There comes a time when any honest reflection reveals the failings and shortsightedness one is guilty of in his ventures. This blog is a second-try for me. I used to post (a long while ago) on another blog, http://sovereignjoy.blogspot.com, but after some time I really lost material and drive to continue that venture. So why make another blog then? I shall tell you:
If a mold doesn't quite fit the tool, what has to be done is a recasting of the mold. While I enjoy much of the work and thought I put into my previous blog, I recently became aware just how unlike me it really was to sit around and comment only on the "good" and expound only on what felt "right" to say. It would be a long tale, but to put it briefly it seems I have come full circle. I've got to be crazy to assume that I can express myself in any honest fashion and maintain this brittle facade of propriety and theological perfection. I had to be mad - out of my ever-loving mind - to think that such an attempt would be either successful or profitable long term.
So here it is: I don't know it all, I'll never know it all and the part of me that wanted to sound like I had an inside track has finally given in to the me that can't stand but to say what I really mean. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't dishonest - but I wasn't wholly open either. I think some part of me realized that critically minded Seminary Students (and maybe professors) would be reading my musings with fingers loaded and bones to pick, and I didn't really want to provoke their ire.
Well guess what... after a year here a little provoking may just be what the good Doctor ordered. That part about speaking the truth in love does afterall require speaking the truth! So the begenning of it might as well be about me; not about what I've got to offer - but confessing my truest state of affairs.
When you get right down to it, I'm not a righteous "I've got the answers all worked out" preacher boy. Far from it. So if you're reading a later post and getting steamed about something I just pointed out and you find yourself saying "who does this guy think he is?" Well, here's your answer: I'm nobody... At least nobody that deserves to say a word. The question is, do you think you are? If the "right" answer comes to mind then maybe we should sit down and talk about what we do know, and what we do believe - and here is what I do know: I haven't earned a darned thing. Not a one. I'm a sinner, once enemy of God on whom the wrath of God rested, destined for destruction that was earned, and entitled to nothing but damnation. I wasn't the righteous, Christian raised, Sunday School answer guy. I was the sick one, the dead one, the hostile one. Some days that old man still haunts me, but something (or should I say Someone) profound came in the meantime, took everything I owed and paid for it while simultaneously giving me an inheritance only He deserved. If there are any perceptions to the contrary, here's the admission d'grat. I'm not the righteous. Fact is, I know there aren't any who are. Some just need some convincing of that fact again; and the world needs to hear it from us all.
So why bother with a blog if that's the case? The mystery of the Gospel, in short. I wasn't the righteous and I don't produce it of my own merit now, but something I am, however, is Called. Called out, called to speak, called to love, called to pray, called to preach, called to exhort and called to praise, and that's the short list.
So here goes nothing. Lord have mercy!
National Review Children's Books
11 years ago
