Why do I Blog?

This is an age-old question, well not exactly. But it's a good question that I'm sure many bloggers have pondered. I don't read many blogs diligently, so I'm hardly a spokesman for the blogosphere. I have no idea what most bloggers blog about or why they do it. And frankly, I'm not sure why I do it.

So why do I blog? It can't be because people are listening. To my knowledge, absolutely nobody has visited my blog. For all I know, only God, me, and maybe some online blog administrator somewhere even knows this blog is here. And for all I know, it may always be this way. I have no guarantees that anyone will ever read this blog, except me. I don't advertise my blog even to my friends or family, so even most of those closest to me don't know this blog is here. And it may stay that way forever. Steve Brown once said that boatloads of people have written books that nobody has ever read. His point was to people like me who are thinking of teaching and writing professionally in the future. His point - don't wrap your self-worth in supposed literary triumphs, because the chances are good that for most of you, your successes (if we can even call them that) are fleeting and will not be remembered very long if at all. Tough words, but probably accurate for the great majority of both professional and amateur writers.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't care whether people read my blog or not. On some level, I hope that people might read it from time to time and that I might get the chance to interact with folks I wouldn't have met otherwise. That strikes me as a worthy goal that makes the blog worth it. But is this the reason why I blog? I don't think so. As I've said, I have no guarantees that in the enormous mass of typed script known as the blogosphere, anyone will stumble on to my minuscule piece of the pie.

So why do I blog? I suppose some of it is simply to be part of what some are calling a revolution. Howard Kurtz echoes the views of many when he suggests that the blogosphere is changing the very profession of journalism because it has fundamentally changed information dissemination for good or ill. The blogosphere seems to be important enough that folks of all stripes are diving in to stake their own claim in the latest American dream. Is this why I blog? This may be part of the reason, but it's not the biggest.

So why do I blog? For me, I think it's another way to talk to God. It's not a substitute for prayer, or even a pale immitation. But during my years at seminary, I discovered that in writing many of the papers I had to write, I often wrestled with God through my keyboard. This may sound weird, but I don't think it is. In my preaching classes, professors would often make a lot out of finding God in the sermon study and preparation. When we get into the Word intensely in preparing a sermon, it is not uncommon (and is in fact desperately hoped for) for preachers to have an 'a-ha' moment in the sermon preparation in which the sermon really comes together where it didn't before. This is God at work rewarding the preacher's study and preparation. Well I'm not a preacher, but I think much the same thing happens to me when I pour my heart out on 'paper'. I inevitably find myself searching some of my deepest thoughts, wondering which of those thoughts to share, and literally feeling God shaping those thoughts so that at times, I get the ever-briefest taste of what it means to discover something about God that I didn't know before.

For me, allowing myself the freedom to write is another way of me letting my guard down and allowing God to reveal things to me as a result of focusing on him, even when I'm not writing directly about him. Steve Brown would often say that he has been in the Word so long and so often as a preacher that everything he experiences in life conjures up a Scripture passage in his mind. This is his idea of having a Biblical worldview. It's just a different way of saying what John Frame says, "Theology is the application of Scripture to all of life." In my own way, I think that's what I'm trying to do here. I feel the need to do that, and for whatever reason, I've chosen the blogosphere as one of the places where I try to do it.

In the end, while it matters to me on some level whether anyone reads this blog, what really matters to me is that this blog represents something of a fulfillment of the commission that was given to me at RTS; to take the Christian story into the world and apply it to the concerns of the world. So I guess for me, this blog is one way to be obedient to the calling that God has put on my life. This is why I blog.