Wednesday, January 04, 2006
GodBlogging - For Better Or Worse?
SmartChristian linked to this post at the CT Blog and quoted it extensively. The writer - Craig Bloomberg of Denver Seminary - is wondering if blogging is good for the church.
I guess my general comment on this question would be that "democratization" of information like seen in the blogosphere is in the tradtion of the Reformation. Christ entrusted the building of His church to some relatively uneducated fishermen, not the religious leadership of the time. We see Paul tackling heresy in his letters, they are as old as the church, which means there were a lot of people "jumping on the bandwagon" and pouring out junk in the name of Christ even a scant few years after the Ascension. Yes, there is "danger" in Christian blogging, but there is danger in all Christian activity.
Good thing there is a Holy Spirit.
Besides, what messages are we sending when we allow bloggers or those who respond to them to post almost any linguistic utterance at will for all the world to read? To the undiscriminating, surely the answer is that even the most meaningless, intimate, hateful, crude or careless thought deserves an outlet enabling others to talk back. From a non-theological perspective, this is the ultimate demeaning of human language. From a Christian perspective, it may be an offense to the Word who alone gives human communication grace. But then, you might not be reading these words if it weren?t for a blog site. So am I overreacting?On the one hand, there is a lot of rotten GodBlogging out there, maybe even on this blog from time to time. On the other hand I have read more "good stuff" in a week reading Christian blogs than I have gotten out of most congregations in a year.
I guess my general comment on this question would be that "democratization" of information like seen in the blogosphere is in the tradtion of the Reformation. Christ entrusted the building of His church to some relatively uneducated fishermen, not the religious leadership of the time. We see Paul tackling heresy in his letters, they are as old as the church, which means there were a lot of people "jumping on the bandwagon" and pouring out junk in the name of Christ even a scant few years after the Ascension. Yes, there is "danger" in Christian blogging, but there is danger in all Christian activity.
Good thing there is a Holy Spirit.
