On Compliments

Working through Corrin's Reflections Project. Today: "What was the best compliment you got this year? What compliment would you secretly like to get? Be as honest as possible."

The most honest answer I can provide is that I often despise compliments as much as I despise criticism. There is a dark feature of the way my self tends to operate (I think this is an appropriate usage of the possessive noun "my self," rather than "myself"). My self tends to shy from receiving compliments. When compliments are bestowed, I think that my self will often work to down play those expressions or even dismiss them altogether.

There is not any one compliment I could remember that I received over the course of the year (actually, there are a few, but they're all recent... so I think it qualifies as not being able to remember the rest).
I cannot think of one compliment that I would secretly like to receive over the coming year either.

Part of this is borne out of a certain self image - half way puritanical even. There is the thought that to say or accept anything good said about myself would be a work of abject hypocrisy. I say this because I know myself and I know the sort of sludge and muck that rests beneath the surface of the outward appearance of what seem to be victories and failings.

But here's the reality: this view of my self in the rejection of criticism and compliment is borne more out of a pride that neither allows others the freedom nor right to observe what is good and bad about what they see in Gene Twilley. That pride is a sort of denial of the gospel of Jesus in that it attempts to extinguish the lights that shine on my neediness. As it is, self-definition is the idol who rules the roost and fights hard against any real sense of community, or of dependency, or of real humanity in the depths of my own soul.

This is the antithesis to humility.
This is the antithesis to the Spirit of Christ within me.

The two: a denial of compliment and a denial of criticism is so intertwined within me. "How?" one might ask. "How," I would respond, by merit of the fact that if you have the freedom, right or privilege to not only see what might be deemed as good in me but also declare it, then you might also have the right or privilege to see and declare what is bad in me. If that's the case - if my laundry is hung out before the both of us, then that which is damnable really needs to be addressed as it makes for a bit of awkwardness for you to see something in me, say you see it, and for me to leave it out there hanging. And if that's the case, if I can hear and respond gracefully to your criticisms and compliments about me, then I (and this is specific to me) am really getting the gospel of Jesus in that I am understanding the need I have for you in my life.

Objectively, I get this.
Practically, this is a little more difficult for me.

And I'll be honest saying that there are people who do not subscribe to the same set of beliefs that I do who excel in taking criticism and compliment. This is an area that has some elasticity in the spectrum of life. In my spectrum, it just happens to reflect the muck that resides in me.