Why I blog (and maybe you should too)

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started thinking a while ago about blogging – whether I should continue with it or not – because blogging has a significant number of downsides:

• The time it takes to write posts takes time away from other things which are arguably more important.
• It impacts on my thought life; something happens, and I immediately start thinking about how it would fit into my blog.
• I don’t feel like I get loads of visits so it’s not as if I’m changing the world by blogging – I could probably save the internet a good few megabytes by cancelling the whole thing!
• The responses I see are generally negative; far more people leave critical or angry comments than grateful comments. That doesn’t make me feel too good.

But, of course, it’s not all bad:

• Blogging makes me better at communicating – looking back at the first year or two of blog posts makes me cringe at my own naivety, aggression, and uninformed opinions. I’m sure I still have a long way to go, but I’m heading in the right direction.
• It impacts on my thought life; a few years ago, life just happened. Now I’m far more analytical, I think things through more logically and clearly, enabling me to appreciate God’s grace in creation, other people, and myself.
• I’m handed a heavy dose of humility whenever I see the stats or the eloquence of those who disagree with me.
• I’ve learnt a lot about how to deal with people who disagree with me.
• Having to face challenges head-on, and thinking through tough things, has only ever strengthened my faith in God. It’s good to have had that experience.

For the moment, I think I’m going to keep on blogging. Not many other people seem to read my blog, so doing it for the benefit of mankind would be a bit silly, but I’m going to maintain these objectives:

• Get better at communicating.
• Think about lots of stuff so that when people ask, I have an informed opinion.
• Create posts about Jesus so that random internet browsers are more likely to read something about him.
• Hope that some book publisher out there asks me to write a book that becomes an international bestseller, meaning I can think and write about Jesus full-time.

Oh well, I suppose three out of four wouldn’t be too bad.

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