Why Should Christians Blog?

After joining the Godblogcon team (www.godblogcon.com) where I am the Director of Marketing, I have thought a lot about the nature and beauty of blogging. Godblogcon is a conference that takes place in September at the Las Vegas Convention Center under the umbrella of Blogworld and New Media expo. GBC hopes to influence Christians bloggers by discussing ideas pertinent to well-written blogs. As I spend more time working to raise the last few thousand dollars GBC needs in sponsorships, I have realized that working with GBC has taught me way more than just business and marketing. It has enforced the idea in me that Christians should blog. There is a voice in every single one of us believers and there is an untapped market that is being tapped into with secularism, politics (this it not necessarily bad), and narcissism. What if Christians used the art of blogging to reach the ends of the earth? What if we can have our voices heard so that we may strengthen others to live better lives? Can technology really be used to fulfill the Great Commission?

As a way to pique my interest and to see which of my friends would blog; I have asked some of my friends to blog, and in return I have found that the most common response to such a request is either one has a lack of time, one rather keep his or her thoughts private, and finally, one has nothing good to talk about and he or she must wait until the perfect opportunity to drop the perfect and most thought-provoking blog ever. Ninety percent of the time, ‘lack of time’ is a poor excuse, because often we are able to fill our days with most anything that does nothing to enhance our soul. The second excuse may be the most understandable. Some people rather keep their thoughts in a private journal or keep their thoughts to themselves. I have nothing wrong with a journal. I myself try to keep one as well. This is slightly understandable because some people are often more private than others. However, the story of the parable of the talents comes to mind, and are we burying our talent or are we using our keyboard to put our thoughts on paper so that others may learn to grow in the Lord? In the end, it seems that refusing to blog because one rather be private in his spiritual journey is somewhat of a hindrance to ones spiritual growth. Much like The Picture of Dorian Gray, a blog reveals the soul of a Christian to a certain degree. Our souls are exposed like the painting of Dorian. What do others see? Do they see youth and beauty or do they see the soul wanting to be locked away out of mere astonishment of its horridness. Let us expose our thoughts if we have nothing but beauty to show. Let others see the light of Christ moving in our lives. In a way, blogging keeps one accountable to his or her spiritual growth. Moving on, the third excuse seems the most ridiculous. Rome was not built over night and even the greatest authors did not submit their best work the first time around. (Jack London’s experience in Martin Eden is an example of such). However, if you have something pertinent to say, let it be heard (This seemingly nonchalant attitude about blogging does have a danger in that it could be done poorly or in a narcissistic manner). Also, are not our thoughts to be constantly focused on the praise and love of Christ?

Narcissism is the greatest danger to blogging. Blogging is an art and like all art, it should be done well. Because a blog tends to be more subjective to one's opinion, it is easier for that person to focus on the events, musings, and ideas of his or her life rather than focusing on objective matters. Focusing on subjective matters in itself is not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be a blog if it wasn’t a single person writing about his events, musings, and ideas about life. Nevertheless, there seems to be a tendency in blogs to have narcissistic undertones. The easiest way to avoid narcissism is to write a blog in a similar manner that St. Augustine wrote Confessions. The genre of the autobiography has become very narcissistic over time, but Augustine’s confessions were nothing but praise for the Lord and His ability to direct him from wickedness to salvation. Augustine writes, “I intend to remind myself of my past foulnesses and carnal corruptions, not because I love them but so that I may love You, my God. It is from love of your love that I make the act of recollection. The recalling of my wicked ways is bitter in my memory, but I do it so that you may be sweet to me, a sweetness touched by no deception, a sweetness serene and content” (Book II). This indirectly answers my question which initially proposed me to write this blog in the first place. How are Christians supposed to blog? After all of this, I don’t believe there is a correct way for Christians to blog as long as they do it well, show no trace of narcissism, and write in a manner that glorifies God. One can write about sports and his love for sports using an appreciation of the Lord that he has created man to play sports. One can write about politics and praise the Lord that He has the world in the palm of His hand no matter who wins or loses the Presidential election. As Christians we have a great influence on who hears us and blogging is just one more venue that any person can enter. Can we reach the ends of the earth through technology? Can we influence other Christians to be better Christians? Can we in all our ignorance and simplicity be a lamp of God’s love shining brightly through the words He compels us to write and the thoughts He empowers us to think? Let not your ink run dry from your pen and let not your fingers tire from the pounding on the keyboard. May your thoughts be an eternal flame that points to the love of God. May others see Him.

Three Books Worth Reading This Summer

1. A Severe Mercy I have never been engrossed with the story of one’s life so much as I was while reading Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy. I read it during my Junior year of high school and sort of forgot about the story altogether. Then I went to a discussion on it in Berkeley and decided to peruse Sheldon Vanauken’s heartfelt story once more. Letting the pages tell the story, I remembered that it was a beautiful story that did not apply to me because I wasn’t in love. Reading it a second time through opened my eyes to the broader aspect of the story other than the near perfect love Sheldon and Davy shared. As a matter of fact, the grief aspect of the story took me to the brink of tears and as Sheldon whispers, “Oh love” many times over to Davy, I couldn’t help but to picture myself in the shoes of Vanauken as I stared down significant grief. C.S. Lewis’ surefire wisdom even falters during his own moment of grief as he experiences loss of a similar magnitude. A Severe Mercy ignites one to ask so many questions…“How are Christians supposed to love (eros)? What was good about sharing and doing everything in common? Why do we grieve death of another believer when we know their soul lies in eternal peace? How can one obtain the same inloveness that the Vanaukens obtained?”

I’d spent much time thinking about the questions the story presented without actually letting it sink into any personal application. After time passed and I thought of the story in terms of personal application, the question I found myself asking was, “What is my severe mercy?”…my shining barrier that God must rip away for me to be in complete “inloveness” with God. God had to take Davy from Sheldon so that he could grow to love God. Thus, the very thing Sheldon loved was taken away from him so that he could find True Love. Lewis says it was a severe mercy for God to do so. Severe because it was harsh? Or severe because it was absolutely and painfully necessary? God is taking something away from me that I do not want to let go and in the end, I will find it to be a severe mercy. Harsh…yet necessary. If you have not read the book, you should do so. It is good for your soul. If you have read it, than feel free to share your ideas.

2. Another great book to consider is Frederick Douglass’ Autobiography. I received this book when I was accepted to Torrey and thought, “cool book…maybe I’ll read it sometime.” In this book, I found the life of Frederick Douglass to be much like Augustine’s in Confessions. While Augustine admits that he should have “found’ Christ at a much earlier stage in life, Frederick laments the fact that God is even merciful for allowing slavery to exist. Either way, both men realize that their actions throughout the course of life were a direct result of Providence leading them to their respective state of finding Christianity. Men like Douglass motivate me to work my tail off at everything. Through his grief-ridden story, Douglass was able to find the hand of God directing him to salvation.

While the story of Douglass is compelling and heart-wrenching, the most powerful part is his appendix where he writes of slave owners, the slavery scene, and America in general, “Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer ; and at the same time they hug to their communion a man-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.

Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean, by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.

Like so many unbelievers note, Douglass states the greatest turnoff to Christianity are Christians who don’t act like Christians. Even though it is important to note that the context of Douglass’ appendix was in light of the slavery movement during America (and thus the crimes of the religious may have been more extreme), the similar could be said of Christians today. Before Vanauken was led to Christ, he writes,

"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians - when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths."

3. Job. The book of Job is terribly frightening and depressing. Depressing because Job’s laments bring sorrow to anyone’s heart. Frightening because it allowed me to realize that even though one can be entirely righteous such as Job, God can be far. In the eyes of God, Job was blameless (1:1). When calamity struck Job, he stated, “The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this, Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (1:22). Nevertheless as Job cries out for the Lord to be with him and he cries out for the Lord to have mercy, the Lord does not respond. It may be one of those remarks such as, “The Lord answers prayer with Yes, No, or Wait…” But here was a completely blameless man seeking the will of God and desperately looking for the hope in God, and yet God did not comfort Job in his grief and sorrow. It is utterly frightening and completely appalling. There are times when we can try utter hardest to search for God, and yet He feels so distant. Is this a result of our own spiritual slothfulness? Or must we be patient and wait on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31)? Job was eventually blessed…but it seemed completely despairing that a completely righteous man such as Job called for comfort and received none. The point of this is not to say that God is distant from us…but it is to note that God will test us and will maybe even be far from us no matter how desperate are cries are. Seek the Lord and you will be find Him. Continuously seek the Lord and you will retain Him.

Dreaming of the Osaka Sun

I have recently taken a liking to reading and writing poetry. I am still learning how to do both well for I believe reading and writing poetry could quite possibly be one of the most difficult things to do well. I have recently been thinking about how I often care too much about my own satisfaction without caring about others. I realize that there is a lot of pain in the world and that I cannot serve everyone all at once, but I believe one thing I can do to take a step in the right direction is to care less about myself and more of others. Our theology must become our doxology and in the end, knowledge can be dangerous if we do not apply it to living well. “Much will be required from everyone to whom much has been given. But even more will be demanded from the one to whom much has been entrusted." - Luke 12:48. In the end, I feel that the more knowledge I obtain through my education at college, the more I am to serve in some way. I am not exactly sure how this looks like quite yet, but pray that I receive this understanding.

One thousand tears fall silently to the ground,
Dropping like lead weights that make no sound,
I walk past each falling tear and trudge along life,
Singing my own tune and exaggerating my trivial strife,

The children are crying while the mothers beg for food,
Agony strikes at the heart and yet fortune eludes,
I ignore each pang of their heart and trudge along life,
Singing my own tune and exaggerating my trivial strife,

Years pass and lust finds the virgin at fifteen,
And one more soul is added to the pregnancy scene,
I scorn their sin and help not as I trudge along life,
Singing my own tune and exaggerating my trivial strife,

Separation strikes when the rose petals are crushed to the floor,
The father who once loved his wife cannot love anymore,
I pity the children who go unloved and trudge along life,
Singing my own tune and exaggerating my trivial strife,

An aspiring young artist is deceived by false beauty,
As his sown seeds are swallowed by the sea,
He becomes the dried out fruit that perishes on the tree,
And he dies begging the Lord for some mercy,

In the end there is something more than trivialities,
Especially when life is nothing but reality,
And all we can do is watch brutality become mortality,
Yet we looking close our eyes as if it is all normality,

1st Post: Peeling Skin

Summer has been peaceful. There is a consistent cycle of sleeping in late, reading books, and eating home cooked food. As I was reading the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a conversion that Eustace experiences. C.S. Lewis describes it as peeling back layers of skin. It was a painful process but it was a necessary process. My layers of sin are being continually peeled back and as I fall into a state of perpetual sin, I have realized that I can no longer do the peeling, but I must rely on my Lord to peel back my skin.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot is prayer and how I don’t do it enough. It is cliché to say I don’t pray enough, but the quantity of prayer isn’t even what I am talking about. I speak about the quality of a prayer. More often than not, a prayer is something that I do subconsciously and it is not something I immerse myself in. I find that I can immerse myself into my friends, my reading, my daily activities, but I find it difficult to immerse myself into my communication with my Lord. Augustine’s Confessions was really an acknowledgement of praise and his book became an auto-biography of praise. How much of our daily time is spent confessing or praising or thanking God? When we do ask for supplementary needs, how much time are we praying for ourselves and how often are we praying for others? It seems that our lives should be a constant revelation of God’s grace in our lives. It is quite difficult for me to live in this manner. I fear that the more difficult this becomes, the closer I approach the danger of spiritual sloth.

After taking business classes at Biola, I have acknowledged that ethical dilemmas are a part of business. People say that business is a lucrative field. It is that, but it is also a very ethically challenging field. Yesterday as I was serving beer to clearly plastered customers, I was presented with an ethical dilemma that I hadn’t really thought about. It suddenly struck me that a beer I was serving could be the beer that kills an innocent driver on the road. A friend of mine said that they are responsible for their actions and it is their free will to choose. Yes, but at what point are we (who have a clear conscious) responsible for their actions and at what point should we have stopped selling beer to drunk customers even if it meant less business? I can’t say that it surprised me to see so many people throwing their lives away on $8.75 beer cups, but I would say that it surprised me to see me selling them something I only knew would hurt them.

I shall have to end my first post abruptly. But before I go I want to add that I wish you all would blog. I think it is absolutely amazing to be able to share in each other’s lives and to be able to delve into each other’s lives. I shall hope to update this somewhat frequently, although I cannot promise to update as frequently as you all shall like.