What the Thunder Said...

I apologize for an overly long sabbatical from my blogging privileges. Apparently, I haven't blogged since Christmas Eve, and you can imagine how the affront is all mine... really this time. Though I never thought about giving up, it was a nice break. Strangely, my thinking and desire to output hasn't slowed, but the difficulty of actually hacking out the posts and dealing with the techno-stress was nice to silently observe for awhile. There were more reasons for my absence than simply overly observing the 12 days of Christmas, and those will come out more and more in the future (not to be cryptic or anything).

But let me start with one of the main lacunae. As with all things, though especially our Christian walk, we are to examine and test our motives from time to time (II Corinthians 13; which I hear Ben tied into his II Cor 5:21 sermon). I had not taken ample time to do so with blogging, and so felt compelled. On occasion I've been known to be downright dogmatic on this outlet, and whether I am entitled to do so accompanied by my skill in ability to do so are not so crystal clear. Blogs, for the writer and reader, tend to can be a colossal waste of time, which is not loving for my neighbor and not loving to God for myself. So I wanted to properly examine this phenomenon in my life, rather than bull rush as I am wont to do.

Conspiring with this rising inner suspicion have been several well-written blog entries helping me to think more clearly or and critically about appropriate blogging. First was a series of entries by Mr. Bob Kauflin of Sovereign Grace (PDI). He leads worship at Covenant Life Church (where Rev. C.J. Mahaney and now Mr. Josh Harris lead the flock) and runs his blog Worship Matters.

Side note: growing up, my dad loved the a capella group GLAD, which was comprised of four men roughly his age singing music he loved. I think I was about to go through my punk rawk music stage, which would have meant I definitely was not interested. Bringing things full circle, however, shows that Mr. Bob Kauflin was actually one of the original members of GLAD, and then wrote and arranged music for them. Now both my dad and I love Mr. Kauflin's contributions to corporate worship. Looks like father knows best after all.

Anyway, so Mr. Kauflin released a three-post series entitled Blogging To Worship God, which I think a perfectly reasonable and necessary title for things we ought to be pondering anyway. The three posts rotated around three themes respectively: Content, Attitudes, and Motives. During his discussion on Content, Mr. Kauflin’s attitude toward blogging is refreshingly reductionistic: “Blogging may seem relatively new, but it's simply another outlet for glorifying God or something else. Let’s make sure it’s the Savior who's being honored by what we do both on and off the Internet.” His post regarding Attitudes I thought noble considering some of the seeming bitter comment-skirmishes between various parties, where it is difficult to cultivate humility. His post on Motives struck the closest to home, and caused me to do the most reflecting.

Labels: blogging, theology