I’ve taken some time recently to re-examine my digital life. It’s not a bad thing, but I have discovered that most things I do in my spare time involve being online. The first step in that process involved working through all the items in my Google Reader. During that process, I discovered something fairly startling — I do not like religious blogs.
Not only did I drop some rss feeds, but I erased any record in my history or favorites of even more sites that I frequented, but didn’t have RSS feeds. A sampling of sites dropped includes:
The Thinklings
DisciplesToday.org
The ICC Discussion Forum
Several church websites of various denominations
Rob Bell
I thought that a vast majority would come from within my own denomination, but it seems to be more widespread than that. So far, the only criteria I have is the site had a lot of things that hurt my heart in bad ways.
What that means is that I want to follow someone that hurts my heart in the right ways. Something stirs my heart to change or reconsider (Matthew 18:3
). Something hits my heart and gives me an opportunity to take a sober estimate of some aspect of my walk with God (1 Thessalonians 5:8, NAS). Something just rings true that is sad (Ecclesiastes 7:3).
It’s no mystery to anyone that knows me that various Church of Christ sites hurt my heart in bad ways. No sense in detailing it too much, suffice it to say that I get deeply angry/sad many times reading certain sites. I think the last straw for me came from a thread on the ICC discussion forum about vocabulary. After I posted a few peculiarities that I remembered, the thread author posted a comprehensive list of suggestions.
Seeing the list of my stilted vocabulary that I used in what I thought was spiritual speech just made me cry. Some items represented words I used to hurt others. A few represented things I saw used against others as weapons instead of encouragement. I don’t say this against the thread author in any way – it’s the memories I have that hurt, not the list itself.
Broadening out from that, I saw more hurtful words on other sites as well. Tone is hard to convey in a written medium, but some of the things said in the name of “speaking the unvarnished truth” was just an excuse for being mean.
God is not mean. Mean is not the same as jealous. Rebukes are not mean. There was a time when I would call someone a rank heretic of a psuedo-calvinist stripe, but I hope that I have put those childish things behind me. The point is, that there is enough meanness in the world and I have decided that I do not want to willingly partake in any more mean in the name of God.
It’s fair at this point to mention that I also got rid of other sites that seem to prey on fear in the name of news. It may surprise you to learn that I tend to get news from Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and one of the local stations in town. Yes, I even dropped the BBC, but that may have more to do with Dr. Who than news. 
I’m not better than anyone. I’ve done the same thing multiple times on this site. It’s just that I really cannot intentionally pierce my own soul anymore. My son does not care about Douglas Jacoby being banned from certain churches or repeated calls for a spiritual enforcement mechanism. My daughter is not outraged that Linsday Lohan is not in jail. My daughter could also care less about Rick Warren or Harold Camping or Bart Ehrman. Neither of my children wrestle with the concept of convincing avowed atheists of the logical supremacy of the concept of middle knowledge.
My son, upon hearing about earthquakes in Japan, went to his toy workbench and built a machine to make toys for children in Japan that lost their homes. If the water level rise much more, he and my daughter will probably want to help stack sandbags along the Missouri River.
When Jesus said that we had to change and become more like children, I think this is what he meant. For me, I have spent too much time damaging myself for no good reason. I’ve become indifferent to the suffering of those around me and to the needs of my family wrestling over matters of no import.
Proverbs 4:23 says Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Today and everyday, I want to choose life.
Nice post. I was amazed at how long the list on the ICCDF became and how quickly it was built. We indeed spoke our own language.
So, were there any ‘religious’ blogs/sites you kept?
My first reply was eaten a couple days ago. I guess I can’t post from my phone without running afoul of my draconian anti-spam measures!
I kept my friend Scott’s site and Bible Gateway. I also kept Internet Monk and Doug Schafer’s blog.
I am wavering to add back John Piper’s posts on desiringgod.com. There are posts like this one about dealing with disability that are helpful. I may decide to just stick to his books. As fascinating as his interview with Rick Warren is though, I sometimes get angry just watching it. I dunno. We’ll see I guess.
As the author of that thread, some of the older vocabulary brought back memories for me too. The “glossary” is actually going to be part of a bigger project (stay tuned!) and I’m attempting to define everything the best I can (with help) seriously and accurately and not sarcastically. You don’t realize how much control that vocabulary has over you until you break down their meanings. (Plus, a lot of people need definitions of more neutral terms like “World Sector Leader” or what the acronym “ACR” stands for.)
Your kids have the right idea. Just be sure their hearts for serving are focused and built around Jesus instead of some guy’s organization.
Hey xray. Good to see you, I hope you do not feel slighted – the reaction is coming from the subject, not the author of the thread. Four years ago, I would have been writing this thread myself. I say four, I would have been writing this two years ago.
I’ve found that my experience has made me sensitive to jargon in religion. (I see enough of it everyday at work and I do not like it there, either.) For example, I heard someone tonight mention the phrase vertically aligned with God. The context of the remark was that if a person or group remains vertically aligned with God, then blessings come to that person or group from God. This was called a form of grace that escapes me at the moment. While the speaker earlier in his talk made a great point about confusing grace with mercy, it was blunted for me when this jargon appeared.
I think I became the most sad when I thought about the term mercy date. I was on both ends of this term, if you know what I mean. It makes me shrink back when I think about how casually I would refer to others as a mercy date. Ugh.
My son actually got out of a funk a couple days ago by deciding to buy food for our church’s food pantry. It made him so happy that other kids would be getting the food that he bought, he was happy for the rest of the day. I credit God and my wife for this miracle. One of our next father/son times will be buying some bags of groceries for the food pantry instead of a couple cans – he is looking forward to it.
Once again, my children seem to have the right idea. I am truly grateful for my children!
Don’t worry. I don’t feel slighted at all. Although I do feel slighted by women who agree to go on a “mercy date” with me and I never hear from them again afterward.
I can accept (or at least tolerate) most Christian jargon. For example, your “vertical alignment” example is true on the surface, but it may lead people to think that “vertical alignment” doesn’t involve any negative things like sharing in the sufferings of Christ, discipline, hardship, or persecution. Some words and phrases carry heavy meanings, which is why expository teaching and preaching is so vital in churches today. A Christian, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, and Kip McKean can all claim to believe in Jesus, but all four have radically different meanings of who Jesus is. (Separating “Kip’s Jesus” from the authentic Jesus was crucial in my recovery.)
Part of the vertical alignment thing that gets me is that I don’t know what that means. I am not making fun of anyone, these are the honest questions that pop up in my head because I do not understand the jargon.
Do I have to be directly under God? Is it a shaft of light the surrounds me that I have to stay within the shaft of light? Is this related to some principal of horizontal alignment with God and what would that mean? (Walking beside Him instead of in front or behind?) Orthogonal alignment, anyone?
Is vertical alignment the same as remaining in the vine?
To further add to the confusion, playing D&D and its derivatives for so many years, alignment has a specific meaning. In fact, there’s just a thing as an alignment language so that people of similar worldviews could marginally communicate with each other despite not sharing a real language in common.
It’s out of context to think about alignment in game terms, but those thoughts come creeping in, you know.
I would agree that staying aligned with God, whatever that means, would not necessarily be an all positive thing. There are negative aspects to faith, like suffering that you mentioned.
Gotta run. More later.
You forgot helical alignment!
Are you still a ‘non-member’ at your congregation? Not that anyone there even cares – or keeps a list there – lol.
I guess so – I never asked for my membership back. I forgot about it, honestly.
Ha ha – we’ve still never “placed membership” here, now going on 7 years. I don’t think anyone knows how do to that if we wanted to Maybe a letter from NY saying, “Yeah, he’s a pain in the butt but his wife’s nice to have around”. We’re still doing the books, hosting and organizing a small group, and acting all membery-like (TM), whatever that means. I suspect that’s what you’re doing, too – acting all membery-like in spite of ourselves.
Hey, we need a new minister dude because Bill decided it wasn’t cold enough here and is moving to Chicago. Someone should tell Gregg about our mountains and skiing… Yeah, I like that idea…
all ‘memberly-like’….i like that.
didn’t know you needed a new ‘minister dude’. i’m sure y’all will get ‘suggestions’. haven’t seen any articles on DT for an opening for ‘minister dude’ yet…..
Yeah, we’re putting our ad for DT together this coming Tuesday. And yeah, Denver, Phoenix, and San Diego have offered to help, but it seems sincere and they’ve made it clear they’re not gonna tell us what to do.
I still don’t get the attraction of DT other than the parochial sense (it’s “The ICOC Site”). Some of the sites pink stopped reading are better.
Good to know. We have best friends on staff in San Diego. (he’s originally from Hatch – maybe I should ask him if he wants to move from the ocean to the desert?)
Love ya Mark, but I’m not partial to Greg moving right now.
It shows you how things change – I was the lone ‘no’ vote to him coming here. (I’ve told him this already and we can both laugh about it.)
Speaking of Greg, he pulled me aside on Sunday just to tell me that I am a good father. I really appreciated that!
I was one of the few to speak against our hiring a campus minister, but he’s been a huge blessing to our congregation in many ways, not just campus. I’m quite happy to have been wrong on that one.
Ok, I can understand most of the ones you dropped, even though I still like Rob Bell, hipster that he is.
But DOCTOR WHO? Say it ain’t so! Are you gonna stop watching, too? You’ll never find out who River Song is? How can you sleep at night?
Hey, I love the hipster, too. Nooma is pretty cool.
I’m so far behind on Doctor Who, I can’t go to the BBC and see it on the main page. I haven’t seen any Doctor Who since Tenet left. I can’t even go to Wikipedia without monitoring!
You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. I’ve found certain sites to be of little value, although there’s some attraction to the discussions, in the same way gossip is attractive. The ICC Discussion forum was one where I was kinda curious and popped in a couple times, but never felt much value in it so never spent any real time there.
I can’t say for me that I can think of any sites where I visited regularly but that ultimately were bad for my heart. Maybe I’m built differently, I dunno.
Was a bit surprised that the Thinklings made that list. It’s been one of my favorites over the years. Recently Jared’s blog, http://www.gospeldrivenchurch.com, has done my heart a lot of good. He’s coming to Columbus for a conference and I’m looking forward to meeting & hearing him.
I was also a bit surprised that I’m on your keep list, considering how little I blog lately.