Archive - January, 2010

Why Blog?

January 16, 2010 in blogging with 9 Comments

In a follow-up of sorts to the “what is a / my blog?” discussion I want to say a few words about why I’d engage in this sometimes confusing, muddy enterprise.

The short answer is that I believe the Bible is important and that I have something to say about it.

A story: A couple of years ago I found myself driving my brother’s car from our parents’ house in Concord, NC, to Durham, NC. Two hours and change. Since my brother is an InterVarsity staff worker, he has edifying and helpful things to listen to in his car, so I found myself listening to talks from a Willow Creek Leadership Conference. One talk was about leadership.

The guy giving the talk offered his take on the two indispensable qualities of a leader: “leaders are optimists, and leaders have an ego.” I was a little disheartened when I heard this, because despite having more than my fair share of ego, I’m not usually accused of interpreting the world through rose-colored glasses. Dangit.

But then he went on to explain what he meant: leaders are people who believe that there is a better future ahead and that they are part of it. Oooh, that was starting to sound closer. In the words of Cornell West, “I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.” And in the words of Thomas Wolfe (the older one!), “He was so bitter with his tongue because his heart believed so much.”

I want to put my thoughts out there for the world because I do believe the Bible, and God’s people who read it, have a bright future. And I think I have a role to play in seeing that future dawn. I blog because I believe there is a better future ahead and I’m part of it.

But even that is probably not enough to bring me back into the blogsphere after a 5+ month hiatus.

One driving reason that I return to blogging is because of the global character of the church/mission of God. Blogging is a way to both “give away” what might otherwise only be purchased through books, magazines, or tuition dollars and to engage in a conversation that embraces more voices than any of the community spaces I or my published writings can physically occupy. Numbers aren’t everything, but in the first day this blog was up and running I had more readers than I will teach in one year in Fuller Seminary classrooms. Yes, I blog because I believe that I am part of the better future ahead, but I also blog because I believe in the world-wide nature of the “you” who also have a role.

The third and final reason I blog: I am more theologically creative when I am constantly thinking about what I want to share with this world-wide community. My next couple books have had their seed as blog posts, which sometimes show before I’m fully aware where there is a cluster of issues I’m passionate about. The next several articles I want to write are all the fruit of putting some musings on the internet, getting some – from my readers, and continuing to wrestle through the issues.

So I’m back. And for now, my desire to say something, to say it in dialogue with the world, and to keep my sayings fresh are enough. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Communal Story & the Face of God

January 15, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 18 Comments

Romans 15 calls Christians to seek each other’s good ahead of their own, even to please each other rather than themselves.

Such self-denial is done in imitation of Christ, living out with one another the story of Christ, who also did not please himself. Instead, as singer of a psalm, Christ says, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell upon me.” The cross of Christ, where he bore reproach, models life in Christian community. (Indeed, I would argue that the reason Paul says that the things written beforehand apply to us is precisely because they apply to Christ first.)

But right now I want to suggest that there is a surprise awaiting us as we start delving more deeply into Paul’s call that we imitate Christ’s self-giving.

The psalm Jesus recites, Psalm 69, is a song of a righteous sufferer, a song addressed to God. The reproaches that fall on Christ do not refer to the sins we should have borne but to the mockery heaped up on the God of Israel.

When Paul calls us to dramatize the story of Jesus in our community, he is not calling us to look at ourselves as the savior and our brothers and sisters as sinners who need us to deliver them. He calls us to look at ourselves as the one who bears ridicule directed at God. He calls us to bear with one another because when we look at the face of our brothers and sisters we see in them the image of God, the ridicule of whom denies the truth about the very structure of the cosmos.
This is a call to live into the future that awaits us, seeing  those “without strength” as though they are, already, “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”

The family of God bears the family likeness. I seek my sister’s good, I seek my brother’s good, rather than my own because in so doing I live into my family’s story, the story of the elder brother who died for the honor of the Father. When I set aside my own desires and seek to please my siblings, I also am giving up myself for the honor of my Father whose likeness I see in them.

To be like Christ entails aligning myself with God by aligning myself with God’s family–even at the cost of myself.

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