Christian Blogging

Here is a must read article my buddy Ryan Kearns has written on Christian blogging.

"Good grief. I am glad I don't read the web very much. I would sin with anger too much. "Roaring debate" !-- these people have too much time on their hands."
                                                                             John Piper

It has been some time since I have thrown a post up. Honestly I have just been bombarded in life over the last few weeks. Usually when this happens my natural instinct is just to go into survival mode and just try to keep my head above water each day. My semester has turned out to be quite back loaded and I am really paying the price for that right now. I have a few more weeks in which I really need to run hard and finish strong and then I can begin to catch my breath. In the midst of all this I have been trying to keep first things first and consistently hang out with Jesus. I have been praying a lot recently and just wanting God to stir my affections for him. My heart is easily hardened and when it is the rest of me suffers because I have stopped battling sin, replenishing grace, and finding rest in Jesus.

Along that note one of the most harmful things I think we can do at times is blog. This could be writing on one's own blog, as you try to think of something creative and funny to say. This could be reading blogs that you like/dislike/why the hell am I reading this? as doing so can take your focus away from the good works that God has prepared for you to do. And last you can even post comments on blogs, this is hardly ever goes well. I imagine it is a lot like what frat guys think when they have a one night stand with the crazy needy girl who they know they should stay away from. That night with the cheap beer flowing and the beer goggles in full effect you throw caution into the wind and say "ah this won't end so bad, in fact I think this will turn out well." This is foolish thinking. The frat guy wakes up in the morning with a raging headache wondering what the hell he just did, and a crazy girl who is making his life miserable. This can be like commenting on blogs especially if it is on something controversial. Then you are just asking for it. You may as well just schedule your STD test down at the free clinic right then.

Anyway, I am re-thinking blogging in many ways because of experiences like this. I have a few conclusions that I have come to. No matter what the form of communication that blogging is, automatically gives to people distorting and manipulating another person's words in order to make their point. Yeah yeah I know this should not happen on Christian blogs, but it does there more than anywhere else probably. On secular blogs you can just say "Hey F@#k you!" when you do not like what someone says. In the Christian blog world you have to be much more sly then that. You have to be passive aggressive make the other person out to be an idiot pull quotes out of their comment and then find ways to deconstruct them. Oh yes this is Christian blogging when it comes to controversial matters. In many ways I think I would just perfer the "F@%K you!" on a secular blog. These threads will then begin to just spiral out of control and fall way off course of what they were intended to discuss. One more thing unless you are bald guy in your fifties, and have a docile personality do not speak of being "generous" either. Giving people grace, and trying to really use our brains to understand what they are saying is too much to ask for.

So I conclude what should Christians who want to love Jesus and advance the Kingdom do? Well I think it to be unwise to just retreat from blogdom this is what the Amish and quakers do when they do not like how culture and its communication forms evolve, they just say, "Hey F&$k it, we are just going to make butter and wear overalls." Sometimes I think I can understand this mentality and wonder if it would be so bad to just be Amish. Then I remember that we can not run from the world and times that God has placed us in. Blogging is here to stay, it is a reality that we as pastors will have to interact and deal with for the rest of our lives and ministry. Yet I think since it is so hostile to good honest dialouge we should be slow to participate in the mayhem (I am mainly speaking to myself here.) Becasue blogging has this tendency to bring out the worst in a lot of Christians. There is no way half of us would say to another person face to face what we say on a blog. I think this should be a rule we try to abide by as we blog, "Would I say this to their face?" If we can answer yes then I think we are doing pretty good. There is much more to throw out there about this subject but this is just some stuff of the top of my head. I threw the Piper quote at the top because it made me realize that Piper does not even blog but still knows more about it than most of us who do, and because I could just imagine him dropping F bombs as he furiously rebutted stupid people all across Christian blogdom."

Amen Ryan, Amen.

Blessings,
Matt

Comments

[Jake]

F@#K YOU!

Just kidding. Interesting, though it does make me a bit timid to comment...

However, as C.S. Lewis says, that which can bring about a lot of bad can also bring about a lot of good. I've read some blogs that have changed the way I have thought about things. I think it's the whole in the world and not of it scenario. How do we do it? One blog at a time my friend, one blog at a time.

[tom schmidt]

Very insightful

[ryan]

Tim Keller quote on Blogging:

After several years of reading blogs I conclude that these sharp exchanges between people with different points of view almost always generate far, far more heat than light. Blogs seem to best for helping like-minded people to share information and to mildly revise one another's thinking. Alan Jacobs (in an article on weblogs in May/June 2006 Books and Culture) said that blogs are 'the friend of information, but the enemy of thought.' I absolutely love blogs for getting news and opinion of all kinds, but the 'dialogues' are generally unhelpful. I'm sure everyone can point to one or two exceptions. But most of these interactions toward the pro- and anti-emergent caucuses usually just polarize people.

[Joe Schmoe]

In the middle of your fourth paragraph, what is "Becasue blogging"? Is that a new type of blogging?

[Josh]

I think if the goal of a Christian's blog is to share spiritual insight, then let he or she build their readers up. One can have the heated debates over controversial stuff, not on a blog, but maybe while lunching or an organized discussion. As long as others are reading what I have to say about Jesus, then let it be good stuff that makes them say "amen"!

[Nate Myers]

Now that the rant's over...can we talk?

Any time someone pops thoughts up like that, it'll make anyone timid to have conversations and even challenge one another. I disagree with the general sentiment here; maybe because I'm still a relative newbie when it comes to the blogosphere (approaching a year).

If one applies the let's-avoid-passive-
aggressiveness-clothed-in-religious-language approach each time, steps back and takes account, maybe lets the emotions settle down a bit, then responds; we might have some solid conversations over issues.

Maybe I'm just not as cynical as your friend, but blogging has expanded my world and my thinking tremendously. It is a tremendous resource.

[matt]

Jake: you timid to comment? What?

Mr. Shmoe: to point out gramatical errors is either a funny joke, or a great example for Ryan's point.

Nate: well said about Ryan's tone. In fairness to Ryan, that was not a public article. I made it public (perhaps further justifying his point). However, I would encourage you to technorati "mark driscoll" (focus on posts from about a week or two ago) and see if you still hold to your point.

Thanks for the comments all, good stuff. I promise to write more soon.

[Nate Myers]

Oh, I've seen ye olde Driscoll's consistent rhetoric, Matt...and I still stand by my point.

Isn't it always true that a few bad apples can mess with the whole bunch (sure, I altered the metaphor a bit, but work with me) or at the very least, draw the attention off the good, ripe ones to their foul stench? There's always plenty of folks really wanting to learn...it's having to sift through the rigid, elitist, blathering, hard-of-hearing folks that can be frustrating as all get out sometimes (I'm sure I've fallen into that crowd before at times).

Maybe what I'm ultimately trying to say is that we all fall flat on our faces from time to time and makes total jerks out of ourselves...but should that reality drive us to throw out the baby with the bathwater? Or should it drive us to continue making steps in the arena of our mistakes...just like what is demanded of us in "real" life?

I can't run away from my personality deficiencies in my daily personal reactions, so why should I do it in the blogosphere? Maybe some targeted withdrawals for periods of time to regain perspective could be in order if one sees themselves falling. I dunno; that might be a more effective alternative?

[ryan]

Nate Once again I would just point you to the Keller quote that I put up above. It is not that I am anti-blogging it is just that I do not find it to be the most conducive forum for theological conversations. Two more things.

1. This is not meant to be mean or elitist, but many people commenting on blogs, are horrible at basic logic. Comments and responses are littered with fallacies and it bogs down the entire process of trying to have good arguments. D.A. Carson's book "Exegetical Fallacies" should be read by all before seriously entering the blog world.

2. By way of another analogy, and try not to deconstruct it to far. Blogging can be a lot like driving a car on the free way in Las Vegas, people will act, and respond in ways they never otherwise would. Seriously I have had people try and run me off the road in Las Vegas or run me into an oncoming traffic. Now I doubt if I was standing next to them and having a conversation they would have so little regard for my well being. Blogging can sometimes be like this, as we create modes of communication that are impersonal in some aspects and move away from face to face dialouge people will often do what they otherwise would not.

[matt]

Personally I feel like a moth to the flame with blog posting. It looks so exciting and intruiging and I cannot help but join in. Then I feel burned and terrible, swear I never do it again. Then Bob Hyatt posts on Complementarianism vs. Egalalitarianism, and I'm back.

Also, for those of you who have never driven in Vegas, Ryan's analogy was dead on. Sometimes when my wife is driving across town I get scared and turn into a Charasmatic prayer warrior.