The well-worn cliché is true: They don’t teach you everything you need to know in seminary.
When I was pastoring, I navigated my church through a highly combative and politically volatile building project. We had been meeting in a school cafeteria and were trying to transition to our own building. I had never led a church through a capital campaign, and I had little understanding of local politics. The mistakes I made were legion.
The problem with leadership mistakes is that most of them are on display for others. It’s one thing to make a mistake contained to yourself or your close circle; it’s another to make mistakes in public for all to see. Public mistakes are exposing, and my inner critic had much to say: You should know better—even though I had never done it before. More pointedly: See how stupid you are? Everyone can see it.
I have battled a low-grade feeling of stupidity my whole life and never outgrown it. Even as an adult, it doesn’t take much for me to feel stupid—and consequentially, exposed. Leading through a building project helped me get very familiar with my inner critic. (Are you familiar with yours?) I decided it was time to learn to wrangle it, so I began to pay close attention to its messages.
Here are the statements it would tell me over and over: You should know better by now. You are stupid and everyone knows it. You are not worth being loved. You are not worth people’s time.
It is quite arresting to read the message of my inner critic written plainly like that. If I don’t wrangle him, his words become like a stagnant pond in my soul, breeding and growing all manner of shame toxins. How can we learn to turn down the noise of our inner critic and hear what God has to say about us?
When I dug deeper inside my soul to learn what was going on, I realized my inner critic was speaking a “gospel” to me. I had never considered that I was believing a false gospel when I gave this unwelcome character a seat at the table.
Every gospel—every belief—offers you something (a promise), tells you what you must do to get it (a path), and reminds you there is a cost (a payment). When I look back at the ancient Egyptian religion or even the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day, I see path, promise, and payment on display.
Rome offered the promise of peace, for example, but the path to get it cost a tremendous payment in taxes, slavery, and often the deaths of loved ones.
When I was a teenager in Australia, the gospel promise I chased was belonging. The path was to make a girl laugh, get good grades, or be a standout athlete. In the words of the late, great Meat Loaf, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” I would happily get a C in physics if I could get a girl to laugh. For those who like to keep score, I was zero for three in the gospel of teenage boys.
My inner critic’s gospel promises protection. He stands like a sentry guarding me from outside threats, and he condemns me out of a weird self-protection. He tells me it is better to criticize myself than to let my guard down, be vulnerable, and receive the criticism of others. Better to condemn myself than to perceive the crushing condemnation of others.
But my goodness, my inner critic makes me pay. As I examined my belief structure, I discovered that I never got the promise of protection; instead, I just got condemnation.
In every gospel except one, the humans do the paying and the “gods” get the benefit. If we look back at ancient Rome, we see that the people did all the paying and Caesar got all the benefit. Not many in the Roman Empire would have described their lives as peaceful—quite the opposite.
My teenage gospel also made me pay. I would spend hours agonizing over what I said to someone and how I might fit in the next day at school. It is only in Jesus’ gospel that God pays and we benefit. As I paid attention to this simple “path, promise, and payment” idea, I realized I could compare the gospel of my inner critic to the gospel of Jesus and see who is telling the truth. I doubt you are in much suspense at this point.
John reminds us in 1 John 3:19–20,
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in [God’s] presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
John shows us how our inner critic condemns us when we feel vulnerable and exposed, but he also reminds us that we are safe in God’s presence. We can instruct our inner critic to stand down and relax. It does not need to protect us from outside harm, because God is our refuge and strength. And, thankfully, he—not others and not our inner critics—has the final say over who we are.
Fans of the Netflix show The Crown are aware that there are rules when you are summoned to Buckingham Palace. If King Charles were to ever summon me, I would happily—and dutifully—go.
But there are strict rules for meeting a human king. Traditionally, the king gets the first word, and the king gets the last word. You are permitted to speak in the middle of the dialogue. I’ve found this helpful as I approach my sovereign, King Jesus.
Because the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, because God is who he says he is, and because I am who he says I am, I orient my life around his Word first. When my inner critic speaks up, I let him run his mouth for a while, but once he’s done, I read God’s Word as the last word.
I tried to fire my inner critic once, but he still showed up to work the next day. He’s not going anywhere. I cannot eliminate his words, but I can contain them so he no longer gets the last word.
Steve Cuss is the host of CT’s podcast also called Being Human.
This article appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Ignore the Gospel of Your Inner Critic".
Being Human: A column by Being Human’s host, Steve Cuss.
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