Monday, July 31, 2006
REFLECTING ON THE NATURE OF A BLOG
One of the most frustrating aspects of writing a blog is not knowing your audience. When commenters use the same handle for each posting, it is possible to get to know what position they are coming from eventually, but it takes many comments before this happens, and the hit counter indicates that a lot of readers never comment at all.
Sometimes I imagine that my audience is Roman Catholic and write from that perspective. Other times I temper my Catholic comments with the thought that readers may be coming from a different theological point of view. It is never my intention to anger readers as Ishmael has apparently been angered, and I often scrap a blog or rewrite it because it may be too harsh or come across sounding vindictive. That was the case with my recent blog, and still it sparked an angry reaction. People are quite sensitive about their religious beliefs, as I am myself, which is why it tends to provoke so much controversy.
No matter how many times we say the word "peace" in the name of religion, we are still left with two choices...accept all religions on an equal footing, believing that none of them are any closer to the Truth than any other; or defend our own theology, believing that it is the absolute truth. The first has been defined by the Church as "indifferentism" and soundly condemned. The second is rapidly sparking the world's condemnation.
In the Early Church defending Catholic theology was a death sentence, yet the Catholics did defend it, and their blood is said to be the seeds of the faith that blossomed into the dominant belief of Western Civilization; a belief that Europe has now rejected, and America may soon reject, choosing instead to be tolerant and diverse and uncommitted to any creed.
Yet without creed there is no guidance for making decisions, and the culture with no standards will fall for everything and no longer have any way to define what is good and what is evil. That is a perscription for anarchy. We can see it developing when we turn on the evening news.
Perhaps the time has come to put this blog to sleep and look for either other ways to present the research I've been doing, or go get a paying job as my husband would certainly like me to do. It's something I've been considering for the last several days, but haven't come to any decision yet.
