The next time you walk into a room full of people, I want you to see how they talk and interact and exchange and tell stories and make jokes. Simply watch, listen, soak it in.

Soon you’ll see there’s a hidden anxiety underneath all their language, a deeper sort of quest for each person to validate their individual existence. You’ll see this web of tug-of-war where everyone is pulling, clawing, scratching, grasping for this weight.

It’s like there’s a secret limited stash of golden currency in the air, and everyone’s fighting for it by telling the better story, bragging about their bank account, trying to be the funny guy, showing off their intelligence, dropping famous names, wearing a name, holding up false bravado, pretending to be a mystery, masking their voice in tight controlled expressions of eloquence.

You know what this is: insecurity. Everyone’s fighting for glory to cover the emptiness, that vacuum fracture. And even when they get the glory from that room, it will never be enough: because we weren’t made for the temporary glory of this earth. Our true glory is beyond the room, outside one another, from on high.

— J.S.

If you’re a Christian, whether you like it or not, you’re preaching with your blog.  This is a big deal.  Of course, we all have an insecurity that we don’t deserve the platforms we have.  Most of us are conveying a hologram of the person we-would-like-to-be.

I think it’s okay to be honest about that — to say, “I’m not there yet.”  We’re all still learning here, most especially me.

The harsh truth is, I see too many Christian bloggers who are trying to preach much further than they really are and always talking from a condescending high ground of pseudo-idealism.  Include me in there: I’m always tempted to act tougher than I really am.  We seem to care less about loving actual people and more about tweeting our moral epiphanies.  It’s a lot of full-time blogging from part-time Christians only saying things they’d like to do, like a half-competent coach who pushes his students so he can live vicariously through their success.  If that sounds mean, it’s because it hurts my heart to see so much passion with no momentum.

I wish we were more transparent about how hard it really is: not in a way that enables or pampers, but actually relies on the God we claim to love.  I wish we could stop chest-bumping the hardness of our right theology and stop shaming other Christians with coercive manipulative one-liners.

It’s easy to be a basement blogger and to post photos of the mission trip; it’s harder to roll up our sleeves everyday and get into the grit of real hurting lives.

Blogging naturally necessitates that you put your life on hold to write about your experiences — but if you go immediately from the moment to blogging, you’re not really letting the experience take hold of your heart.  Soon you’re only doing the bare minimum to write for likes and reblogs, which is not transformative but showcasing.  We can all see through it.

If you keep taking shortcuts from living to blogging by skating on the surface of faith, you’ll short-circuit intimacy with the glorious, face-melting, galaxy-sculpting Creator — and He’s the only one who can pierce our hearts deep enough to genuinely sacrifice for each other.

It’s cool if you have the Instagram with the ocean wallpaper and the pick-me-up verses in fancy fonts.  I just think God would rather you be you and not some shrill version of you, to be honest about your unique challenges in this journey with Him.

If I Hear “Wrecked” One More Time

I saw a blog post the other day about “The Future of The Church” written by a guy who was about twenty years old, with all kinds of bold declarations about the decline of ministry.  I think it was supposed to “wreck” me.  I like him and he’s a good person, but I sort of cringed at the whole thing.  Not because he was wrong, but because he cared too much about being right.

Continue reading “Christian Bloggers Trying To Go Viral: Preaching All Day But Ain’t Living Your Bible” →