No one must blog anymore than anyone must read a blog. If a blogger has nothing to say, he/she should not feel obligated to say it.
A blog is much like a credit card. A credit card is good to use for credit but very bad to use for debt. When one allows a thirty day credit account to become a high-interest debt, it is not the "same as cash." A blog can be a good place to visit friends, venture out with thoughts and write about things that concern us. When a blog becomes a mandatory daily exercise tied to a high hit count it may lose its value.
For instance, aintsobad is a Christian-based blog with certain standards of investigation and comment that would be unacceptable elsewhere. If Christianity itself is seen as unacceptable and unanswerable the only motivation to try it (as to read aintsobad) is individual need. That is, to come to Christ (and remain and grow; to convert) is the result when one finds something of personal value. Psychologists study "conversion" syndrome, only to find one can describe the incident of conversion much more readily than plumb the depths of its issues. Long-term conversion differs as much from short-term conversion (attention getting, escape, release of anxiety) as night does from day.
When men reject the old Calvinism, for instance, we believe we decide against fatalism, when, in fact, we actually make a memory of providence. In providence, God is not so much a determinist as a history-arranger. So long as I am revealing my absolutist stance, let me say the providential answer is the "only way" to answer the skeptic's questions about life, including destiny.
That is, in the face of tragedy of epic proportions, or sin of heinous portent, or atrocity of colossal potence, the skeptic accepts no answer. The providentialist we leave to hold the proverbial bag. He must come to some answer. The skeptic may stop at the grave. The providentialist must wrestle with the horrors men impose on men and nature.
The difference between the skeptic, the fatalist and the providentialist may simply be seen as this: the providentialist sees what occurs as a result of action dependent on the intention of a determinative being with an active will, interrelative to the variables of human thought. The skeptic sees a random universe, the fatalist sees coming anarchy/catastrophe (easy enough to expect in this sphere) as the expected end to every action.
No? There is a 5.8 billion dollar supercollider about to be turned on in France after twenty plus years of construction. Some believe the natural consequence of enacting the collider will be the creation of a black-hole that will inhale all of earth and indeed, the solar system, if not the galaxy. Talk about your fatalism. Trust the French to destroy the earth.
If the earth will die in August, perhaps one could invest in some personal pleasures in July. What happens, however, to paraphrase the old song, if I see you in September?
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong but that is always the way to bet. Don't bet on an early or easy end. You are more likely to live longer out in eternity than in time now.
So, Christians do more than villify evil for the sake of a skeptical good conscience, if Christ-like we be in truth. Christians war against evil, in word and deed. We invoke the terrible justice of God against evil, our own, or borrowed evil.
Why may we (must we) do so? We may because the "judgements of the Lord are true and righteous." We must (or may) because the attributes we see in God are those we wish to see in ourselves and in our fellows.
Any life, then, is privilege. Any corrective is obligation but joyful obligation. The first is the wind and the latter the whirlwind. We start in the wind. We calm the whirlwind.
Aintsobad is one of those intolerant, exclusive screeds one keeps as a "guilty pleasure," I think. We argue here for Christian conversion and cannot wait to see it occur among Christians. Our thoughts move toward that purpose, regardless the direction our reading or experience takes us.
*For the sake of readers who find me somewhat wordy, please understand I had time to revise this post and deleted fifty words.
*No dictionaries were injured during the writing of this post.
I rarely comment - often read and find these words today to be some of the most enjoyable.
Posted by: Eric | July 01, 2008 at 08:55 AM