Article August 28, 2006 Issue

ROUTING OUT the inner critic

BY TONY LOBL

MY FAVORITE MOMENT of seeing a well-meaning critique fail happened years back when a friend offered his mother a magazine focusing on the need not to criticize others. My friend thrust the magazine into his mum's hands with the curt advice that she needed to read it.

Clearly, so did he!

That moment, which my friend and I later laughed over, illustrates a poignant point related by the Apostle Paul: "Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one!" (Rom. 2:1, Eugene Peterson, The Message). The same verse in the King James Bible reads, "Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things."