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Praise and a critical view ...

Wednesday, Aug 29, 2012. What about the relationship between praise and criticism? Think about someone who is in a mode of praise and tells you a lot of good things, and then imagine another person who is in a critical mode, raising all the difficult features of a person.

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Opponents or partners? …

Are criticism and praise opponents or partners? It is a serious question! When you observe people, then often there seems to be no balance between the two. Either, someone is very enthusiastic about someone, and you hear words of praise from him. Or someone is quite critical, and he will put a strong emphasis on the critical things.

But we need to be aware: both praise and criticism is needed. We need both of it together. The Greek word “critein” means something like to discern or do distinguish. Originally criticism is not just negative, but it means to look in detail and talk about the good things and the bad things, about talents and difficulties, about achievements and problems.

All humans have talents. All humans have weaknesses. Those with strong talents can have strong weaknesses. No one is free of talent. No one is free of weaknesses. So we have a great opportunity, to identify the talents and to clearly see the weaknesses. There is nothing bad in this. Criticism and praise can be strong partners … and when they come together, they are much stronger and much more convincing than just one of them alone!

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God's universal view …

God sees everything. God knows our heart. He knows our mind. He knows our every word. God sees us as we are, with all our strength, with our weaknesses, with our victories and our tragedies. He knows what we will do, before we do it. He knows where we fail …

So God is the one who can fully acknowledge our efforts. He can fully judge our failures - he knows where we fail in our heart, long before our actions show where we are. He also knows where we succeed, where our fight to act according to what is just succeeds, deep in our heart. He knows!

God can truly praise us. He can truly criticize us. Since he knows. And it is good to have him, to know that we cannot hide and do not have to hide before the Lord. He is full of justice, full of mercy, full of love which saves and helps and restores! Should we not praise him? I would say that who ever gets to know the Lord, will find his heart full of praise - the surprise of praise which comes deep from within, a joy beyond everything we have ever experienced before! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts

jn_en_2012_08_29.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1