The Blogging Tightrope

So, after a long pause, I’m about to once again take the plunge into the dangerous world of blogging. It’s a strange and stormy place to be, especially in the polarized intellectual environment that our culture has become and in the manner in which I enter it. In some sense, I hail from three intellectual worlds, each with its own particular and peculiar culture and traditions. Those three worlds are – a Christian faith tradition, higher education (a private, primarily undergraduate college with roots in that faith tradition,) and a behavioral/social science (psychology.) All three of these worlds have a strong ethos and sense of orthodoxy. At some level, all three would claim that those who think and speak for themselves are welcome and free to express their convictions. When these realms are at their best, they live up to that claim. However, when they are at less than their best, all of them have demonstrated a strong propensity to flash fry those whose self-expression departs from the prevailing ethos and orthodoxy of the day.

So, creating a venue for self-expression about topics of concern is risky. One risks either repeating or rehashing the standard party lines and thus, becoming boring and pointless, or departing from those old familiar songs and becoming the object of criticism, scorn, and even hatred or ridicule. No kidding. I’ve seen it happen. So have you.

Still, despite the risks, I think it’s worth doing – though time will tell. Before I really begin though, I probably should clarify how I’ll think about what I’m doing here. First, what I’ll try to present is my own perspective. I do not write here to express the official institutional position of any church, college, clinic, or other organization with which I am or have been affiliated. Second, much of what I’ll write may be sort of working through tentative ideas and hypotheses. All people who are sane believe that in the general/hypothetical sense, they could be wrong in their thinking. However, most people tend to believe that in any given specific case, their particular perspective is right. I’ll admit ahead of time that I could be wrong. I’m willing to be talked/reasoned/cajoled out of a lot of things. I’ll always try to write what I believe to be true at a moment in time about things that I think are important; but my thinking could change, both about what’s true and about what’s important. I hope yours can, too.

I hope you’ll read and benefit. Peace.