No one in Jeremiah’s day believed that God would really bring disaster on Jerusalem. They considered themselves adequately pious and moreover, they prided themselves in their status as God’s covenant people. They didn’t see anything wrong with themselves and therefore the suggestion that they were in a state of apostacy was offensive to them. But Jeremiah was not out to insult them. He was bringing God’s word to save them! Before we shake our heads at the defensiveness and anger of Pashhur in this account, we should perhaps look at our ourselves and how we respond to criticism. When someone points out some character flaw in you, for whatever reason, how do you typically respond? Do you automatically take offense? We all have character flaws, and we all do things we should not do, but it is not easy to hear people point this out to us. It bruises our pride. The greater our pride the more such feedback hurts us. In such cases we might act defensively and even harbour ill feelings toward the person who tells us these things. We do this even though, often, what is being pointed out is quite valid. This habit of self-defensiveness will be detrimental to us if we allow it to continue unchecked. It will impede our ability to grow as people. Even if people are wrong about us there is nothing to gain from being defensive. One of the greatest virtues we can develop is the ability to consider constructive criticism and allow it to challenge us and grow us.
Ask God to make you more open to constructive criticism.
Read Jeremiah 19:1-20:6
