Editorial March 11, 1972 Issue

Criticism and Healing

Carl J. Welz

As a music major in college, I had my big opportunity one day when I was the featured violin soloist at a monthly meeting of the college student body. When I had finished, the applause was good. But after the meeting, as we made our way to the exits, the leading tenor of the music majors greeted me: "Hey, Carl! You were flat."

Whatever else was said to me about that performance I have long forgotten. But after about two weeks of insisting to myself that the tenor was not only rude but wrong, I realized I had played flat. And I began to work with my violin to see that my notes were on pitch for subsequent performances.

The problem of knowing when and how to "reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine,"^{II Tim. 4:2;} as St. Paul says, seems difficult. Because we know criticism is often upsetting, we tend, as Christians, to classify it as evil and to denounce it under all circumstances. Or if we learn to take criticism and to gain from it, we sometimes expect the other fellow to be able to take it too.