I was having a discussion with some Christian friends over the weekend (we were away in Cornwall, which btw is generally an excellent place), which turned up some interesting stuff. The issue - are blogs generally a good thing or a bad thing for Christians and the church? A few of the questions to be resolved...
- do blogs encourage people to think themselves or others experts in subjects which they are not?
- conversely, do blogs help to implode the cult of the 'expert' whose opinion must be submitted to, and encourage a healthy skepticism about the conclusions of editorials?
- do blogs encourage the hurried pinging off of replies in theological discussion, and therefore discourage slow and thought out reponses? Not just at the level of wanting replies to be composed slowly enough to take due care in consistency of thought, but at the level of neglecting sustained thinking about an issue before taking a strong stand on it?
- are blogs part of an overarching 'democratisation of knowledge' (which would also be seen in things like wikipedia) which denies that truth is the property of anyone other than the individual or that anyone's opinion is more important than my own? (see the first point)
Other thoughts, and responses, welcome.
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12 comments:
Tom - I absolutely, whole-heartedly, without doubt - agree with you - Cornwall is an excellent place - and on that, I am an expert so take note ;-)
So, a blog post on the merits of blog posts... can me with very little brain cope ;-)
I think blogs, sadly, can encourage bad tendenancies... it is possible for a blogger to think themself an expert, a reader to think they are reading expert opinion; a blog makes a quick, un-thought-out reponse, a very easy thing!
But the blog is not the thing at fault in all that... it's the way the blog is valued and used... remember it's not money that is the root of all evil, but rather the love of it...
So we, bloggers and readers, need to be careful, slow and thought out for sure!
Since reading blogs I have thought about topics that I may not have done otherwise; listened to talks that I may not have done otherwise; heard opinions that I wouldn't have done otherwise; read books that I wouldn't have done otherwise... they've helped me to think as I have written, and helped me to think as I have read... a healthy use of blogs, makes blogs a healthy tool to use.
Another path to follow on this subject:
Bill Thompson writes:
"Perhaps the real danger posed by screen-based technologies is not that they are rewiring our brains but that the collection of search engines, news feeds and social tools encourages us to link to, follow and read only that which we can easily assimilate."
in http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7459182.stm
Thanks Greg. What about the idea that blogs (and internet publishing generally) lowers the bar for content? Because a book is much harder to get printed than a blog is to write, discussion on blogs doesn't get the time or research or rumination that you would expect in print.
The blog isn't at fault in itself, but as a medium it doesn't serve the purpose that print does for informing me about theology (for example). Scholars don't write their important stuff on blogs, and that is the stuff I should be going to more. Which I guess is part of the point that Bill Thompson is making.
Well and good if all we are using blogs for is general banter, sharing of ideas and stimulus to thought (although it might be better if my thoughts were stimulated in a more deliberate way).
And yet lots of our generation will spend much longer reading Doug Wilson's blog to find out what they think theologically than they will reading real books. What do we do? Advertise the books more? Or be less keen on blog proliferation and concentration? And then even further, it's all very well for blogs to tell me about the brilliant book they have just read (mea culpa), but they also give me 55 links to follow to find what x y and z's blogs tell me about it. I don't have the time! How do we use blogs efficiently? Whats our purpose statement for the blogosphere?
Ooh I'm rambling.
My turn to wear the walking boots
I have no doubt that the internet lowers the bar - my thoughts on Habakkuk would never make it to an editors desk, yet alone the binders, yet they are now available for the world to read... a scary thing, and maybe I should think more before posting in future!
I'll have a chew on the purpose ... as a reader, and a poster! I originally started with some guidelines that I would try and follow... will dig them out!
Think it was Tim Rudge at Forum who said we're a generation that just looks for "sound bytes" to inform our thinking, when searching the Scriptures ourselves is what is important... a wise man... your post on "Salvation Belongs to the Lord" picks this up well... slim practical "here's the answer" books are what we want - they are what I want!!!
Yet I got a great book on evangelism, a magnificent book on marriage, a fantastic book on perseverance, a pratical book on being a Christian in the workplace, an excellent book on the natural state of man, and an thrilling book on the promise of God! Yup, the Bible!
It really is worth thinking about how we cultivate a searching of Scripture today, amongst our generation, in the blogosphere, and the real world - it was certainly my aim with RML this year that the group members would tackle and think through passages for themselves, rather than running with what Adele and I said... we need to be better at that - without having to do a 2-year training scheme for a large church in the City ;-)
Maybe discipline is lacking, maybe time is lacking, maybe desire is lacking, maybe an ability to think is lacking - all compounded by the plethora of soundbytes available at our fingertips. Question is - how do we get better at doing it for ourselves? I don't really know - so I'm doing a 2-year training scheme for a large church in the City ;-
Is the devaluation of both Scripture and a personal intimate relationship with God the problem today?
Whenever I read JC Ryle, or Calvin (OK, yup, they are two of my favs) I can't help but see something just a little bit different in them!
Hi Tom,
As I mentioned at the weekend, I don't think it makes sense to blame blogs for what is a long term trend in more knowledge in more peripherial (but I would argue still useful) areas being published by less and less expert people. That process has been taking place for centuries.
I think the best point raised at the weekend was the point that as readers, why waste time reading blogs/inferior books when there is so much good stuff out there?
But that is a general point about media consumption, not about blogs in particular.
The whole postmodernism/authority stuff as regards blogs is interesting but much more complex. I have it on my 'to blog' list :)
Sam - hope you enjoyed Cornwall too!
What's your definiton of "good" and "inferior"?
And then, how do we ascertain which something is (blog/book) without reading it in the first place?
Greg,
Cornwall was indeed a lovely place.
Re. good/inferior, I recognise that to an extent those values may be personal but in general I am happy to accept authority figures' recommendations of what is best.
So, why should anyone read my recent blog post about the transfiguration, when you can read RC Sproul's commentary which your pastor has recommended?
Because I've just read a helpful posting on the transfiguration... when a commentary on the subject is not near the top of my reading list...
With that, I do not now consider that I know all I need to know about the transfiguration, or that I have read broadly on the subject, or that I have read the best there is on the transfiguration... but I have in the least been reminded of the suffering now, glory later, that comes with following Christ... which is no small thing... and certainly not a waste of time...
'that process has been happening for centuries'
And has it been beneficial? Do we want to help it or reverse it? Given that there are already more sources of information that I can possibly take it, how much more do we want to generate unless it is really of the most thought through and useful variety?
- And has it been beneficial?
Yes. I think everyone agrees that largely going from papryus to printing press to mass market books has been a good thing. I just don't think this is a system where finding the optimum point really helps. For any given amount of media published, I'm sure I could point to something helpful that you would be missing if we just stayed at 1740s/1940s/1980s levels of media publishing technology.
That does create the following challenge:
- Given that there are already more sources of information that I can possibly take it, how much more do we want to generate unless it is really of the most thought through and useful variety?
I'd first question how useful your assumption that there are too many information sources already. There is very little in the world on the biology of the Aldabra coucal for example - I think it would be good if there was more. There is very little on what Don Carson thinks about the latest thing Tim Keller has written. Even in Bible books there are several lacking good commentaries.
So there is a lot of information out there, but there is also a lot to know!
Second response this point is practical: as publishing has become easier and more frequent, so information processing has happily become easier (tho arguably hasn't quite kept up).
I think the challenge to be wise in the blogosphere in this area of content generation and consumption is much more on the side of the consumer - how do I be wise in what I am selecting to read?
(and I think there is room for blogs = Godly conversations - i.e. we don't spend all our time reading Packer, but we also talk to normal people)
As a blogger, I don't think we should feel bad about adding more to the heap of knowledge in our own little area. Obviously if you have nothing at all to add, don't post, but if you have something even slightly helpful I would suggest you should feel free let it out there.
For bloggers the challenges are more in how we make our content the best it can be, how we don't was our own time posting triva.
So in summary: 'let the reader understand'.
i'm guessing from you lack of posting, that your conclusion was not to blog...?
do you think there's no place at all for little non-weighty but none the less christian posts about how great the lord is? or even a place for trivia?
your blog is (was?) great!
no, actually I've just been too busy sorting out 'in the shadow of the gherkin' to do my own blogging recently! I agree there's lots of place for the kind of thing you mention.
in fact i guess one of the conclusions of the discussion for me might simply be that generally the most helpful thing blogs can do is just that - to be a means of encouraging each other about how great the Lord is, and how real us are really learning that from the Bible.
Speaking of which, I've enjoyed reading your blog too ;-)
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