Sharpening Your Saw: Body, Mind, Spirit & Soul
Constructive criticism motivates you to change. Constructive criticism encourages and challenges you. Constructive criticism pats you on the back for victories and successes you experience.
When someone is constructive, they are helpful, useful, valuable, and practical. When someone criticizes, it can be positive or negative. If positive, the criticism will be a comment, an assessment, or an observation, a rave, or praise. And it will be constructive criticism.
If contrary, the criticism will be of disapproval, faultfinding, almost like a slap in the face or someone whispering behind your back. When this occurs, constructive criticism becomes destructive jealousy. Destructive jealousy is coveting someone else’s stuff.
Sadly, destructive criticism may come from our closest friend, our spouse, sibling, or co-worker. After all, it is those closest to us who often watch us climb hurdles, help us along the way, and see our victories. Yet, they slap us in the face with whispers behind our back.
Illustration by Michael Woodruff
Destructive jealousy reminds me of Miriam, the prophetess, otherwise known as Moses’ sister.
Perhaps you know the story when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt with God’s guidance, instructions, and protection. On this journey, Moses’s sister, Miriam, and his brother, Aaron, accompanied him. Sometimes it’s a satisfying feeling to have your siblings accompany you on a journey, especially when the task seems challenging.
According to Exodus chapter two, Miriam was Moses’s older sister. Miriam helped save her baby brother. During this time, Pharaoh’s law was to toss Hebrew infant boys into the Nile. Three months after the birth of Moses, his mother, Jochebed, placed him in a papyrus basket, coated with tar and pitch for waterproofing. Jochebed set the basket afloat at the edges of the Nile river. Miriam watched her three-month-old brother float in the reeds of the water. Miriam watched Pharaoh’s daughter remove the crying baby from the basket. Miriam immediately approached Pharaoh’s daughter, asking if she could help by getting a Hebrew woman to nurse the child. The princess agreed, and Miriam took the baby back home to the comforts of his mother and family.
I imagine Miriam was thankful he had been rescued from the slaughter. I imagine Miriam as a teenager playing with her baby brother, perhaps helping him to learn his first words and to walk. I imagine that once weaned from his mother, three or four years later, Miriam may have wept. The loss of her brother to the Egyptian land. It is even possible that Miriam could have been a bit jealous that her brother would now live like a prince. Her brother would be adopted into the lifestyle of games, reading, festivals rather than oppression.
Exodus 15:20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.
So, imagine her surprise years later when her baby brother comes home as Moses, the deliverer, the man of God who will lead the Israelites out of slavery. Miriam trusted her brother and her God, and she followed. When victory surmounts, the “Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground” (Exodus 15:19-21) Miriam celebrates with timbrels and dancing.
I don’t know about you, but when God grants a victory in the life of my family, it’s time to shout and dance and sing of his praises. That’s what Miriam did. Miriam had influence because the women followed her. Miriam had rank and position. She was a prophetess, which meant she received a call to speak for God to the people in a time of crisis about God’s judgment and/or deliverance to Israel and the nations. I would think that’s an excellent position. Wouldn’t you?
In this position, once again, Miriam watched her baby brother. She watched God use him as a leader. She watched God speak to Moses and give Moses instructions for the people. Perhaps, she became envious and jealous of her baby brother’s success. Perhaps, she began to covet the relationship between God and Moses. Have you ever wanted what God gave someone else? And in that vein, you try to pick their life apart.
Well, “Miriam and Moses began to talk against Moses behind his back” (Numbers 12:1). You and I know that if we are talking behind someone’s back, it’s destructive. We’re not being thoughtful or kind. We are judging them. What’s sad about the criticism, “Moses was a very humble gentle, kind, devoid of self-righteousness man” (v3).
Miriam first criticized Moses’ wife because she was of different ethnicity. Then the conversation turns to how God speaks to Moses. “Is it only through Moses that God speaks? Doesn’t he also speak through us?” (v2).
And the answer is yes. God does speak to his prophets “in dreams and in visions” in the verses that follow, God reveals this. But God chose to have a distinctive face to face relationship with Moses.
Miriam didn’t heed the commandment: Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s. Don’t selfishly desire and attempt to gain something God has not given to you.
So, what’s the big idea, don’t talk about people behind their back just because God is using them mightily. In the words of my Aunt Coreen, “Don’t be jelly!”
Until next time.
Praying God’s best life for you,
