right, where Jesus says, do not judge, you know. But again, this phrase doesn't support the students' claim either since Jesus follows up his statement with an explanation of how to judge a brother properly who's in sin. In other words, that passage in Matthew 7 when you read the entirety of it isn't Jesus commanding us not to judge. Rather, it's him teaching us how to judge and the way we're supposed to judge is not in a hypocritical manner. That's the key point of Jesus' teaching there. Now, perhaps the students' feedback had some merit where they said for me that I need to, quote, tweak the presentation to apply to teens, okay, end quote. Now, though I always try to adapt my content to fit my audiences demographic and specific kind of age and spiritual maturity level and all that stuff, it's possible I didn't do enough in that instance.

And to be honest, it's difficult to know what exactly is meant by this request, but I'm still taking the feedback to heart and honestly, you're reviewing my own presentation. In fact, I often teach on the same material a lot. So I'm going to be using that material again. And so, yeah, I'm going to look for ways to adapt my material. I'm always going to try to improve. Bottom line is, I'm always looking for any truth in the critical feedback where I can improve what I'm saying or what I'm doing or in the manner in which I'm communicating. And then the third advice or comment I have about how to address critical feedback is to remember to stay faithful to your role. I think it's it's easy to be, well, it's tempting to be discouraged, let's just say that, when people are critical. And trust me, there's no shortage of critical people, especially if you're posting things online. But if I were to throw in the towel at the first negative comment, I mean, I would have given up a long time ago, right? So don't let the criticism paralyze you. Again, what I've been saying here is you need to embrace the feedback and then make changes where there are changes to be made, where it's necessary to make changes, okay? But as they say, you know, the old phrase is eat the meat and spit out the bones, right?

so find what's true and focus on that and then get rid of the stuff that you think is just a distraction or just untrue and then press on okay because remember your job is to be faithful to whatever your role is but especially if you're in any kind of content creation or communicating the truth you want to learn how to present the truth in a clear and gracious way and then just as long as you've done that leave the results up to god all right well that's all I have for you today. If you've enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to share it with a friend. And also don't forget to subscribe to my podcast. And that way you won't miss any future episodes that come out. And again, thank you for listening. I look forward to thinking out loud

with you next time. You know,