Here are four things you can do when someone says something negative about you that you don’t think is accurate:
1. Slow down and think carefully about what they are saying. If you are like me, you have heard a whole lot of rationalization in your time, and you know you are not all that different than other people, so you are probably pretty good at rationalizing yourself - even though usually when you are doing it it doesn’t seem like rationalizing to you.
2. The bad news is that even if they are wrong about why and what in that particular situation, they are right in the sense that you are actually worse than what they realize. The good news is that because of faith, you are in Christ and dearly loved by God.
3. You can reflect on the fact that this has happened to other people as well. Paul, Jesus to start. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day looked at what he was doing and said he was Satanic. The courts of Jesus’ day condemned him to death. So…
4. You can rejoice in the fact that although other people may look at what you do in different ways, God’s view of you stays steady. He sees you in Christ. He doesn’t look at you as disconnected from Christ. You are inextricably linked to Jesus in His view which means He looks at you as having living Christ’s life, loves you with the kind of love He loves His own Son and that’s not going to change.
