cymbaljack

That is the question.

Look, I'm erratic. Scroll down to the post before this, brush the cobwebs off it, and you'll see I took three months off. And it's not like a lot of people are eagerly reading this.

But if I tried to get more consistent, maybe some people would. There are a few people I email who periodically ask me how it's going--and the blog could indicate that. I could use it to be more connected with my family. But the multiple audiences get tricky.

'Cause my family would probably just be hurt and mortified to read some of my opinions about some things. And my students too might be better off not hearing some of my blunt opinions out of the context of our class. They might draw some false (but understandable) conclusions about what I think about them. The things I want to say to the people I go to church with are not necessarily the same as the things I want to tell the people I work with.

Oh, I know, the culture of the Internet is largely that you can find any kind of offense you're looking for without much trouble, and that you have to pick what you read and take it with a grain of salt and remember that YMMV. But I don't want to take that as license to be cruel. I don't want to hurt my parents by rubbing in their faces how different some of my opinions are from theirs. I don't want a bunch of people at Cornerstone being alarmed about me.

Well, I want some of the people at Cornerstone to be alarmed, actually. But mostly either people I'm close to or people who are in positions to do important things. And I want them to be alarmed about thinking about what it really means to be disciples of Jesus, not to be alarmed that I read a comic book with dirty pictures in it.

I don't want students to read my blog and mistakenly think that I will grade them more harshly if they don't share my religious convictions or my politics or my preference for movies or music or sports teams.

So the question is, what now?

It's out of the question to try to keep multiple blogs for multiple audiences. I've experimented with that and never gotten any good results from it. I could keep this one blog and limit the audience for it, but I'm not sure where the limits need to be.

Maybe that's not true. I think I know where the limits need to be. If someone gives some indication that they want to know what I think, then here it is. In pieces, erratically.

So if you're reading, don't take anything here to be ALL of me. It's a bit of me, at this moment. I don't expect you to agree with me. I won't love you any less (or more) based on how you react to this.

But here are five things in my head right now:

1. The Kansas City Chiefs picked a really stupid week to experiment with running the Minnesota Vikings' offense.
2. Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What --while I disagree completely with about 4 points in it-- gets to the heart of one of the most important ideas that modern Christians need to wrestle with: Christianity as about relationship, not abstractions.
3. As the new semester starts, I'm going to be turning more of my attention to relational issues. I'm trying to use that as a guide for how I use the time available to me. In my classes, I'm trying for better balance of "getting it done" and "slowing down to dig deeper."
4. It is time--way past time, actually--for Christians to absolutely respond to the GLBT community with love. We must immediately cease all efforts to politically or socially oppress them. We must even quit worrying about publishing our notion that sexual deviance is sin. (Not that all Christians 100% agree with that, which we need to admit.) None of us are worried about making sure everybody knows we think greed is sin, and everybody around us is greedy. We need to show these people we love them so that they know that God loves them. No more attacks. No more fear-mongering. No more hatred.
5. I start my "comics as literature" class in fall, and whatever "spare" time I have this spring will be spent getting it put together. This is great news for me. It's been a long time coming, and I can't wait to start it.

So there's a tiny bit of me, today. Maybe more in a week or so, if anybody's watching.