The Christian blog world out there is BIG and biased. I am getting increasingly frustrated and depressed at the limited number of issues and topics covered in the more prominent blogs. The trend of “this fellow wrote this and i disagree and so he is to be crucified and here’s why” is really going over board even in the blogs I list as my top reads. This trend is sickening. While i know and accept that truth must be defended, I think we are going way over board. The problem is at the end of the lengthy “theological” analysis and comments, I cannot be sure what I learnt form it and what added to my spiritual life. Instead I learn a lot about what some old scholar has written about it and see some good debating skills (more cheap shots though). While there are some really good sites out there they get sidelined because most people just head to the top blogs and comment and comment and trackback to the more commented posts.
May be I have entered the bolgsphere looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place, while I am interested in knowing and keepng up with the emergent movement and the zillions of variations that calvinism and arminianism and other isms have,what i want to spend more time on is very different.
I am looking for exposition, not aimed only at proving everyone else wrong but aimed at insrtuction in righteousness, aimed at rightly dividing the word of truth that I be equipped in GOOD works.
I am looking for elder belivers willing to teach the younger ones about discipleship, and sanctification, and help them deal with the more pertinent issues and problems.
I am looking for analysis of the worlds events in the view of the scirptures on more topics than homosexuality and women’s ordination.
I am looking for men and women in christ who will show thru their writings the fruits of the spirit.
I am looking for christian art, in its mant forms fiction, audio-visual, etc.
I am looking for young belivers who like me are struggeling in faith and are bugged with churches and need both guidence and correction and help for daily living.
Maybe I am looking for too much.Or maybe I am just looking and not doing anything. I will admit that I too am guilty of the dead fishism. So far I have been just keeping abreast with what is happening in the blog world instead of doing anay writing and thinking of my own. I guess a good way to begin would be to start doing what I want form other, some bible study some bits of my journey etc.
I am back in vellore, the climate is hot, but thankfully the library has reopened. need to restars my suspended studies.
Some good stuff
Dan continues his series on unshackeling the american church latest post is on fraternitas.
A Biblical Approach to Confrontation. From Sharper iron ,just began exploring it and its nice.
When its time to leave the church 1 2 3 From the world from my window gives some good insights on deciding how, when and why you may (not) need/decide to leave the church.
Covenant seminary is offering a treasure trove of audios and PDF’s.
Am on the look out for some other good blogs and post series, just wish I had more time.
Technorati tags Christianity My faith GodBlogs Calvinism Blogging.
22 responses so far ↓
1 Dr. Johnson C. Philip // Jun 1, 2006 at 5:37 pm
People think they have nothing to learn from the younger ones. Perhaps right when the word ‘learn’ is used in a narrow sense. But use in a wee bit more breadth, one would discover they have a lot to learn from even the bed-bug, let alone the younger ones.
Thanks for your post. I was looking for some ideas, and got more than I needed — at least for time being!! Keep it up.
Dr. Johnson C. Philip
http://www.BrethrenAssembly.Com
2 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 1, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Thank you sir for the encouragement. You are not comparing the youngsters to bed bugs are you
3 DLE // Jun 1, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for the link to my series at Cerulean Sanctum.
I, too, am grieved at the way we’re underutilizing the blogosphere to grow disciples and reach out to the needy. The potential is great and we’re not realizing it.
What can you bring to the mix to take things to the next level?
4 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 2, 2006 at 5:10 am
Never thought of “taking things to the next level” dan, but over the last few days I have been praying that I be able to break out of the stream and do some blogging thats independant of whats around. More importantly to blog FOR God .
I am no great writer and am very lazy and hard pressed on time so I guess I will be posting short studies from my daily life and probably will post short takes from my journal that I think will be encouraging to other youngsters who have gone thru or are going thru the same phases.
Sometime next month me and some friends in college are going to do a study of the book of acts to learn what “gospel” means and what it does(did).
Thank you for prompt comments.
Blog on.
5 Dr. Johnson C. Philip // Jun 3, 2006 at 8:08 am
Webmaster,
No I was not comparing bedbugs with young people. It was a “contrast” between two to show the value of the second object.
Dr. Johnson C. Philip
http://www.BiblicalArcheology.Net
6 Dr. Johnson C. Philip // Jun 3, 2006 at 8:27 am
Dear TGN
as I was reflecting on this post, I was suddenly awakened to something commonly seen, but rarely realized: this tendency to go away from core truth, I mean core theoretical as well as practical truth, is seen in ALL disciplines and not in religion or spirituality alone.
This is true in my field — Physics. Once a person settles into a physics-oriented profession, soon he shows a divorce between reality and what he imagines/practices in physics. A good example would be a question that is often asked in medical and engineering entrance exams about a certain monkey that went into free fall simultanously with the gunshot.
The physics community has become so blind about this particular experiment that a student will get ZERO marks if he writes the correct answer. Thus students have been gaining full marks by writing the WRONG answer.
The question in my minnd is, religion also shows the same behaviour. Or rather religious people show the same behaviour. If exact sciences can produce fuzziness, religion would be more prone.
What what are we to make of this observation
Dr. Johnson C. Philip
http://www.TrinityTheology.Org
7 Dr. Johnson C. Philip // Jun 3, 2006 at 8:29 am
Oh, forgot the important question, which is:
Should we atrribute the problem to the failure of Truth or to the fraility of People
8 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 3, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Thank you sir, as far as i can see in the scripture degeneration is the fault of the fall, so we fail, in truth, but since the Word is infalliable it does not, thank God.
9 Dr. Johnson C. Philip // Jun 3, 2006 at 3:56 pm
In that case, you will have to abandon some of the Schizo Phrenia and say that “I looked around for the root cause of the problem, and — sadly — realize now that that problm is none other than us” [with apologies to whoever made the original -- and unedited -- statment]
I wish we had a perfect world. All us us wish it. But the fall coupled with the felled human free will assure that even those who desire perfection are often not able to rise above their own level of commitment [or lack of it].
I hope that my comments are not making you alarmed
Dr. Johnson C. Philip
http://www.BiblicalArcheology.Net
10 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 5, 2006 at 8:00 am
Dr. Johnson,
My schizophrenia is an internal spiritul problem and has little to dao with blogsphere. Amen to your statemnt, that the problem is in ME. I didnt get which statemenst you are talking about though.
Blog On
11 David Wayne // Jun 5, 2006 at 7:43 pm
You bring up a lot of good points here. I am one of those who has pretty much stuck to the hot topics in the blogosphere. I have commented a good deal on other’s posts and have often caught the train of the current topic for my own posts. I’m still interested in the calvinsit/arminian debates, the emerging church and some of the other hot topics but I too have often thought that there must be something else we can write about.
Anyway, thanks for the good thoughts.
12 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 6, 2006 at 9:29 am
Mr David yours is a blog on my daily reading list, and it is there because clearly the lord has given you an exceptional skill in wrting. I am relly glad that you think the post had good thoughts. Does this mean Iwill see some exposition by the jollyblogger soon:-)? I hope so.
What I am asking myself now is why am I blogging, in that am i doing it expressly for the glory of god as the scripture teaches us to, or am I being taken over by my need for intellectual stimulation, leading to only self gratification. I am afraid I seem to lean towards the latter.
13 Matt Jones’ Random Acts of Verbiage… » Christian Carnival CXXV // Jun 7, 2006 at 5:22 pm
[...] » Schizo-phrenic @ The Blog of Disfunction presents Godblogs are bugging me [...]
14 Derek Gilbert // Jun 7, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Couldn’t agree more. It’s the same dysfunction that’s affected the political blogs: The pond is small and there’s a natural tendency to preach to the other fish in it.
15 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 7, 2006 at 6:09 pm
I Like that example Derek, :-)Thanks. May God enlarge the pond.
Blog On
16 The Blog Of Dysfunction » Just In // Jun 7, 2006 at 6:13 pm
[...] God Blogs are bugging me is in the Christian Carnival no. cxxv Over at Matt Jones'. Published in: [...]
17 centuri0n // Jun 8, 2006 at 11:26 am
As an intermediately-sized plastic fish on the trunk of the blog church van, here’s a coupla-five bullets on this topic:
+ Most bloggers, without regard to “core values” or “theme”, are terrible. By “terrible”, I mean “unreadable, meandering, and self-involve without being self-aware”. That sounds harsh, but play a little “next blog” and see if you don’t agree.
+ In that, allegedly-Christian bloggers are the same way. And many of us (like me personally) have a small circle we have been running in for some time which has issues that we are involved in. So our focus tends to be narrow-band.
+ However, the blogosphere is also full of non-Christians and marginal or undiscipled Christians. So when (for example) write something like “your baptism ought to be more than a bath which you take more seriously”, a lot of people have no idea what I’m talking about and they say things that need apologetics clean up.
+ While this clean up is a necessary part of the discussion, it certainly veers away from discipleship and into (as you say in this post) “this fellow wrote this … blah blah blah”. If we (and specifically I) didn’t take the time to interact with these underdeveloped or non-existent “theologizings”, a lot of the Gospel would not be preached.
+ Last of all, there are certainly blogs which spend their bandwidth treaching and preaching without getting into the street-level stuff, but because high-brow exegesis is over the heads of 95% of all blog readers, even those sites don’t spend a lot of time messaging the nuances of the Greek in Rom 1:17 or whatever.
So don’t be discouraged, but also don’t set your expectations too high. If you want something in the blogosphere, provide some of it and see what happens. And then recognize that the medium has its limits.
18 Martin LaBar // Jun 8, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Good job!
I found this through the Christian Carnival.
19 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 8, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Thanks Martin.
Centuri0n,
I will reluctantly agree that a large number of blogs, christian or other seem to exist becaue it seems to be the new "in" thing, but it is too early to dismiss them as unredeemable.
What I suggest is that if the "Big" Bloggers spend some time in directing the stream to the rich diversity of things christians can talk about and blog on, the aimless wanderings of many will cease.
The problem with asssumimg that the discussions that are on your blog or in any other similarly prominent ones is a small cirlcle is that,well, your assumption is wrong, it is in fact often The trend setting circle.
Apologetics is for evangelism, but as I mentioned, what is more prominent is the internal conflict.
Sure, go ahead and correct everyone who is wrong, its your prerogative but if you think that much of the exposition on the net is too high brow, maybe you who clearly is gifted should write something that people can understand (exposition of the scripture not exposing the armenians :-)).
I will be trying to contribute, I only wish I had more time and some talent.
20 Rey // Jun 9, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I think it’s partially a matter of target audience.
For example, DLE talks to believers to re-examine some of their entrenched thinking while not shying away from talking to unbelievers and presenting a thinking Christian. Jeremy (Parableman) speaks to unbelievers and believers alike through the medium of high-level thinking. He has no problem putting in observations on political statements and race relations mixed in with various levels of commentaries with reviews. Both sites are amazingly interesting since they document any discussion that arises.
On other sites, way too big for me to mention, the writer posts some extremely unbending language, clearly demarcating a circle by which anything outside that circle is heresy or doctrine of demons. Any disucssion is flamed and proves extremely unfruitful.
I’m rambling. I think what I’m saying is that some of these sites may benefit from focusing their apologetics and then adjusting their rhetoric accordingly. For instance, I’ve seen some majorly major writers attack both the sanity and intellect of another believer whereas they would never speak like that to an unbeliever. So, it may be necessary to touch on Calvinism/Arminianism or eschatology, but I don’t think those things should be the sole focus–it should grow out of the focus on target audience and respect thereof.
BUT if you’re like me you don’t have to worry about it much. I put up personal study notes, probably things I’m going to be preaching that aren’t topic oriented yet focused on a chapter to chapter study. More often than not, posts clock in over 1,000 words (anathema to bloggers). If someone jumps in and reads over my shoulder that’s fine but my target audience tends to be myself thinking about the passage and outworkings of my own understanding. Completely self-absorbed probably but there you go.
I definitely rambled.
21 Schizo Phrenic // Jun 10, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Dear Rey
Fear not , this blog IS for rambling.
22 Jules // Jun 15, 2006 at 12:52 am
I hope no one comes to my blog to be proven right or wrong on a matter. I hope someone comes to find out who I am, what I like, what inspires me, what bugs me, and a variety of other things about a plain, ol’ sinner who loves Jesus and is stuggling just like you. Theology is out there, but please don’t expect it from the normal person on the web. Or even the normal Christian on the web.
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