If I'm right, this time next week, this humble blog will have a thousand views. I'm surprised at who reads this thing, actually - different from whom I'd expected!
In the spirit of milestones, here are some fun facts about readership:Best fake reader: trollface.ru. Russian rage trollface comics. no jokes.
Best real reader: You. Reading this right now. You're awesome.
Most popular post: Star wars. By far.
Least popular post: Andrew and cold sores. Strangely, people not jumping all over that one.
Best google search leading here: "Dennis Chupik".
Worst google search leading here: "helmet with crest" or maybe "angry black wolf"
I'd say the biggest spike in readership came on the day that I published the post about Dennis Chupik and Atheists for Jesus. That post, perhaps more than any other, got people reading right away. And there's a pretty good reason for that. What we're getting into is something that I view as being akin to the console wars that were going on when I was growing up. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's like this - You begged and pleaded with your parents to buy you a video game console. They eventually caved, and bought one. But they weren't going to buy two. You had to pick one, and stick with it. Now, that means that you made the call for the Nintendo Entertainment System over the Sega Genesis. Well and good. But what that also meant was that you'd backed a horse. And you needed to convince yourself that the horse you backed is the absolute best. God forbid that you make the wrong choice in the console race. And that's where, to a large extent, the current fanboyism comes from. It's not about the consoles, never was. It's about our desperate desire to be right, to have made the right call, to have backed the right horse, because God forbid we be mistaken, and have to admit that we were wrong.
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| Is this possible? |
Most religious / anti-religious texts are like this too. They don't go out of their way to convert, they do their best to solidify. When I read through "The God Delusion," I was struck by the way the writing assumed the idea that God was made up was a given. It certainly made no effort to try to convince me of that fact, or to try to offer up a whole bunch of compelling arguments for the lack of existence of God or whatever. It was mainly just trying to solidify a position that I didn't hold, which might be partially why I didn't find it to be overly compelling. Same thing with God is not Great, or the End of Faith.
Okay, great. So I didn't find the books by atheists for atheists to be overly convincing, mainly because I don't fit into their target market. But it takes some reminding to those of us who are in the Christian camp to recall that Not everyone is a Christian. We do a lot of talking in what I call 'Churchineese,' that is, using words like 'justified' or 'sanctified' or 'righteous,' and we forget that people who are outside the church don't necessarily use that kind of language. Or at least in the same way. Those of us who are churchgoers tend to react to people who aren't churchgoers with one main reaction 'You DON'T go to CHURCH?'
But we need to remember that our position is more than just telling other Christians how great Christianity is. Hooray. In order for this to work long term, you need to do something very important, something you may never have done in your whole life ever.
You need to wrestle with what you believe.
It's like a console war in which you have to back a side, but then sit down and look at what you've chosen. You have to work with it, to find out WHY you believe what you believe. In the Bible, it takes the form of Genesis 32:
24 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him
until daybreak. 25 When he saw that he had not prevailed against him,
he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh
was dislocated while he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said,
“Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.”
But he said, “ I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 So he said to him, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Jacob.” 28
He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but[a]Israel;
for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
29 Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”
“ I have seen God face to face, yet my [c]life has been preserved.”
31 Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over
Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.
32 Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat
the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh,
because he touched the socket of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.
How often do we as people wrestle with our positions? It's usually a matter of hearing what you want to hear, and being confirmed and supported in that. The books we read, the media we subscribe to, our podcasts, our radio stations, our polemics, they mostly all back up what we already think is true and right. The greater task is to grab what you believe, and say "Why." Wrestle with God. If you do it right, it should change you, as it did Jacob. If you don't grapple with what you believe every once in a while, if you don't challenge yourself on what you believe, you may find that you fall into the same routine as the rest of the world - reading and paying attention to stuff that tells you that you're terrific, and that's all. Gotta move past that. Know what you believe in, and then you can better communicate it to others, who may never have heard about it, or may be tired of it, bored of it, may not believe in it at all. See it from their point of view. Wrestle with it.
PJ.
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