{"id":47080,"date":"2005-10-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/mans-reaction-misinterpreted-as-criticism\/"},"modified":"2005-10-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-10T00:00:00","slug":"mans-reaction-misinterpreted-as-criticism","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/mans-reaction-misinterpreted-as-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Man&#8217;s Reaction Misinterpreted as Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I showed up at the house of a friend and rang the doorbell. I was supposed to bring some chairs. He opened the door and said, &quot;Ron, where are the chairs?&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>I responded, &quot;Oh, I forgot.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>He glared at me and barked, &quot;That figures!&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>I thought, <em>That figures? He thinks I&#39;m no good. He thinks I can&#39;t follow through. He thinks I&#39;m useless.<\/em> Then I thought, <em>Who does he think he is? The creep. I bet he&#39;s got a problem or 12!<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>But then I decided I had two options: believe the best about what he was saying&mdash;although that was pretty tough&mdash;and just forget about it, or ask him what he meant&mdash;even though it seemed obvious to me.<\/p>\n\n<p>A couple of weeks later I saw him and brought it up: &quot;You know the other day when I was at your house and forgot to bring the chairs and you said, &#39;That figures&#39;? &hellip;&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>He interrupted me and said, &quot;I shouldn&#39;t have said that.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>&quot;I was wondering what you meant.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>&quot;Well, all day long that day in every meeting someone had forgotten something. It just figured.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>So, he wasn&#39;t saying, &quot;Jenson, you&#39;re a jerk.&quot; He was saying, &quot;My day&#39;s been terrible.&quot;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3454,3666,3717,3981,4010,4021,4482,4623,4766,4792,5171,5292],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,382],"class_list":["post-47080","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-attitude","tax_ctp_tags-conflict","tax_ctp_tags-criticism","tax_ctp_tags-feelings","tax_ctp_tags-forgiveness","tax_ctp_tags-friendship","tax_ctp_tags-mistakes","tax_ctp_tags-perception","tax_ctp_tags-reactions","tax_ctp_tags-relationship","tax_ctp_tags-tongue","tax_ctp_tags-words"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Man&#039;s Reaction Misinterpreted as Criticism - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/mans-reaction-misinterpreted-as-criticism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man&#039;s Reaction Misinterpreted as Criticism - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I showed up at the house of a friend and rang the doorbell. 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