“What I Learned From My Critics”

“What I Learned From My Critics”     Dec. 15, 2019    Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Just before he was inaugurated, Teddy Roosevelt was shot on his way to deliver a speech. The 50 page manuscript of his talk was folded and inside of his coat pocket. I know that you probably think that I do go on a bit long some Sundays, but I can tell you that it was only the ponderous length of his speech that saved his life that day. The bullet did penetrate the manuscript and entered his chest. He coughed a couple of times into a handkerchief and seeing no blood, concluded that the bullet had not gone into his lung, and so he delivered the talk . . . all 90 minutes of it. 

The blood stained shirt with the visible bullet hole is now a museum piece that bears testimony to his courage and rather crazy tenacity. 

A generation later, Franklin Roosevelt, just before he was inaugurated as president, survived an assassination attempt. The shooter missed Roosevelt but did wound four of the people who were around him. Roosevelt insisted upon loading the four injured people into his car and driving them to the hospital for care. He remained with them for several hours and continued to visit them during their recovery. Being the president of the United States is still one of the most dangerous jobs in the world but clearly, it becomes much more dangerous when that president is trying to lead the way in dramatic change. FDR not only suffered an assassination attempt, but his administration also survived a coop attempt when wealthy business owners tried to raise an army of veterans to overthrow our government because FDR was a Democratic socialist and the corporate world was afraid of the New Deal. 

When you think of the martyrs of the past century: Gandhi, King, Robert and John Kennedy, Oscar Romero, you realize that they were not killed simply because they were famous or because they were powerful but because they were trying to change the world for the better, to fight racism, poverty, war, and classism. 

I remember hearing M. Scott Peck say in a lecture he delivered 30 years ago in Louisville, KY, that the world is in desperate need of leaders but those who dare to stick their heads above the crowd to provide that leadership must accept that someone in the crowd will likely cut their head off for providing that leadership. 

And, of course, that doesn’t mean literal martyrdom in most cases. You think about how many times Dorothy Day was arrested protesting the arms race, and Rosa Parks was arrested for fighting racist laws, and Malala was shot in the face for going to school and  advocating for education for women. And one of my favorites, when Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina state house in Columbia to take down the Confederate flag shortly after the shooting in the Mother Emmanuel Church. And my all-time heart-throb, Iesha Evans, who stood up to riot police in Baton Rouge during the protests against police shooting of Philando Castile. (call me Iesha)

I’ve never been arrested, though the police have been called out to a number of the protests I’ve been involved in . . . so far, I have managed to avoid being picked for police action. I have never been shot, though I have received any number of threats which, thankfully, never materialized. Still, I can’t help thinking that I have not tried hard enough, not been brave enough, not stuck my neck out far enough because people who really try to make a difference can count on fierce opposition.

I was a very young pastor when I created the proverb you have often heard me quote:

If you light a candle in a dark place, you will draw bugs. Or as the comedian, Steven Wright, put it, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.” I endured a lot of pretty toxic board meetings during my years in denominational ministry but one of the more memorable was when the Tsunami hit Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004, almost instantly killing a quarter of a million people. I quickly organized a children’s concert that was performed at Hammons Hall and raised about $50,000 to send for relief that was sent through our denomination’s Week of Compassion office. At our next board meeting, a guy who had been a constant critic for a dozen years rose and asked this question, “Are you raising all of this money to pay off some financial debt you have to the denomination?” 

It is rare for me to be speechless but anything that came to mind for me to say at that moment would have been so laced with obscenities that even Lewis Black would have been covering his ears. Evidently other board members did speak to him privately and I never saw him again. 

The 18^th century English writer, Samuel Johnson, observed,       “Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.” People who offer little of themselves in public, people who feel that they are not being noticed, praised, admired enough, will appoint themselves to a moral Supreme Court and throw stones at people who are trying to accomplish good things and by doing so, they think that they are making themselves important by simply hurling insults, like Statler and Waldorf . . . except, of course, Statler and Waldorf were at least clever. 

I strongly suspect that most of this goes on at a subconscious level. I spoke last week at a Unitarian church in South Carolina where I have been several times before over the past several years. One of our hosts, someone who has, frankly, been a very enthusiastic fan, came up to me at the end of the service and enthusiastically exclaimed, “Oh Roger, I think you have improved so much!” I was a bit taken aback and she went on as if she were a judge at a speech contest. 

I told my traveling companion about the exchange as we were driving back to Missouri and he refused to believe that she had actually said that. As if on cue, she called at that moment and on speaker phone, repeated the same backhanded compliment. Now, on the conscious level, I’m confident that she thought that she was praising my improved homiletic skills, but what was evident to us was that she was placing herself on a pedestal from which she could hand out grades to someone who has been a published writer and public speaker for more than 40 years. It is not malevolent, just sadly lacking in self-awareness.

And while I am playing arm-chair psychologist, I want to share with you a belief that I have long held but never spoken of . . . contradicting my former spouse who always said that I had no unplublished thoughts . . . 

I reached this conclusion 20 years before researchers at George Mason University published the same. There are lots of reasons why people are shy and all of us are shy to varying degrees in certain circumstances. I can be very confident with a microphone and a spotlight but in most casual social gatherings, I’m the one hiding in the corner wondering when I can escape and go home. There are very real social anxiety disorders which deserve which deserve our empathetic understanding and accommodation. But I have also been aware that an awful lot of the anonymous hate mail that I have received through the years, when I have discovered who the author was, it is often someone who is so shy that they would never speak up in public, they would never be the liturgist in church, a Sunday School teacher, or an opinion writer for the newspaper, because, they would say, they are too shy. But what is happening in at least some cases is just this:

They know how hyper critical they are of other people and they assume that others would be just as hyper critical of them, and so they choose to never publicly air anything of themselves, choosing instead to be emotional snipers, always hiding in the brush and throwing rocks from behind a wall. 

When I had a weekly column in the local newspaper, I used to get a lot of hate mail from readers who were offended by my pleas for peace and justice. It took me many years of being wounded by these letters, what Soren Kierkegaard called, “being stomped to death by geese,” to stop reading the letters that came in with no return address and no signature. If the author knows that what they are saying is so poisonous that they will not put their own name on it, why would I be willing to drink their poison? 

Scott Peck was still right. They world is in desperate need of leaders, people who are willing to stand up for what is right, people who are willing to challenge the status quo, to put their own names on a petition, to hold a sign in public demanding change, to stand resolute in the face of the police, to climb a flag pole to remove a century old sign of racism, to speak truth to powerful and wealthy people, like Bill Cosby, or Harvey Weinstein, or Donald Trump. And the sad reality is that such courage is rarely rewarded and often punished, and sometimes arrested and imprisoned and sometimes even shot. 

She didn’t write it but she liked this poem or prayer so much that Mother Theresa kept this on the wall of her children’s home in Calcutta:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

            If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

            If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

           If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

            What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

            If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

            The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

         Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

         In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

Your critics are not always wrong and none of us should be so lacking in humility that we are not willing to learn something from honest critics. I put about 3000 pages of original material online or in print every year and you all know that those 3000 pages contain a lot of things that are not correct. I make mistakes. But if I am even 80% on target, should I allow that 20% of failure to silence me? There are things that Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bishop Oscar Romero said or did that I don’t agree with and that I think was wrong, but I sure am glad that they did not shy away from public leadership because they were not 100% on target. 

You are people who have passionate views. I’m begging you, don’t hide your light under a bushel. Don’t waste your time being critical of people who make mistakes, get out from behind the bushes and do something powerful, something wonderful, something risky, that expresses your own beliefs. 

One year ago, the 15-year-old Swedish student, Greta Thunberg, began a every Friday strike from school to sit in front of the Swedish parliament with her sign that said simply, “Striking for climate.” 

Now she is Time’s person of the year and possibly the most well-known climate activist in the world, proving that one person, armed only with conviction and courage, can change the world. 

I pray that none of them literally become martyrs because of all of the hate spewed in their direction but we cannot but be thankful for those who have the courage of their convictions to risk twitter onslaughts from our president or the potential of an assassin’s bullet. I am grateful for Greta, for Malala, for Emma Gonzales and David Hogg and all of those who survived the mass murder at the Stoneman Douglas High School who are fighting for sensible gun laws. 

I am so thankful for Congress members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilana Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, who, as members of congress are not afforded security guards even though all of them regularly receive death threats. They are not always right, and, in fact, I can name several instances in which I’m certain they have been on the wrong side of issues but I am even more convinced that their voices in Congress are incredibly important and their courage and moral leadership gives me hope for America’s future. Oh, and thank you David Hogg for representing for white guys everywhere that we can still throw up a hero now and then. 

And thank you Colin Kaepernick for sacrificing a multi-million-dollar career to kneel for #blacklivesmatter. And thank you, whoever the anonymous Whistleblower is that the Trump administration is trying to out while simultaneously putting a target on your back. And thank you Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for becoming criminals in the eyes of the American government for telling us the truth about American war crimes and espionage. 

This is the Sunday in the year when most churches are in the midst of the Advent celebrations and they are talking about John the Baptist. I will leave it to others to preach history lessons today, I’m looking for the current day church to find its prophetic voice. Specifically, I’m looking at you. What I want for Christmas

 Is for this generation’s prophets to stop being afraid . . . stop being afraid of cowardly critics, of presidential tweets, and if you can bear it, assassin’s bullets. We have work to do.