A critic’s gratitude

As an academic, I freely admit that people in my profession share a rather unattractive quality: we are terribly critical. Worse, we tend to approach life in general from a critical posture. We get out of bed with criticism. We eat critically. And we retire for the night with criticism haunting our dreams.

How often have I settled down with Nancy to watch a period film, only to become distracted from the plot by what to me is an obvious historical error or anachronism. Of course, I have to mention it on the spot. Even in an exhaustively researched historical monograph, I tend to fixate on the misfires, a skill undoubtedly developed during three decades of marking student papers. Given that Nancy and I are both academics, we easily feed each other’s critical inclinations. Obviously we’re quite the fun couple at cocktail parties.

Academic heritage

There is ample precedent for our shared predilection. The Socratic method calls for gauging the truth of a proposition by endlessly poking holes in it. Small wonder the Athenians condemned Socrates as an intolerable irritant. Immanuel Kant wrote his three critiques – of pure reason, practical reason and judgement. My first book is a “Christian Critique of Political Ideologies.”

Moreover, we hear a lot these days about various critical disciplines: critical legal studies, critical race theory, critical pedagogy and critical policy analysis. Students are taught to think critically, and the more academic degrees they acquire, the more critical they become, undoubtedly further endearing them to their friends and families.

Where to begin

But what if we were to begin, not with criticism, but with gratitude? The small child starts life with a sense of wonder at all the new things she sees around her. She is delighted at her first opportunity to pet a dog, at the taste of ice cream, at the comfort of her mother’s embrace. We are born into a world that we did not make, to parents we did not choose. We are born citizens of a country and, as Christians, members of a church community, heirs to God’s promises made at our baptisms.

For two millennia many Christians have begun the day with Psalm 95: “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving to God is a major theme in the Bible. The third part of the Heidelberg Catechism is titled “Gratitude,” or “Thankfulness,” affirming that “in all our living we . . . show that we are thankful to God for all he has done for us” (Q&A 36).

There is, of course, a place for criticism – for analyzing and identifying flaws, and, we hope, correcting them. But we can’t start there. We must begin – if it’s not too awkward an expression – with an attitude of gratitude: thanks be to God!