Critique or Criticise?

Here's something you probably don't know about me.
I love to read fiction.
I could walk to my local library and sit there for hours when I was a kid, I would ride my bike home with a basket full of books and sit up with a torch at night under the covers reading.  Occasionally I would find a dubious "teen" book and discuss it with Mum. I know it was her who encouraged my love of the written word.
A few years later I discovered the "Queen of Crime" Agatha Christie and I was hooked.
I love her books and am thrilled every time ABC has a telemovie on.  I try to imagine the settings (having never been to England or seen an English village) and would consider my ultimate night out to be a "murder/mystery dinner"!

After a particularly enthralling Miss Marple episode last week I tried to explain to hubby (not a reader) what my addiction was and why.  I googled Agatha Christie and tried to impress him with her many feats; being known as the best selling author of all time, writing over 80 mystery novels and many plays, being outsold only by the bible etc.  I obviously didn't impress him much as he was snoring while I was reading..........
I kept reading and googling and was a little miffed to find some negative reviews about my beloved Agatha. Mostly they were such petty things like - her famous fiction detective Hercule Poirot would have been over 100 if her novels were written chronologically (um - it's fiction!) or - she must have been racist to have referred to foreigners as "foreigners" (heaven forbid!) etc.  I found it weird that people felt that they must say something negative.  That they must criticise.

I have always been under the impression that to critique is to review or analyse something in order to make it better ie, a recipe needing a tweak, a budget that's just not working, a room in your home that is decorated all wrong, a blog post that's not quite right and you need someone to critique it for you, to let you know where you are going off course.  But that to criticise is to find fault with,  express judgments about.  At least that's what my old faithful dictionary says, but a modern google search of the word critique came up with this - "the art of criticism."  Yuk.

How awful that it's apparently no longer what you do to improve something, it's now an artform.

I've been critiqued before, in the old sense - been corrected, nudged back onto the right path, been pointed in the right direction and accepted it, knowing that it's for my own good.  I've been encouraged to try harder, go further, stretch bigger, tweak, improve, grow. Always by those who see potential in me for more.
I've also been criticised - many times, usually by those who care nothing for my improvement or for my own good!
How much more pleasant is it to accept critiquing than criticism?

Anyway, all of this to say - I am very good at criticising.
Yep. Me.
Especially at home. Finding faults. With my family.
Plop.

Praise God that there is a solution!
Prov 10: 31-32 - The Godly person gives wise advice..... The Godly speak words that are helpful.


So now my goal this week is to encourage. To nudge my children onto the right path, to direct, guide and lead. To build up and not put down. So that when they are older they will do what Agatha Christie did - ignore the critics.