Speaking of words, have any of you ever experienced discouraging words just when you are taking progressive steps in your life? “That will never work.” “You won’t be able to do it.” “What a dumb idea.”” Give it up and get a life.” “Don’t quit your day job.”
Often it is when you ARE getting a life that you hear more naysayers apparently trying to hold you back. The big surprise is that when you are doing something courageous, more unselfish, more beneficial to mankind than you ever have before, some voice comes along and scoffs at it or puts it in a bad light or assumes you have base motives.
It is one thing to be criticized for your mistakes, but seems entirely a different animal when it is your good efforts that are called into question. This may seem shocking if you experience it. But it helps to understand the nature of such communications. Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it you win and wear the crown.”*
If anyone ever experienced such criticism, Mary Baker Eddy did. She wrote from her experience. When she published her first book, Science and Health, the critics were learned, loud, and lambasting. Her family told her they would have nothing to do with her if she persisted in spreading her wild ideas. Yet she well knew the value of what she was sharing and perhaps knew that the world is more interested in maintaining the status quo than it is in improving. A known evil seems safer than an unknown of any kind.
Inventors, change agents, and those who have broken barriers in any direction have had similar experiences. Love and commitment to the good they are doing has to powerfully outweigh the drag of popular opinion in order for anyone to continue on a path of progress. Even when the progressive step seems small in comparison to great achievements, we may encounter resistance. No one has been able to achieve a gain for the human race, large or small, without persisting through resistance.
When you become willing to take up the cross of criticism without rankle, you find that it makes you stronger. Criticism can clarify, improve, and refine the forward steps if it isn’t allowed to discourage and quash them. In fact, Mary Baker Eddy said that “through it, you win and wear the crown.” It may help you redouble your efforts. It may make you more carefully support and prove your truths. It may actually work to make your purpose more real to you.
Whether the disapproval comes from other people or even from inside your own head, learn to take it up and bear it. Such an attitude immediately deprives the sails of criticism of a lot of their wind. To come to the point of saying to critics, “I believe I can bear anything you have to say about me,” is a place of freedom. Mary Baker Eddy discovered that, in fact, negative publicity will cease only when it ceases to bless us.
So, when your good is evil spoken of, look for the blessing. In the process of looking for the blessing, you will forget the very thing that precipitated it and will be well on your way to wearing the crown.
*Science and Health page 254
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