"Whoever heeds life-giving correction will be at home among the wise" (Proverbs 15:31). Criticism can sting, crush or harden us. It can also make us better. Much depends on how we receive it, and on what kind of critics we choose to become.
These four stories about criticism, retold in our own words, look at both sides. Two are about people who were criticised: one turned the hurt into revenge, the other turned it into growth. Two are lighter stories about the kind of critic nobody wants to be. Each ends with a takeaway for preaching or reflection.
Stories in this post:
- The Greatest Forger: When Criticism Turns Into Revenge
- Ole Bull: The Violinist Who Asked His Critic for Help
- "Not Much of a Dog": The Critic Who Cannot Be Pleased
- The Complaining Monk: Two Words a Year
The Greatest Forger: When Criticism Turns Into Revenge
This is a true story. We have corrected one detail from the version often told: the painting sold to the Nazis was not The Supper at Emmaus but a later forgery.
It was perhaps the greatest hoax in the history of art. Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter with a grudge. In the years before the Second World War, critics savaged his exhibitions. One is said to have described him as a gifted technician who had produced a kind of composite copy of the Renaissance school, a man with every virtue except originality.
Stung by the criticism, van Meegeren decided to strike back. He would prove that the experts did not know what they were talking about. Working in secret, he painted a religious scene in the style of the great seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, using old canvas and paint he hardened with heat so that it would look centuries old. He called it The Supper at Emmaus, and it was presented to the leading Vermeer expert of the day, Abraham Bredius.
Bredius took the bait completely. In 1937 he wrote that it was a wonderful moment in the life of an art lover to be suddenly confronted with an unknown painting by a great master. He went further, calling it perhaps the masterpiece of Vermeer of Delft. The art world gasped. The painting was bought for a fortune, the equivalent of millions of dollars today, and hung in pride of place at the Boijmans museum in Rotterdam.
Van Meegeren later said he had planned to expose the forgery publicly, humiliate his critics and destroy their reputations. But greed got the better of him. Instead of revealing the hoax, he painted more fake Vermeers and sold them for huge sums. During the war he even sold one of them, Christ and the Adulteress, to the Nazi leader Hermann Göring.
That sale almost destroyed him. After the war, the Allies were determined to return the art the Nazis had taken to its rightful owners. A paper trail from Göring's collection led investigators to van Meegeren's door. They wanted to know where he had obtained a Dutch national treasure. Unwilling at first to tell the truth, he was arrested and charged with collaborating with the enemy, a crime that could carry the death penalty.
Sitting in prison and facing ruin, van Meegeren finally confessed: the paintings were not Vermeers at all; he had painted them himself. But nobody believed him. The experts insisted the works were genuine. The only way to prove his claim was to paint another fake under the eyes of witnesses. So he did, spending weeks painting a new "Vermeer", quite literally painting for his life.
The final twist is that van Meegeren was cleared of the treason charge and, for a while, became something of a national hero. He was the man who had fooled the Nazis. As The Telegraph later recounted, he was still tried for forgery and fraud in 1947 and sentenced to a year in prison, but he died before serving his sentence.
Takeaway: Van Meegeren let criticism become a wound, the wound became bitterness, and the bitterness grew into a life built on deception. Criticism we refuse to learn from can still shape us, just in the wrong direction. "Do not repay anyone evil for evil" (Romans 12:17). Is there a criticism you are still trying to prove wrong, and what is it costing you?
Source: "The forger who fooled the world," The Telegraph, 5 August 2006, and standard accounts of the van Meegeren case.
Ole Bull: The Violinist Who Asked His Critic for Help
The outline of Ole Bull's early life is well documented, but we have not been able to verify the details of the encounter with the Milan critic. It is told here as it is usually told.
How a person reacts to criticism can make the difference between success and failure. Take the case of Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist of the nineteenth century.
Ole Bull was born in Bergen in 1810. His father, a practical man, wanted him to enter the church and sent him to the university in Christiania (now Oslo) to study for the ministry. He also forbade him to play his beloved violin. Ole promptly failed his examinations and, defying his father, poured all his time and energy into music instead.
He had enormous natural ability, but his teachers had been relatively unskilled. By the time he set out on his first concert tour, he simply was not ready.
In Italy, a newspaper critic in Milan was blunt. He wrote that Bull was an untrained musician. If he was a diamond, the critic said, he was certainly a diamond in the rough, and unpolished.
Ole Bull could have reacted to that review in two ways. He could have let it make him angry, or he could have learned from it. He chose to learn.
He went to the newspaper office and asked to meet the critic. The astonished editor introduced them. Bull spent the whole evening with the seventy-year-old critic, asking him about his faults and seeking his advice on how to correct them.
Then he did something even harder. He cancelled the rest of his tour, went home, and spent the next six months studying under genuinely able teachers. He practised for hours on end to overcome his weaknesses.
Finally he returned to the concert stage. And by the time he was only twenty-six, he had become the sensation of Europe.
Takeaway: Ole Bull treated his harshest critic as a teacher rather than an enemy. It cost him his pride, a tour and six months of hard work, and it made him great. "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid" (Proverbs 12:1). Is there a critic in your life you need to sit down with and ask, "What am I getting wrong?"
Source: Unknown; widely told in collections of illustrations. Biographical background from standard accounts of Ole Bull's life.
"Not Much of a Dog": The Critic Who Cannot Be Pleased
This is a humorous story, not a true account.
There was once a cheerful farmer who could not wait to greet each new day with a booming, "Good morning, God!" Unfortunately, he lived next door to a woman whose morning greeting was more like, "Good God... morning?"
They were a constant trial to each other. Where he saw opportunity, she saw problems. Where he was satisfied, she was discontented.
One bright morning he called out to her, "Look at that beautiful sky! Did you see that glorious sunrise?"
"Yeah," she replied. "It'll probably get so hot the crops will scorch."
One afternoon a shower of rain began to fall. "Isn't this wonderful?" he said. "Mother Nature is giving the corn a drink today!"
"And if it doesn't stop soon," came the sour reply, "we'll be wishing we'd taken out flood insurance on the crops."
The farmer became determined to stir up some sense of awe and wonder in his neighbour's hardened heart. So he bought a remarkable dog. Not just any dog, but the most expensive, highly trained and gifted dog he could find. The animal was magnificent. It could perform astonishing, seemingly impossible feats, and the farmer was sure that even his neighbour would be amazed. So he invited her over to watch the dog perform.
He picked up a stick and threw it far out into the lake, where it bobbed up and down on the rippling water. "Fetch!" he commanded.
The dog bounded after the stick, walked across the surface of the water, picked it up and walked back.
"What do you think of that?" the farmer asked, beaming.
His neighbour frowned. "Not much of a dog," she said. "Can't even swim, can he?"
Takeaway: Some critics will find a fault in a miracle. It is worth asking whether we ever sound like the neighbour, so fixed on what is wrong that we cannot see what is wonderful. Paul urges us to fill our minds with "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable" (Philippians 4:8). When you look at the people and gifts around you, what do you notice first?
Source: Unknown.
The Complaining Monk: Two Words a Year
This is a humorous story, not a true account.
A man once joined a monastery with a very strict rule. The monks were allowed to speak only two words a year, and those two words could be spoken only to the abbot.
At the end of each year, every monk was given an audience with the abbot to say his two words. Naturally, everyone expected these precious words to be something profound, a phrase like "Jesus loves" or some other eternal truth.
At the end of his first year, the new monk stood before the abbot and said, "Bed hard."
At the end of his second year, he said, "Food bad."
At the end of his third year, his two words were, "I quit."
"I'm not surprised," said the abbot. "You've done nothing but complain ever since you came here."
Takeaway: When words are scarce, we find out what we really value. This monk spent his entire allowance on complaints. Criticism of everything around us can become a habit that crowds out gratitude and praise. "Do everything without grumbling or arguing" (Philippians 2:14). If you only had two words to say this year, what would they be?
Source: Unknown.
Final thoughts
A forger who let criticism turn into revenge, a violinist who let it turn into growth, a neighbour who could find fault with a miracle, and a monk who spent his rare words on complaints. Together, these stories about criticism ask two questions: how do we take it, and how do we give it?
Is there a criticism you need to receive humbly this week, or one you need to stop handing out?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.