http://www.davidpfield.blogspot.com
Over
recent months a very small number of people have complained to one another –
and eventually to me – that, on occasion, the way I disagree with ideas or
people on my blog betrays an arrogance or uncharity on my part. I recognize
that I have, in a few posts, been unguarded and I have indulged my tendency to
overstate in order to provoke without properly considering the ways in which
that provocative over-statement may come across to readers who don’t know me. I
am very sorry that I have given offence and I am very sorry for each
and every time I have sinned in my blogging – my motives, my content, and my
tone. This has led me to remove a couple
of posts from my blog, to resolve to pay closer attention to how readers who
don’t know me might feel about the way I express myself, and to reflect a
little on blogging in general and my blogging in particular. It seems worthwhile
to make a few things clear about my blog.
In
general, a blog may be thought of as a soap-box and megaphone. To blog is to
stand on that soap-box in a public place, put that megaphone to your mouth, and
talk. (See a) below for why a person
might do that rather than keep all their
conversation to the quiet of their living room.)
And
a blog may be thought of as a form of instant and extremely low-cost
self-publishing. To blog is to print copies of your poetry, your opinions, your
favourite selections from the writings of others, and so on and to leave a pile
of those copies on the high street for people to pick up if they wish.
Blogging
is no different, fundamentally, from any other medium: open to great use and
great abuse. I don’t think that blogging makes people opinionated self-authorizers
(in fact, no matter what anyone says, I know it doesn’t!). It just makes their heart-level and
conversational graces and vices slightly more visible than they otherwise would
be. If someone has the desire to serve
others and a spirit of godly tentativeness, accountability, and self-suspicion
in his/her heart and conversation then they probably have that desire and
spirit in blogging too.
But
I’d like to note a few things about my blog:
a) People
have all sorts of different reasons for blogging. I blog by way of keeping a sort
of cyber common-place book in which I capture good stuff that I find elsewhere.
Along with that, from time to time, I scribble down thoughts on topics which
have recently come to my attention and, just occasionally I attempt
mini-reflections or mini-mini-essays. I
put this online rather than in a book
made of paper or on my hard drive simply because “good stuff” for me might
prove to be “good stuff” for others.
“Good stuff” is whatever is true and honourable, whatever proclaims or
explains the Gospel, whatever magnifies the King or beautifies his Bride,
whatever demonstrates or illustrates the hopelessness of life outside of Christ
and the security and wealth and cleanness and glory of life in Him. I’d love
it if what blesses me could prove to be a blessing to others too – in ways
which bring life to the dead, beauty and maturity to the living, and praise to
God.
b) If
you are an orthodox trinitarian Christian and you believe that anything I write
is unbiblical then I’d be happy to hear from you: davidpfieldblog at
gmail dot com .
c) If
anything I write – substance or tone – is offensive to you then let me
know: davidpfieldblog at
gmail dot com .
d) If
you think that you can gauge what is most important to me from what I am
blogging about then please think again. At most, the things appearing on the
blog may give you a sense of the things I’m reading or the topics I’m
considering at a given moment.
e) Unless
you think that I am sinning grievously in tone and content in my blogging (in
which case, do, please, let me know), then if you find my topics of
conversation irksome or my tone merely irritating then slip away quietly. There
are MILLIONS of better things to read. Why waste time being annoyed or bored by
my blog when you could be reading some of those millions of things?
f) Don’t
take my speculative musings based on recent reading either to represent the
“position” of my local church or of my employer on those matters on which I
blog. Obviously, if I am guilty of false teaching then that is highly relevant
to my church and my employer. However, to state what I hope is obvious, I
fervently endorse and subscribe to and delight in the orthodox Christian faith
as expressed in the catholic ecumenical creeds of the first five centuries, the
Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
evangelical statements of faith / doctrinal bases of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
g) Just
as bloggers are as responsible for their blogging as they are for any other
communication in which they are in “transmit” mode – emailing, facebooking,
casual conversation, texting, phoning, dinner party conversation, preaching,
writing to the Times or whatever else SO blog-readers are as responsible
for their blog-reading as they are for any other communication in which they
are in “receive” mode – reading books, newspapers, watching TV, listening to
conversation, sermons, reading emails and so on. There are sins of talking and
sins of listening, sins of writing and sins of reading. May the Lord preserve the writer, and any
readers, of this blog from all such sins.
David
Field
1st
January 2009