I am one of those types that every Christian blog that I see (whether "conservative" or "liberal"). I like to subscribe to because I love to try to keep in touch with many traditions and lines of thinking in order to learn and change my thinking into a more Christ-like and Biblical foundation. However, in doing that I have also see my fair share of blogs that are used more to attack certain characters than it is to actually discuss theology.
There is one blog, which I will not name and I have since unsubscribed to, that most of the posts are basically accusing President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and any politician that is identified with the Republican party of evil. These attributions of evil are the wrongly judgmental type, automatically attributing the worst instead of giving the benefit of the doubt. The call as Christian to love everyone and not to harshly or hastily judge people apparently is not followed by many Christian bloggers, in politics (which I merely use as an example) or other realms such as theology.
I have also witnessed a few blogs that are explicitly about theology that denigrate people on the other side of the theological spectrum. One blog I subscribe to (haven't unsubscribed yet as it hasn't gotten my point of toleration yet) has the tendency to essentially denigrate, if not mock, creationists. It is not merely pointing out disagreements with creationists, but it goes far beyond that. It gives the appearance of intellectual superiority over those who hold creationist beliefs.
Many of the blogs I have seen appear to be more about getting onto a soap box. The occasional soap box rant is fine under certain conditions (or otherwise I am being a hypocrite right now). However, if we constantly are on the soap box, then we have to begin to wonder if we are angry people instead of being at peace. If we are constantly talking negatively about people when we do rant, we have to begin to wonder if we are judging unrighteously.
We as bloggers need to ask ourselves two questions.
First off, why are we blogging? Is it to rant? Is it to talk about how certain person are evil? Is it to show how stupid other groups are? Is it to show off how smart we are? Is it to teach, but all the meanwhile being unwilling to be taught? And so on.
Secondly, are we actually fulfilling our purpose in blogging? There is often times a vast chasm between intentions and actions. We may purpose our blog to be an edifying place to inject some of our ideas into the world all while remaining humble, but when caught up in the moment we fall short of edifying and/or humble.
Fortunately, I have found many very edifying Christian blogs out there. Chrisendom is definitely my favorite. Faith and theology is a good one. Leithart is another. Another one called Shuck and Jive for one that isn't one I see talked about or linked to from about nearly everyone (even though I am in disagreement with the blog owner in most that he writes). There are many others that I have not named but I find edifying, humble, and Christ-like in their tone. So I don't want to see that I am poo-pooing the Christian and theological blogosphere. I just honestly think there are some blogs that would best be served by not being out there.
*steps off the soap box himself, hoping he hasn't been hypocritical*
In other news, I have prepared a sermon for tomorrow about the "image of God" that I hope to write into something I can post here tomorrow. It is a synthesis of a lot of different theological opinions that I have developed over the past couple of months. Also, I want to comment on the idea of the Greek word kurios (translated as "Lord") itself being used to identify Jesus as God (inspired by Chris Tilling's series on Gordon Fee's book Pauline Theology: An Exegetical-Theological Study). But we shall see with all my reading that I have to do.
Additionally, I have found Paul Tillich's A History of Christian Thought to be a very good read so far, even though I see where he is coming from theologically and I am in sharp disagreement with his ideas in many areas (and it isn't about "correlation" since he hasn't gotten to it in what I have read, yet).
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1 comment:
Good post, and thanks for your kind words!
As for Tillich, no doubt you know that you won't be the only one to find yourself in sharp disagreement with plenty he churned out! Of all the big name theologians, I probably have less in common with him than any other - especially his Christology
All the best
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