I got an e-mail from Eric on Monday letting me know that he was done blogging here at BtT and I was able to read his post and have a few days to decide what to do before his post dropped.
And I decided that I’ll follow his lead and stop blogging at BtT as well.
I’d been thinking about quitting since January, when the blog was down and I found I didn’t miss blogging at all. I became more inclined to stop after reading a recent blog post that described the “And You Are? syndrome” in which the author argued that there’s a sort of epidemic amongst young white middle-class reformed dudes to be too self-assured, to confident in their own understanding of the world. And when they’re done pontificating on a given subject, anyone with the least bit of maturity or wisdom can only respond with a quizzical, “And you are… who?”As I read that description, I saw much more of myself in it than I would’ve liked. So that became added incentive to step away.
Blogging, and to a lesser extent Facebook and Twitter, has given an interesting forum to young aspiring writers and church leaders like Eric and myself, and I know that it’s been helpful to both of us as we try to develop as writers and thinkers. However, I can’t help but think of past eras in church history when young guys like us were basically locked up in seminary for a few years where we had all the pride and naive self-confidence beaten out of us before we could do too much damage in our youthful zeal. Blogging allows us to circumvent that system. Sometimes it’s for the better, but there’s a lot of dangers with giving a large public voice to inexperienced people, and that’s where much of my discomfort with blogging has come from.
And the final reason I’m stepping away as well is that this space has always been ours, both Eric and mine. I remember rooming with him at the L’Abri conference my freshman year and talking about blog management/formatting. And as hard as it is for me to believe it, that was two and a half years ago. This has been a wonderful space and (for the most part) I don’t regret anything I posted here, but I feel like this space has accomplished what it needed to, and it’s time to pack it in.
So to those who have been reading, thank you for your time. Hopefully you’ve found something resembling life and health in the discussions here. I hope you keep reading Eric’s new blog, I probably won’t be making a new one, but I’ll still have my weekly column in the Daily Nebraskan. (Search my name in the field on the top right to find my columns.)
And to Eric, it gives me great joy to call you brother. It’s been a unique pleasure to share this space with you and I will miss it.
peace