Disclaimer: this is a mixed bag of thoughts in regards to criticism I’ve been kicking around over the past weeks…probably a bit disorganized, but on my mind/heart nevertheless.
A few weeks back I got back to my hotel room and came across an interesting documentary that Jamie Kennedy put together on critics and hecklers. Regardless of your opinion of Jamie Kennedy and his work, he had a few profound points through his movie. Kennedy conducted a series of interviews with artists and critics to address the dynamics and impact that criticism can have on people, and the reason we feel the need to criticize. In a clear state of depression/defeatism as a result of the amount of abuse he had personally received over his work, it became clear that many artists held the same viewpoint that critics and being criticized can and often does becomes cripplingly destructive. Kennedy’s main point was that when we become critics we often fail to consider that we are in fact criticizing the creator as well as the creation…by irresponsibly taking on the role of critic, and recklessly doling out criticism we threaten not only the people, places, and things we criticize, but our ability to enjoy them.
Our culture and the internet has produced thousands of mediums for us to criticize and deconstruct most every facet of our daily lives. Restaurants, movies, music, art, actors, celebrities all have their online slaughterhouses where anyone with access to the world wide web, and the time and inclination can go pick to pieces anyone and anything they wish…and best of all, for those who are unable to find a specific forum to communicate all the world’s shortcomings, there is blogging to provide us with limitless possibilities of who/what we can deface.
I personally struggle greatly with being a critic. While I am a situational optimist, I can sometimes be a perfectionist (not proudly)… perfectionism amidst imperfection paves the way to a critical worldview (both in how we look at ourselves and how we look at everything else). I am very keen on my own shortcomings, and I often use self criticism to try to become a better person and better at the things I do. However, the process of being self critical often can slowly creep its way into the way we look at others and the world around us. Criticism in its very nature is deconstructive, it takes the whole and breaks it into pieces to figure out what works and what doesn’t…the problem is that most of the time criticism simply stops at the deconstruction and leaves the world fragmented and broken.
While criticism is deconstructive, creation in its nature is constructive. Creation and creativity takes pieces and puts them together, it puts color on a blank canvas, it breathes life where there was none. Critic and the creator are typically contrary in nature.
I am confident that when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he most certainly made one or two wayward brush strokes, yet like the great master painter he was, he worked even the unintentional slips of the wrist into his master design. The “mistakes” are certainly there…it is our choice whether we’ll focus our energy on enjoying the creation, or peering through the critic’s lens to try to find some miniscule flaw.
When we become critics, we attempt to take power from the creator and the process of creation and make it our own. Criticism is a power play; it is about trying to make something ours which is not. And when we enter the power struggle we end depreciating the value of other’s and ourselves.
It is interesting to me that God during creation played the role of both critic and creator, he spoke life into being, and deemed it good. He put it all together, looked at it carefully and said “This is good stuff!”, and he had the exclusive right to do so. Sin entered the world via a critic who did not have the authority to provide any commentary on creation, in the garden, the serpent was not enamored by the vastness and perfection of God’s work, rather, he fixated on a singular shortcoming, the fact that there were a few trees whose fruit was off limits. The power play worked, criticism took focus off the things that were significant and real to that which was insignificant and valueless…in doing so we ended up with less not more, a cheaper broken reality, a reality distracted from the glory of creation. (Luckily the creator didn’t stop creating and in our brokenness and deadness he breathed life a second time through the birth, death and resurrection of his son…the ultimate work of the final authority.)
So what are we to do in a world so rich in critical feedback, in a society that demands perfection, in a culture where “good enough” is never in fact “good enough”, how are we to respond in the face of the of this world’s cynicism? We mustn’t be so naïve to think the we are impervious to the critic’s snare, for criticism is virally contagious and a miserable affliction…just think if NOTHING were ever good enough to enjoy, how miserable EVERYTHING must be, this is the critics plight.
The reality is that we are only susceptible to the extent we believe that the critic does in fact hold some power to make a determination of our worth…the further detached we are from the creator, the more we will be detached from the source of our value, and the more subjected and beaten down we will become.
It’s amazing what can happen to the way you see the world when we depart from criticism and move to affirmation. We learn to love new friend’s, we learn to love old friends in better ways. Instead of dwelling on the ever so small things that divide us we can focus on the large things that unite us, the world is opened before us, and it is good. We embrace and emphasize the fact that we are imperfect, that we need grace. Most importantly, we keep the power and our definition of worth with the one to whom it belongs, the creator of all things.
We’ve got a choice on how we let this world effect us, and it’s a hard line to draw. To be honest I don’t know how it’s all supposed to play out, I just realize that there are a lot of folks out there who try to steal our joy, to break us down, all for the purpose of making themselves feel more elevated and empowered. Our best weapon is love, our best defense is confidence in Christ, our hope is that we do not live for the approval of men…I’m trying my best these days to be in the camp of creative affirmation, the more I try the more good I find to affirm and enjoy around me.
1 comment:
Great article Chris!
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