Monday, October 17, 2005

Blogging for God?

Last week, my roommate Laura attended the GODBLOGCON held at Biola University. (You can visit her blog for more info about the conference). It got me thinking about all the blogs that are out there, particularly the ones I enjoy reading regularly -the ones I link to through Laura's site, my political blogs and online columns I have bookmarked, friends' blogs where I discover what is going on in their lives. I was recently showing someone how they could blog as a means of connecting with others of like interests. All of those things are good; potentially, it makes the blogger into a journalist. The blogosphere is not dependent on the mainstream media in order to get out whatever message the blogger is trying to communicate. There is no editor you have to get approval from prior to publishing. However, some of the messages that are going out need some self-editing. In this I refer to the disturbing blogs I see on the Xanga and MySpace sites. Mind you, I am perfectly content to stay here and blog on Blogger; unfortunately in order to communicate with some of my students, I must enter their world there. What I have seen is distressing, particularly among students claiming to be Christians with "F'ing this", "S... that", "she's a B..." There's pictures of things I care not to describe and an embracing of worldly things that would certainly bring shame to the average believer (laura says no, adults are caught up in the world just as severely as teenagers, their vices are just different.)
While I need to ponder this further, I will make one observation: whether or not they intend to, their blogs that identify the bloggers as "Christians" while simultaneously embracing the hedonistic culture, are in a sense "blogging for God." It's just a very bad testimony for Him.

1 comment:

Laura Springer said...

I think the teens' stuff would cause adult believers to blush--when the stuff is different than the adults' stuff. On the other hand, the teens are probably horrified by their parents' (and other adults') moral inconsistencies, even while being blind to their own. Too often, a "public blush" has little to do with the reality of one's moral behavior.