On Criticism
By Richard Burke
It’s usually pretty easy to get engulfed in criticism, particularly if you follow news, spend any time on social media platforms, or listen to coffee shop talk.
Perhaps those who indulge, myself included, are trying to make sense of events in their lives and peripherally around them.
The search for answers can start with The Lethbridge Herald, Globe and Mail, CBC News, New York Times, Google, Facebook or any of a number of websites that purport to give us information we need to make everyday decisions.
Much of what I see in my daily news or information routine runs the gamut from useful, causing an ‘I didn’t know that’ reaction as in climate science stories, to useless, like ‘Who cares?’, as in celebrity gossip, or ‘That’s scary, ‘as in the endless criticism bordering on hate about the state of democracy, politics, immigration, the economy or the world in general. All critical.
The Bible isn’t a social media platform, although it gives us more than enough direction to help us make everyday decisions.
Like: ‘And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”’ (John 8:7)
I Googled that. OK, I admit it: I don’t read the Bible regularly. I may have, in the long past, but now rely on Sunday homilies to jerk me back on the right path.
And, to an extent, osmosis can work. You know, the process of absorbing and assimilating ideas? (Checked the dictionary.) That’s again why Sunday church is important to me.
Trouble is, the rest of the week, osmosis can work against all the sound ideas assimilated on Sundays. Hear enough criticism of how others behave, as in news columns, editorials, letters to the editor or comments beneath stories, and it’s possible to get a chip on your shoulder.
Apparently, the chip-on-the shoulder phrase originated in the early 19th Century: "when two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril", as reported in a New York newspaper (and found through another Internet search.)
The ‘chip’ can be interpreted these days as an entrenched opinion or view of the world that cannot be altered, even by violent or angry, not particularly civil, exchange.
Whoops. Sounds like a criticism. I can so easily fall into a critical, judgmental or cynical demeanour. And barely being aware I’m doing it.
And Trump? He’s either the cause of all our problems, or a symptom. And certainly symbolic of the state of criticism.
Don’t get me started.
From Galatians 5:15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”
I’ve been known to have a thin skin that I can even trace to an incident when I was just a child. It’s still with me now, as my skin actually does get thinner in older age. So, you’d think I would be sensitive to how others feel if I criticize. I actually work at what Fr. Albert alluded to recently in his homily, to be constructive, in a kinder, gentler more helpful kind of critiquing.
In fact, critiquing, as opposed to criticism, actually suggests being constructive in a constant striving for improvement.
It’s pretty clear to me what I can work on this Lent. From Matthew 4:2: “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”
Could it be that the 40 days and 40 nights is about the amount of time it takes to break a bad habit? Or develop a new one?
The website www.openbible.info March 1,2019 published a long list of relevant Biblical references to help me.
Or, I could go directly to The Bible.
Perhaps those who indulge, myself included, are trying to make sense of events in their lives and peripherally around them.
The search for answers can start with The Lethbridge Herald, Globe and Mail, CBC News, New York Times, Google, Facebook or any of a number of websites that purport to give us information we need to make everyday decisions.
Much of what I see in my daily news or information routine runs the gamut from useful, causing an ‘I didn’t know that’ reaction as in climate science stories, to useless, like ‘Who cares?’, as in celebrity gossip, or ‘That’s scary, ‘as in the endless criticism bordering on hate about the state of democracy, politics, immigration, the economy or the world in general. All critical.
The Bible isn’t a social media platform, although it gives us more than enough direction to help us make everyday decisions.
Like: ‘And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”’ (John 8:7)
I Googled that. OK, I admit it: I don’t read the Bible regularly. I may have, in the long past, but now rely on Sunday homilies to jerk me back on the right path.
And, to an extent, osmosis can work. You know, the process of absorbing and assimilating ideas? (Checked the dictionary.) That’s again why Sunday church is important to me.
Trouble is, the rest of the week, osmosis can work against all the sound ideas assimilated on Sundays. Hear enough criticism of how others behave, as in news columns, editorials, letters to the editor or comments beneath stories, and it’s possible to get a chip on your shoulder.
Apparently, the chip-on-the shoulder phrase originated in the early 19th Century: "when two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril", as reported in a New York newspaper (and found through another Internet search.)
The ‘chip’ can be interpreted these days as an entrenched opinion or view of the world that cannot be altered, even by violent or angry, not particularly civil, exchange.
Whoops. Sounds like a criticism. I can so easily fall into a critical, judgmental or cynical demeanour. And barely being aware I’m doing it.
And Trump? He’s either the cause of all our problems, or a symptom. And certainly symbolic of the state of criticism.
Don’t get me started.
From Galatians 5:15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”
I’ve been known to have a thin skin that I can even trace to an incident when I was just a child. It’s still with me now, as my skin actually does get thinner in older age. So, you’d think I would be sensitive to how others feel if I criticize. I actually work at what Fr. Albert alluded to recently in his homily, to be constructive, in a kinder, gentler more helpful kind of critiquing.
In fact, critiquing, as opposed to criticism, actually suggests being constructive in a constant striving for improvement.
It’s pretty clear to me what I can work on this Lent. From Matthew 4:2: “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”
Could it be that the 40 days and 40 nights is about the amount of time it takes to break a bad habit? Or develop a new one?
The website www.openbible.info March 1,2019 published a long list of relevant Biblical references to help me.
Or, I could go directly to The Bible.