I fear that I'm going to be opening myself up to a world of hurt. It's like I'm posting a giant target to my blog and to my pride, saying, "C'mon kids, pick up a battleaxe and see how close you can get to the bullseye."
But all fears aside, I was thinking the other day about how one change that has occurred in our culture over the years is that we have become very hesitant around criticism--both in giving it and receiving it. We shy away from saying anything critical about a person's work (to their face, anyway), and we don't really want people to point out the weaknesses in our own work. We only desire compliments and praise. We want people to say, "Wow, that was a great presentation" or "This is the best blog post I have ever read in my entire life, and I printed it out and put it in a golden frame, and I took the picture of my family down from the wall and hung that there instead."
What can end up happening, though, is that our work never really improves. We get content because we are only receiving positive feedback, and we never strive to do anything better.
Last week I read a biography about C.S. Lewis entitled Jack's Life, written by his step-son Douglas Gresham. In one chapter, Gresham talks about the Inklings--a group made up of Lewis and several friends (including J.R.R. Tolkien) that would meet a couple times a week to talk about literature and the like. In this group, members would often show the others what they had been working on in order to get feedback. For example, The Lord of the Rings was discussed in Inklings meetings before it was ever published, as was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Here's what Gresham says about these meetings:
The Inklings was a sort of refining furnace for great writings. Chapters would be read aloud and then discussed by all who were present. Well-written, worthwhile material would be joyfully received and praised as it deserved, but bad material would be mercilessly cut to pieces under the withering scorn of some of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century. (110)That paragraph made me chuckle when I read it. Wouldn't it be terrifying to bring some poem that you had written to one of these meetings, and then to have the likes of Tolkien and Lewis pick it apart? But that's what made the writings of this group so good. What is especially interesting to me is that Gresham points out that this process of criticism didn't damage the members' relationships. They remained the best of friends because they understood that a critique of one's work didn't mean an attack on that person. It was a way of fostering improvement.
Again, that's something that we often forget today, so we make sure that no one has a chance of offer an criticism on what we do at all. I saw a Saturday Night Live sketch recently where they create a show called "You Can Do Anything: The only show that celebrates the incredibly high self-esteem of the You-Tube generation." The show features three guests. The first one fails to juggle ten bowling pins and then immediately exclaims "I juggled!" The second sings a song he wrote and remarks" I've never been punched!" And the last attempts Chinese calligraphy while performing an Irish dance and points out, "I went to a school with no grades!"
What the sketch shows in a satirical way is that, when people never receive genuine criticism, they can go on in mediocre work unhindered. But, of course, this isn't good for the individual or for society as a whole. We need that process of refining so that we can truly produce the best work we can.
Of course, all such criticism must be done in a loving and gentle manner. We don't want to crush people with harsh comments, nor should we make it our mission to seek out and draw attention to every mistake and weakness we can find. But we should learn to accept and receive criticism gracefully, as this will refine what we do and make it better in the future.
Again, I'm scared to publish this, because what I'm saying is, "Feel free to criticize what you read!" So please...be kind.
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