I am humbled by all the comments and e-mail I’ve received. I am deeply touched by your concern for me and desire to see this blog continue.
I don’t plan to stop blogging. My critics would love that, but they won’t get the satisfaction. In fact, I didn’t mean to give anyone the impression that I wanted to stop blogging because of negative criticism. Why I’m blogging is the issue.
When I first started this blog almost a year ago, I didn’t know it would grow as it has. It was to be an extension of my column, but this site has become so much more. In the process, it’s taken on a life of its own and I let it become an idol. While I believe I’ve done some good things here, they mean nothing if I don’t stay connected to the One who makes it all possible.
Some of you sense my political burn out and suggest I narrow the blog’s focus and concentrate on two or three topics. Others sense the inner conflict of blogging about contentious political topics and incorporating my faith into the mix. While I believe Christians should be engaged in the culture, doing so with political rhetoric may not be the best way to go about it. In that regard, I may consider maintaining two blogs: one for social commentary from a Christian point of view and the other exclusively for devotional purposes.
God is interested in our hearts. The questions for me: Where is my heart and why am I doing this? While I want to believe I’m blogging about Christ out of love for those who need to hear it, sometimes I don’t. Bear with me as I learn to do everything I do, including blogging, for Christ.
Some of you cited a passage that I know I need to mediate on. 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Loving those who hate you is something I don’t think non-Christians can fully understand. I don’t fully understand it, but that’s the beauty of following Christ. If you think Christianity is a man-made religion, think again.
What man-made religion requires its followers to love enemies as we love ourselves? It’s counterintuitive. I think love has been missing in my writing, and that may be one of the causes of my confusion. If I respond in kind to my detractors, what good does my writing serve? It attracts readers but doesn’t edify.
If I share the Gospel, even if I rightly handle the word of God, what good is it if I hate those who also hate me? I’d be nothing more than a clanging cymbal, and the world has enough of those already.
Thank you for reading my blog and sharing this walk with me. All that’s left to say is…I’m back.
