The Foundation of Christic Criticism

Sunday, May 17, 2015

In order to make the teachings of Jesus a method of critical engagement similar to feminism, Marxism, etc., we need to lay the foundations—foundations which are definitely moral, but which essentially focus the attention, providing a lens through which to look at the world.

I think those foundations begin by seeing everything as religion: as the ancient Hebrews were surrounded by false gods that distracted them from worshipping the Lord of Creation, so today we have many ideas—false gods—which distract us from worshipping the true source of moral authority, the Creator.

Sometimes the worship of these ideas supplants the worship of the Creator; sometimes, the worship becomes a fusion, a cooperative form of worship that might best be described as a “pantheon” 

However, as Christ declared, no man can serve two masters. This, then, is point one of a Christic Criticism: seeing the way that ideas become an “god principle” in modern discourse, god principles that one must serve with all one’s heart, might, mind, and strength. Where does one’s loyalty lie?

The second principle of a Chrisitic criticism would be following Christ’s example in gethsemane: when he wanted to avoid the pain of his atoning sacrifice, rather than allowing the “natural man” to inform his decision and avoiding what needed to be done, he submitted to the will of God. Now, everyone submits to the will of some god or other—even if that god is only an idea, a “god principle”—but a Christic criticism will attempt to sift through the variety of ideas—the spirits that have gone abroad in the earth—to discover what gods are being worshipped in a given case so that a person can see more clearly how to choose between God and mammon.