Seth Godin and the Purple Cow
Posted by donknoup on March 31, 2009
I have been reading Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow. It’s a marketing book where the general premise is that in order to sell something it must be remarkable. Take a purple cow for example. That would be remarkable. We’ve all seen brown cows and black cows and so on, but have you ever seen a purple cow? A purple cow would stand out.
I think there is probably a sermon that could come out of this in the future. In fact one has already been done by Steven Furtick where he talked about Purple People. I’m actually going to be sharing some clips from one of his messages really soon for our youth at nxt.lvl.
Today as I was reading something that he wrote really stood out. He said that often people/companies play it safe because of fear. They don’t want to take the risk of criticism so they simply don’t rock the boat.
He shares how we have been trained since our youth to view criticism as bad and to be avoided. Think about this for a moment. Was Jesus ever criticised? You bet he was!
Matthew 12:22-24
22Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”24But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”
They told Jesus that he was teaming up with Satan. I’d say that’s some pretty harsh criticism. But, Jesus didn’t cower or draw back when the criticism was given. Instead he always pushed forward. In fact if you lock on to verse 25, you will see he answers right back to their critical attitude. And it isn’t in spite or anger, but rather with the truth.
How can we take the criticism in our life and use it? How can we learn from it? How can we grow stronger or improve from the knowledge that we can learn? How can we respond with truth? All good questions I believe we need to wrestle with when criticism is sent our direction. Don’t back down…never give up…press on.
