Self-Critical Thinking
The Hebrew prophets do not hesitate to criticize their religious tradition, even while loving it. Father Richard shows how they help us to incorporate the shadow side of reality:
The Hebrew prophets are in a category of their own. Within the canonical, sacred scriptures of other world religions we don’t find major texts that are largely critical of that religion. The Hebrew prophets were free to love their tradition and to criticize it at the same time, which is a very rare art form. One of the most common judgments I hear from other priests is, “You criticize the Church.” But criticizing the Church, as such, is just being faithful to the pattern set by the prophets and Jesus. That’s exactly what they did (see Matthew 23). The only question is whether one does it in a negative way or in a way that is faithful to God. I pray that I am doing the second. You pray too!
The presumption for most people is that if we criticize something, then it means we don’t love it. Wise people like the prophets would say the opposite. The Church’s sanctification of the status quo reveals that we have not been formed by the prophets, who were radical precisely because they were traditionalists. Institutions always want loyalists and “company men”; we don’t want prophets. We don’t want people who point out our shadow side. It is no accident that the prophets and the priests are usually in opposition to one another (see Amos 5:21–6:7, 7:10–17). I think it is fair to say that the prophetic charism was repressed in almost all Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity. None of us have been known for criticizing ourselves. We only criticize one another, sinners, and heretics—who were always elsewhere! Yet Paul says the prophetic gift is the second most important charism for building up of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). [1]
We have to experience the negative side of reality along with the positive. No wonder we split, avoid, and deny. No wonder we prefer abstract ideas, where we can dismiss the unacceptable material. But the Hebrew Scriptures amazingly incorporate the negative. Jesus does the same when he is “tempted by the devil for forty days” (Luke 4:2). The Jewish people, against all odds, kept their complaining and avoiding, and kept their arrogant and evil kings and their very critical public prophets inside of their Bible. [2]
Of course, there is such a thing as negative criticism and positive criticism. I think we can feel the difference on the level of energy. When we read the spare, unfiltered texts of the prophets, some of them sound negative, as does Jesus, too. But my assumption is that this criticism comes from a primary positive encounter with Divine Reality. We see this in other parts of their lives and writings. The positive energy is the overriding experience. [3]
[49] The Same
The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.
Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 26-27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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