The Sum of Some Parts

Rebecca Treadway wrote an interesting post about the unintended relational consequences that can come about because of the nature of the blogging medium. From her post:

Blogging is a strange medium that has great potential for allowing misperceptions and miscommunication to run rampant. To put it bluntly, you may not really know me if you only read my blog.

To that I would also add that the things you read in my blog may or may not conflict with the "me" you know from our "real life" relationship.

I ran into this as I began to consider moving back to Lincoln with my family. As I talked about looking forward to being back in our old church, a very good friend worried that this church (i.e. his church) might not be "radical enough" for a guy like me. He and I have been friends for almost a decade now, and while we were in college we were nearly inseperable. We kept in contact throughout my time in St. Louis, mostly by e-mail but also by him reading my blog. Admittedly, I definitely have radical leanings in my politics, religion, and cultural critiques. Yet, my response to him was that he should be careful to not understand who I am (or who I have become) on the content of my blog. He knew who I used to be before I moved to St. Louis, and he also knew part of me based on my blog. But, that part was not (and still isn't) representative of who I really am in total.

I blog as an outlet of sorts. Most often, the things I blog about are the things that really get to me and bug me enough to compel me to write about them. If something isn't particularly interesting to me, it's probably not going to make it into the blog. I like the St. Louis Cardinals, Bluegrass music, and Peanut Butter Panic ice cream, but I will probably never blog about any of those things because they just wouldn't be interesting to write or for anyone to read. But, they are all parts of who I am nonetheless.

So, a friend from afar can get an idea of what really bothers me by reading my blog, but being defined only by what bothers me is hopefully a very limited view of who I am. You can know part of who I am through my blog, but not who I really am as a whole.

This longtime friend also happens to be Mrs. X's husband from my post about the typical view of children held by many churches and church-goers in America these days. Being an astute gentleman, he was able to realize that his wife had been mentioned on my blog.

My intention in that post was to put into words my somewhat radical (at least in our culture and era) position on children, marriage, and the family. The post was intentionally polemical, as most blog posts are, so that I could clearly define my position as it differs from what I believe to be the majority opinion of many Evangelicals these days. My aim was most certainly not to skewer Mrs. X, or even to accurately represent what Mrs. X believes. In reality, I would wager that my "Doctrine of Children" and that of Mrs. X are probably at least 95% alike. But what fun would it be to blog about that? Mrs. X's comments were used as a jumping off point so I could put my thoughts into words on an issue that I think the church, in general, gets wrong most of the time.

Fortunately, Mr. X is a good guy. He and I discussed the issue until we were both confident that no conflict or "hard feelings" remained.

If you read my blog, I hope you enjoy it. I hope it challenges you to think about some things that you might not have considered before (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). Just don't base your opinion of who I am on what you read here because, as Johnny Cash once said, "It ain't me, babe." It's just my blog.