I am starting this blog for a few reasons.
- Truncation is the rule of social media, like it or not. Blogs, however, have no such expectation.
- Controlled comments. Way more conducive to charity, clarity, and constructive criticism.
- Prose tends to be more coherent and conversational on a blog than on social media.
- A blog has staying power when Facebook and Twitter go the way of Myspace and AskJeeves.
- But mostly, I’m excited to start a blog so I can abruptly abandon it later. Fingers crossed!
But between now and the time I inevitably forsake this endeavor to the cobwebs, I anticipate updating this blog regularly with mental meanderings, cultural critiques, boring bloviations, and difficult dilemmas. I like asking questions that we’re not allowed to ask and dissecting things that aren’t supposed to be dissected. I like digging deep into the dark and dicey topics that have no clear answers, and I believe we shouldn’t be afraid of this task. “The truth will out,” as Shakespeare so rightly asserted, and that should be our goal: the truth. No matter what it costs us.
Speaking of which…
Now might be a good time to let you know that I’m a Christian. Let me just get ahead of the objection and confess that, as far as my reasons go, it’s not because it’s just so dang easy to believe. Because it’s really not. Not for me, anyway. It probably doesn’t help that I live in the most atheistic region of the United States, which has long declared Christianity to be not only untenable, but harmful and oppressive. To make things worse, I was born into a Western culture that is increasingly saturated with an outlandish amalgamation of modernism and postmodernism, both vying for prominence while masquerading as immutable companions that have been with us since the beginning. And to top it all off, I consider myself a very, very skeptical person. I mean — a talking snake?
So no, my reason for being a Christian isn’t because I’m gullible or conditioned to believe things without evidence, as is so often claimed by many outside the faith. Nor have I chosen to simply pretend that the hard parts of the Bible and the faith don’t exist. In reality, I recognize there’s a lot of roadblocks to navigate in the robust realm of religion, but I ultimately remain of the persuasion that the Christian faith — when correctly understood and properly practiced — is altogether true, and is the solution to the problems that we humans have done an excellent job creating, and yes, provides the hope of redemption in Christ.
Where was I?
Well, that was an unexpected excursus. But a profitable and purposeful one, I think, even if it does sound a bit like I’m protesting too much, to borrow from Shakespeare yet again.
I look forward to this. I hope to integrate my podcast, simply titled “Equipoise,” into my blog in the near future. I’ve been doing well at keeping up with that, even if I have missed a week or two here and there due to the business of life, family, and all that comes with pastoring a church. When all is well and things are normal, I do release a new episode of the podcast each Sunday evening, and each episode serves to bring some balance and understanding to issues that are sometimes divisive, particularly in the Christian faith.
I look forward to writing another entry soon. I hope you will enjoy this blog as much as I expect I’ll enjoy writing it.
