Christians have a problem with compliments.
On the one hand, we’re told to be humble—which can lead to us dismissing any compliments as not true, out of fear of seeming prideful. On the other hand, many churches foster a celebrity pastor attitude where church leaders act like CEOs—charismatic heroes proclaiming their accomplishments.
Neither approach fits what the Bible teaches about humility, pride, and accomplishments. Here are some specific things we must remember so we can have a healthy approach to receiving compliments.
There is a lot of truth to the old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Smart parents know that they worked together to raise their children well, and had plenty of support (neighbors, friends, relatives).
The same point applies to other areas. Paul is renowned for his missionary trips, but he didn’t travel alone. He partnered with Barnabas on his journeys. He also had people like Titus and Timothy who picked up where he left off, leading the churches that Paul had founded. Many of his letters to churches end with him thanking others—deacons like Dorcas, friends like Linus who supported him in prison.
We can appreciate the need to be thankful for other’s contributions if we think about who is supporting the work we currently do.
Churches tend to highlight the pastor above everyone else. However, the pastor’s work goes alongside the worship team, who have to work well with the pastor (and work well together) for their part of the service. Both the sermon and the worship sections of the church service are made possible by wise elders and deacons making sure the church is in good shape. All of those people have work because the congregants show up every Sunday. Of course, everybody—congregant and pastor, deacon and worship leader—benefits from the church janitor who keeps the building clean.
Companies often talk about their CEO or leader as the shining leader who made it success possible. However, it’s rare to meet a successful business leader who did everything themselves. As Business Insider observes, many great companies are founded by pairs of people who “recognized their individual limitations and respected what the other could bring to a partnership.” Steve Jobs created Apple’s vision and gave input on the projects, but Steve Wosniak built the products. The documentary Inside Bill’s Brains observes that Microsoft founder Bill Gates described his success as coming from great partnerships—Paul Allen helping him found Microsoft, Steve Ballmer helping him solidify Microsoft for longterm success.
When we receive compliments, it’s important to consider whether we’re being given credit for someone that someone else did. If so, we should give credit where credit is due.
C.S. Lewis has one of his characters give an interesting take on humility in The Screwtape Letters. The character observes that God truly wants someone who “can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”
True humility is not pretending we have no skills. God created us individually, with skills he wants us to use. The danger comes when we act as if our skills are greater than they are. We can develop our skills, and research suggests that in the long run, people who work hard and consistently accomplish better results than more talented people who have poor work ethics. Even so, there comes a point where we realize we each only have so much talent. Pretending we are eternally talented or that we did a better job than we actually did, does not honor God.
Nor is true humility pretending that we haven’t done a good job. We honor God when we take our God-given skills and use them well. In fact, not doing a good job with our skills may technically be blasphemy—dishonoring what we’ve been given.
True humility means we have a healthy sense of proportion about our work. It involves recognizing when we’ve done a good job but that others’ success doesn’t threaten our successes. It means rejoicing when people take what they’ve been given and use it well, even if they are still developing their proficiency.
With true humility, we can celebrate when we’ve done well but not let it go to our heads.
One of the harder lessons of success is that it doesn’t just happen because of our effort or brains. There are outside factors we didn’t know about that affected our success.
VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer talks in Me, Myself, and Bob and elsewhere about how VeggieTales benefitted from several factors. Other people (most famously the team at Pixar) were experimenting with CGI animation, but it was a new animation technique that made the VeggieTales look (bouncy, elastic characters) possible. He expected it to sell well to Christian mothers, but it was Christian teenagers who first embraced VeggieTales’ humor with all its references and made it a big success. The fact that he started his company between home videos being invented and Internet streaming destroying the video market meant he could sell VeggieTales to families who bought and shared the videos.
The reverse is also true. There are talented Christians who struggle to achieve success because outside factors don’t work in their favor. Matthew Dickerson observes in his biography of Mark Heard that Heard was an exceptional songwriter and musician, but his career happened before Internet distribution and digital editing made it possible for niche artists to directly share their work. Heard’s Christian music was great, but he never “got the break” he needed or had the sound marketing specialists wanted, and the way people made music during his lifetime made it hard to overcome those factors.
It's humbling to admit that success has much to do with being in the right place at the right time. Once we understand that though, we can have a healthy gratefulness for our success. We can assess compliments, accept them if they are well-deserved compliments, and use the occasion to gratefully reflect on all the little factors that aided our success.
Calling, the idea that God has given us special skills for tasks or roles, is very popular. We read books about finding our callings, seek “live out your calling” techniques, and jobs that best fit our callings.
These discussions can be good because God does craft each of us for certain work (Ephesians 2:10). However, the discussions often imply that finding the calling is all we need. We’ll never hate going to work again, never turn in a shoddy assignment, once we’re doing what we’ve been called to do.
Sadly, finding your calling doesn’t mean that you’re doing it well. For example, editor and novelist Hope Bolinger describes how often writers submit poorly-written manuscripts to her. When she highlights the mistakes, the writers often respond, “Well, God told me to write this story.” It doesn’t mean the God-called work isn’t poorly done.
The Bible affirms that we each have work God wants us to do. However, the Bible also says we should strive to be good craftsmen (2 Timothy 2:15). It says we should tread carefully before following some callings (such as teaching Christian doctrine) because they carry high responsibilities (James 3:1).
Once we know that calling is part one, using our callings well is part two, we develop a new attitude. We stop using “I’ve found my calling” as a cop-out. We do good work—and, like all good artisans, we reflect more on how the work went than on what accolades we got.
We like to to think our successes are permant and our failures will be forgotten. While it’s important that we remember we are more than our accomplishments, we must also remember all our work will be revisited.
As Chris Davis observes in Bright Hope for Tomorrow, the Bible also says that we’ll bear witness to what we did. When Christ returns, there will be a final resurrection and final judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). Those who have believed in Jesus will not be destroyed. However, they will still stand before him and see their lives replayed (2 Corinthians 5:10). What Christians did with their time will influence their life on the new heaven and new earth—rewards based on what we did with what God gave us (1 Corinthians 3:13-15).
We shouldn’t fret over the last judgment or what rewards we’ll get. However, we should cultivate a kingdom view of our work. The kingdom of God is “here but not yet,” and will culminate with Jesus’ second coming. When he arrives, we will all stand before God and bear witness to what we did. This should serve as a sobering (but not terrifying) reminder to do well with what we’ve been given.
What does this have to do with accepting compliments? It reframes how we think about our work. Once we develop a kingdom view of calling and work, we see compliments in a different light. We can accept them without taking ego trips.
Once we develop a long view of our work, we become motivated to do well while recognizing God loves us regardless of whether we do well with our gifts.
We also realize that ultimately other people’s compliments don’t matter. If we’ve done good work, someday God will tell us, “well done, good and faithful servant.”
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