Does our work now reflect our grateful response? Do we labor with both humility in ourselves and confidence in the One who is transforming us into his own likeness? He’s the one who took it personal. And he is the one who will personally be the advocate for his people on that last day. For this reason, those who look at our work should be able to see our joy in the artist behind it.

 
Is it just me, or has the whole idea of good critique and constructive criticism these days been snubbed like the awkward, knobby-kneed boy asking for a tweenage diva’s number? It seems that as a society, and even in the evangelical world, all questions, differing opinions, and critique are taken as personal attacks. But isn’t everyone to expect constructive criticism at work here and there?

When I was in college, it was actually a sign of respect for your work to engage in critique. In the many art and writing classes that I took, a third of our grade was based on our ability to properly do this. When our assignments were due, they were displayed before the whole class for a critique session. Talk about a great motivator to not slack on your work! The students were to point out both what they liked about the work and what parts they may think the creator has fallen short. It was to be constructive, both sharpening our skills of discernment and helping the artist improve. We were careful with our words, as we all knew that the artist had invested time into this piece, and was now sitting there in front of the whole class.

This was a very vulnerable position for the artist, and a sticky situation for the one offering critique. If we were just being nice and giving a velvety critique, our own grade would suffer.

Constructive criticism was a necessary element for our grade in the class and our maturity in the field. As growing artists, we needed to learn how to take critique. We had to learn to listen to our peers and begin the hard work of filtering these educated opinions for the benefit of our work of expression.

Not all of the critique would be true to the direction we wanted to go with our piece. Which advice do we follow? Maybe we completely disagree with the first criticism offered, only to find out it is the consensus of the majority of the class. In this case, we need to evaluate whether our perception of our own work is delusional. Maybe we are not properly communicating how we intended. From this we needed to decide whether our piece had enough redeeming qualities to improve upon, or whether to abandon that project all together. We began to learn how to listen to criticism without taking it personal.

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