Somebody told her tonight that the thing she made was beautiful, and she said the equivalent of no it is not, in the polite way, in about a second and a half.
She always does. She has a set of them. It was mostly luck. It is fine, there is a problem with the left side that nobody has spotted yet. Oh, that old thing. Somebody else did the hard part.
And she thought nothing of it, because she has done it her whole adult life, until her friend said, mildly, still holding a plate: you know you never let anybody say anything nice to you.
She laughed it off, which is a deflection about deflections.
But here is what is actually strange, and she noticed it herself on the way home, and it has been sitting oddly ever since.
The compliments bounce off. All of them, every time, in about a second and a half.
The criticisms do not bounce off at all. They go in whole and they stay for weeks.
She had always thought of herself as somebody who did not care much what people thought. And on the way home it occurred to her that a person who did not care what people thought would be roughly equally unmoved by both, and that she is not remotely unmoved by both, and that she has been running a system that lets in only one kind of information for about twenty five years.
You may have your own set of deflections. And you may never have noticed that they only work in one direction.
The question Paul asked out loud
Here is a man asking himself a question in public, and the shape of the question is the useful part.
For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.Galatians 1:10
Notice that he does not ask whether he cares too much about praise. He asks whose approval he is working from.
That is a much better question, because it does not require anybody to stop wanting approval. Wanting approval is not a defect, it is standard equipment in a person. The question is where the account is held.
You are working from an approval that was settled before anybody in that room had an opinion. Galatians 1:10 puts the whole matter as a question of whose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves an account rather than asking a woman to stop needing one.
Now let me say the thing about the one direction, because I think you already half saw it in the car.
A person who deflects all praise and absorbs all criticism is not humble and is not thick skinned. They are running a filter, and the filter has a rule, and the rule is: information that lowers me is accurate, information that raises me is generous or mistaken.
That is not modesty. It is a settled belief about which kind of thing is true, and it means the account only ever moves one way, for twenty five years.
You are able to receive a true thing that is good, and receiving it is not vanity. The written word makes the question whose approval rather than how much, and the Holy Spirit does not run a filter that lets in only the low readings.
I want to be careful about two things.
I am not telling you to start believing every compliment. Some are kind rather than accurate and you can tell the difference and you always could. And I am not telling you to care less about doing good work, because you are good at what you do and the caring is part of that, and I will not treat that as a fault.
And I am certainly not saying that your deflecting is a sin you need to repent of. It is a habit built early, probably for a good reason at the time, and habits get outgrown rather than confessed.
The honest half: the deflection will come out of your mouth again this week before you can stop it. It is a second and a half long and it is faster than you are.
But you can go back afterwards. You can take one that has already been deflected and simply receive it, out loud, after the fact. That works. It is slightly awkward and it works.
They are the same problem, and it is not humility.
The praise bouncing and the criticism sticking are one mechanism with a rule inside it, and the rule has been quietly setting your value at the lowest available reading for twenty five years. Nobody would call that modest if you described it in those words.
You are approved on ground that was settled long before tonight's compliment or last month's note. Scripture makes the question whose approval a person works from rather than how much they want, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves the account instead of asking you to need less.
So the deflections will come again, because they are fast. And you can go back and receive one afterwards, and that counts.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the room or on the way home. The standing to speak them is yours in Christ, given rather than earned, which is why a woman who cannot take a compliment can speak these with complete footing tonight. Scripture is the ground under every line, the Holy Spirit makes it live, and what anybody thinks of you next week is His to decide about.
- Filter that lets in only the low readings, you have been setting my worth for twenty five years. Scripture asks whose approval I work from rather than how much I want it, and you have never once been humility and I am not calling you that again.
- Second and a half of deflection, in the name of Jesus you stop having the last word. The written word makes the question whose, and the Holy Spirit does not require me to receive every criticism whole and every kindness sideways.
- Lord, Your approval of me is settled and I am working from that account and not the other one. I thank You that Galatians 1:10 makes the question whose and never how much, and I am taking one kind true thing now and stopping at thank you.
Galatians 1:10
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