Looking back on Lent

Readers of the blog may not have noticed much different during the last couple of months, but those who follow me on Twitter or like the page on Facebook may have noticed that I decided to give up self promotion for Lent. Instead of using social media to push my own writings to those who ‘like’ or ‘follow’ me, I wanted to highlight the work of other bloggers, all of whom I regard as better quality writers than I, even if I don’t agree with everything they write.

My aim was to do 40 blogs in 40 days, only I managed to learn for the first time ever (at the age of 29) that contrary to what I had been told for years, that Lent doesn’t last for 40 days. While I didn’t manage to do one per day (my week in Scotland hindered that) I did want to make sure that I did all 40 by the end of Lent. Only when I thought Easter should have been a week away, I looked at the calendar and realised it was 2 weeks away. When I asked on Twitter why this was I was deluged with responses from those from a high church background telling me that for counting the days of Lent, Sunday isn’t regarded as a real day. The only time I’ve had more responses on Twitter in a short space of time was when I was retweeted by the BBC’s Conservative party spokesman, Nick Robinson. Anyway, you live and learn!

When I began, it was just after Valentine’s day and I had written a piece specially for it (you can read it here). I had tremendous joy in writing that and conceitedly thought it was rather good. So I began Lent by being hugely frustrated that potentially good work may be ignored. However, as I went on, I no longer started to twitch at the idea that I was throwing words down a hole. Rather, I was hoping that someone might pick up on a blog they had never come across before and might start reading. I know of two people who said that I had helped them find new works they had been unaware of, so I think it was worth it even if it were only for those two.

I think it would be a fair criticism to say that behind some of my self promotion is a desire to win approval from others. Though I mostly muse, with writing as a form of thinking, I do like to make you think at least as much as I have thought about what I write. Even if you don’t agree, I hope that some of you feel ‘nudged’ a little. Sometimes I may prod a little too hard in some directions. I try not to be needlessly offensive. If I think offense may be warranted, I try to bite my tongue, though I wouldn’t claim my judgement is anything but flawed in deciding when to speak out and when to stay silent. As I write this (it’s about 9:30pm on Tuesday the 2^nd of April) I have been much angered and upset by the news. There has been the conviction of the Philpotts for the manslaughter of their children. There have been arguments over the government’s changes to social security which have begun to kick in and I saw an article on the news about Welsh farmers who have lost large parts of their flocks due to the harsh weather in March. I plan to write about tax and benefits soon, but I may well remain silent over the others, even though they move me greatly. Is that a bad choice? Are so many writing about the economy that the voices on the left are now just an incoherent cacophony rather than a united chorus?

With Lent now over, I have returned to self promotion. Please let me know if you think I do it too much. My aim is generally to post once on my Facebook page and three times on Twitter (once in the morning rush hour, once at lunchtime and once in the evening rush hour). I know I find those who promote more heavily than this to be irritating, especially those on twitter who retweet any recommendations they get. If that’s you, maybe you might consider your own motivations as I have tried.

Anyway, here’s the list of blogs I promoted. Only towards the end did I realise there was a gender imbalance, so I apologise that it does lean more towards male authorship than being egalitarian. I apologise if you think I overlooked you. Most of these blogs have their own blogrolls, so you could springboard your way to many more from these. I hope you have fun exploring them, though I do hope you come back and have a read here sometime. Let me know if you think I’ve erred, omitted anything or if there’s anything you’d like me to write about. I’m also happy to host any guest posts if you want to write.

Confessions of a Doubting Thomas
Pam’s Perambulation
Renaissance Mathematicus
Teenage Christian
Rogue Stardust
Rev’d Claire
Stranger in an Even Stranger Land (though this site is blocked on some servers for malicious links – nothing about the content. The author is a lovely bloke)
Running Life
Cranmer
God and Politics
Dyfed Wyn Roberts
Longing to be Holy
Half Way to Normal
eChurch Blog (though, having taken a break for Lent, Stuart has now joined the ranks of The Church Mouse & Rev’d Lesley as one to have ceased an immensely readable blog)
Broken Cameras
We Mixed Our Drinks
Simon Clare
Lucy Mills
Admiral Creedy
Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley
An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy
Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
Vicky Walker
James Prescott
Thorns and Gold (my personal favourite from this lot)
Thirsty Gargoyle
Recovering Agnostic
Lay Anglicana
Kurt Willems
Kouya
Opinionated Vicar
Vicky Beeching
Finally Human
Fragmentz
Part Time Priest
Sat n’ All That
Black Coffee Reflections
The Church Sofa
The Big Bible Project (a collaborative project, to which I contribute on the 10th of each month)

A christian ethic of blogging

Of late, I have been reading Justification by Tom Wright. I have now finished it and my review will be published before long on this site. However, near the beginning, one little passage jumped out at me and I could not help but be drawn into engagement with it. It reads thus:

“Go to the blogsites, if you dare. It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. As for the practice of saying mean and untrue things while hiding behind a pseudonym – well, if I get a letter like that it goes straight into the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road-rage don’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their
worldview to be under attack.”

I like the idea of a christian ethic of blogging. Though I wonder how it might differ from a christian ethic of any other form of communication. As a fairly regular blogger with an online presence on Twitter and Facebook also, how we communicate our faith to one another and to those who are not christians is a topic of great interest to me.

I agree with Wright that we ought to remain courteous and gracious in all our dealings with one another, whether that be conducted face-to-face, via handwritten letters, writing books or composing blog posts and commenting thereon. Though it strikes me that these are all just different forms of communication; so maybe we could generalise to a christian ethic of communication. Though I think this was outlined quite well by James in what has become known as chapter 3 in his letter to the dispersion.

What really struck me about this snippet was the phrase, “hiding behind a pseudonym”. I have written a little on web anonymity before but it may be worth restating some things. I blog under a pseudonym to keep my normal life and my working life separate. I’m not sure how many of my employers, past or present, would like what I write. I do not claim to speak as a representative of anyone other than myself, which would be compromised if I openly blogged in my own name. Aside from that, there is nothing duplicitous in what I write. I would hope that any readers here have found me to be open and honest.

What I aim for is what I think of as credible anonymity. To avoid such fallacies as the argument from authority or the argument from no authority, I think it is important to assess a person’s words on what they actually say rather than any secondary information which may be dug up by researching their real name. After all, what is a name if not a label by which someone is known. To be simultaneously credible and anonymous, one ought to maintain a self-consistency. I wouldn’t claim I always attain this, though it is something I aim for, and I hope you might recognise this.

The trouble with anonymity is that there are those who use it, as Wright points out, as a mask to hide behind while abuse is hurled out from behind it. Yet to characterise all such anonymous bloggers as such would be (though Wright doesn’t quite go that far) a terrible slur. Of course, people don’t like being told that they’re wrong, especially when the accusation is false. That doesn’t just happen to famous authors, bloggers do that to one another.

In my opinion, it is only by setting an example of being both anonymous and credible, with others following en masse, that attitudes towards anonymity may be helped. I don’t think it will ever be free from suspicion, as the likes of LulzSec and the “Anonymous” collective continue to use the web for purposes perceived (not always unjustly) as nefarious.

I also, wonder if, given that this blog is anonymous, Prof Wright would even read this piece, all other considerations aside…

Top 10 posts of 2012

I’m not a fan of “[reviews of the year]” which are shown the light of day before the year has ended. That is why this post has not taken shape until the start of this year. In case you’ve only just stumbled across this blog or if you’ve only recently started following (welcome along, by the way!) then these are the most popular posts in 2012. I’ve used the total number of hits as the measure. As I migrated from Blogger to WordPress, this takes into account the total hits from both sites.

It is interesting to see this list, as it’s not what I expected. The top 2 posts are by far away the most popular, each with more hits than numbers 3-10 put together. Some of the posts on unemployment have been unexpectedly well-read, though I will confess some disappointment that some of the longer posts into which I poured the most time and effort have not made the list.

I think it also says something about how a blog post is worded which either piques the interest when it is advertised on social media or by how easily it is found via a search engine.

1. Derren Brown, confirmation bias and the need for religious education
2. Proof of why a transposition error is always divisible by 9
3. Book Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
4. Confession of a left-wing christian
5. A Big Personal Announcement
6. Why I left my church – part 4
7. Why I left my church – part 1
8. Is this the worst email reply ever?
9. How not to conduct an interview
10. What is an alethiophile?

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for topics you would like me to write about, please do feel to suggest any. If you would like to write a guest post then do drop me a line. You can leave a comment, send me a message on Twitter or Facebook.

Blogger’s block: Searching for cohesion

I’ve hit a wall again. While I found my month off quite beneficial and several people commented (albeit slightly backhandedly) on the quality of my posts thereafter, I’ve run into another mental block. I’ve received responses to both my tax proposal for companies taking on unemployed people and to my post on confirmation bias and the need for religious education.

While I have draft responses to these, I am satisfied with neither. Looking at them as they stand, they are little more than a collection of soundbites. To those I have promised to reply, I apologise. They lack an overall cohesion, making them difficult to read.

I also have had some other distractions, some welcome, some not. For one, the job market seems to have picked up, so I have been spending a lot more time researching for both 1^st and 2^nd round interviews. Inevitably, there have been some massive disappointments; interviews that have gone particularly well have resulted in rejection because “[there was just someone with more relevant experience]”. Also, I’ve not been in the best of health, and the most minor of illnesses tends to make my head go a bit fuzzy, making the prospect of writing that bit more daunting. 

There are a few more books which I’ve read & reviewed, but whose reviews haven’t yet been posted. So unless I can improve my half-written posts greatly in the next few days , then the rest of this year’s posts will just be book reviews. I know they’re not the most popular of my posts although they do seem to be the most frequented when the blog is found via search engines.

Let’s hope the new year beings good health, a new job and greater clarity in writing (in that order of priority).

Reflections on a month off from blogging

Well, I’m back again. As you may have read, I decided to take a break from blogging for a month. This was not the only thing I was taking a break from, though I didn’t say so publically at the time. I was also taking a month off from my local church in order to decide whether I ought to stay there or whether it was time to move on. I eventually made the decision that after 4 years, it was time to move on and find another church, but I will say more on that in later posts.

With regards to taking a break from blogging, I began by trying to take a break from writing completely. My laptop was solely to be used for reviewing job specs and making tiny amendments to my CV. This was thwarted, though, by  the need to express in words some of the thoughts that were going through my head. I ended up writing a piece over 4,200 words on why I left my church. I actually wrote it in about a day, as the fact that I was not pressurising myself to publish it online within a certain timescale somehow freed up my thinking process. I am grateful to @pamjweb for proofreading it for me. After that, I did some editing to it and eventually slimmed it down to 3,200 words which I sent to my (former) pastor on the 30^th of October.

It highlights one of the important lessons I’ve learned about writing this month: good writing needs good editing. As you may see in some of my posts, I can have a tendency to have diarrhoea of the keyboard. As such, I will endeavour to keep my posts shorter in the future in order to make them more readable. I am often so concerned with being misunderstood that I have expanded on points and tried to clarify the definitions I am using ad nauseam. Maybe I’ve been patronising you; if so, I apologise.

The other key thing I’ve worked out is the need for a blog to be written in as short a time as reasonable. I am not advocating rushing, but rather that its initial composition (prior to editing) needs to be done in as few ‘sittings’ as possible. I still have on my computer about half a dozen blog posts that I started writing over a year ago. Whenever I return to them, I lose my train of thought, write a few lines, wonder where it is going, press save and then put it away for another few weeks. It would be interesting if you can discern which of the posts I have published fall into that category.

I also set myself targets which were not healthy. I was trying to ensure that I would publish 2 or 3 times a week. But when an idea ran away and needed to be broken down into several parts I would rush things through just for the sake of having something for you to read, in the hope that you would not lose interest in the blog. Having something a digital ego, I do check my statistics from time to time (see the vanity counter on the left sidebar, if you’re viewing on this in desktop view). What I found is that the traffic barely changed. If I have interestingly-titled posts then I may experience a peak on one particular day, but on the whole it trundles along at a steady pace.

So I may go through more periods of silence whilst I ponder what to write. This may be followed up with flurries of posts. I hope this sporadic style of posting will not put you off. It seems to be the best way of being a clearer, honest writer.

This has a knock-on effect that I have had to come to terms with. I will never be a ‘current affairs blogger’. As exemplified with #CNMAC12, most of the blogs were written very shortly after the event; within a day or two. Other bloggers (I have no idea how they do it) manage to write lengthy, thought-through pieces on the same day as any given topic or event comes up. Being a ponderous sort of fellow, when I come to write such pieces, everything worth saying has already been said, so I let my voice echo off the walls of my flat.

In the meantime, if there’s anything you’d like me to write about, or if you would like to write some guest posts, please drop me a line either by commenting here or tweeting me @TheAlethiophile.

Celebrity Christians

[Please note that this was written before the recent flare-up of vitriol both propagated by, and in reaction to, Mark Driscoll’s comments about UK christians]

Those of you who know me will know that I’m quite critical of what I call the ‘cult’ of celebrity Christians. By cult, I do not mean occult, or necessarily that all such folk are unsound teachers (though I do have strong reservations about some). I merely mean that that they often have a wide following that is much broader than that from their own individual churches.

Such people include (but are not limited to): Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, Billy Graham, Bill Hybels, Bill Johnson, Alister McGrath, Joyce Meyer, Joseph Ratzinger, Rick Warren, Rowan Williams & Tom Wright.

I was tempted recently to go to a one day conference where another of these kind of people was to be speaking: William Lane Craig. But then I just caught myself and started questioning my motivation. So this post is simply an exploration of what went through my mind in relation to that, as well as my concerns in relation to the phenomena of the celebrity preacher.

The bite from the blogosphere

For just about everyone that gains any level of “fame” there will be detractors. It’s not hard to find them; all you need do is type their name into Google and add the word “false” at the end. One has to be very cautious with this, I think, as it is tempting to think “there’s no smoke without fire.” You can also go the other way, and think that because someone is coming up against a lot of opposition that they must be talking sense.

The truth is, the blogosphere can be filled with a lot of junk and people pushing their own agenda. As an aside, I will let you draw your own conclusions about this tiny and obscure corner of the blogosphere that you find yourself reading at this instance. For me, the key word is “discernment.” There is a subtle difference between this and “judgement” though the consequences can be very far apart.

It is very easy to condemn someone with whom you disagree as “false” and to launch attacks on them. Of those named above, the newcomer to the scene who has only really come to prominence in the last couple of years is Mark Driscoll. I do not agree with everything he teaches, but I will not condemn him as a false teacher. I think he is mistaken on some issues, but I do not, based on that, reject anything and everything he says.

On those that I tend to agree with more, say, Alister McGrath, I do not accept uncritically everything he says or writes as being true and correct. To do so would be to fall foul of the Argument From Authority fallacy, though I do have some unorthodox views on this which I may expand upon on in a future post.

Are we guilty of “itching ears?”

Amongst the detractors, there is a common verse that is referred to. 2 Timothy 4:3 says

“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

In today’s world of social media, it is easier than ever to listen to whatever you want to listen to. Sermons and blogs are published online and you can gather all the soundbites you like off Twitter. In so doing, one can filter out anything you disagree with and choose a select group of people to listen to.

This is not something new. Paul wrote the following to the Corinthians

“What I’m talking about is this. Each one of you is saying, “I’m with Paul!” “I’m with Apollos!” “I’m with Cephas!” “I’m with the Messiah”” (1 Corinthians 1:12, NTFE)

You could take any period of history and substitute any names. If you take the slightly later church, you could have Origen, Tertullian & Ignatius. Move on to the Reformation and it might be Luther, Calvin & Zwingli. Today, it could be any of those I named at the top. The important thing to me is that we don’t become followers of men & women, but that we are followers of Jesus. That’s pretty much Paul’s gist in this passage and it’s one that I think has never ceased to be relevant.

Some individuals may be self-promoters, others are promoted by the institutions and organisations they are a part of. I would love if it the prominence were given not the person writing the books & blogs or preaching the sermons, but to the words that are written and spoken themselves. Instead of looking to a select few and hanging on their every word, I think it would be far better for the anonymous masses of churches to declare truth and have their words assessed on their own merits.

Of course, that then begs Pilate’s question: “What is truth?”

Taking a break

I’m going to be taking a break over Christmas. Not just work-wise but blog-wise too. I’ll continue to write, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have ready access to an internet connection to upload. I haven’t decided if I’m taking my laptop with me as I tour the country visiting family for a few days at a time. I’ve got a large pile of half-finished posts that I really ought to get back to. So even though January will be the busiest month of the year for me work-wise, I hope to be able to make some regular postings. Some of these will be responses to posts that are months old and others will be the product of the musings of my mind over the Christmas period.

Besides, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of better things to be doing at this time of the year than perusing the web. With over 100 posts written this year, I think I’ve done enough for now. I hope to have more time in 2012, though I can easily imagine that that will disappear somehow. Either way, some changes are afoot, some of which can go online, others of which probably can’t. The blog has certainly grown in readership this year. For the first 5 months it averaged a meagre 100 hits per month whilst in the last 5, it’s garnered almost 900 per month, though it’s still a long way short of the superstar blogs.

Have a good Christmas!

On web anonymity

It may not have escaped your notice that this blog is semi-anonymous. The username I tend to go by, Sipech, is actually related to my real name, though I choose to not reveal it in full. Those that know me “in real life” may be aware of the blog, and I estimate that about 25% of those of you who are reading this have met me. But for the rest of you, does it matter that you can’t put associate my writings with a name or with a face?

This led me to think: are web users who choose to retain their anonymity less credible than those who don’t?

Prompted by this, I asked an open question on Twitter. Interestingly, all the responses I got were from users who, like me, opted to retain their anonymity. I don’t keep mine a particularly closely guarded secret. I’ve entered into email correspondence with some people, and my email address bears with it my real name. Part of the reason I choose to use a pseudonym is to distance my work life from my blog.

On the one hand, someone who opts for anonymity may be perceived as hiding something in some way. On the other hand, though, I don’t see what is materially gained from knowing an individual’s identity in some way. There are exceptions, where a blogger may have specialist knowledge or access to information that the public in general wouldn’t have. In such a circumstance, the writer may meet with some scepticism (and rightly so, I believe) if it may be thought that they are making things up. There have been some notorious cases of bloggers who have faked their identity or where they have been ‘unmasked’ for various reasons.

What about those who choose to reveal their true identity? Do they (or you) think there is something to be gained by doing so, or is it an issue to which little thought is applied?

One experiment I had in mind would be for a well-known blogger to create a second blog and write anonymously. The content need not be significantly different. I think it would be interesting to see if the same content under an anonymous label would garner the same level of attention.

Of course, there are a number of other factors to consider in such an experiment, like how long it took for a particular blogger to gain a significant following. So it’s not an experiment that could be done a few weeks. Several months to a year may be a more reasonable estimate.

I don’t know the answer to these questions. I’m just throwing them out there. What do you think?

The quiet before the storm

I feel I must apologise for my lack of postings this week. Despite it being relatively gentle in terms of my day job, I haven’t had the time to finish any blog postings to a degree I consider satisfactory. Readers who notice my regular spelling and grammar mistakes will know how low my standards are, so you can possibly imagine how terribly half-formed my posts are at the moment.

I was also asked to lead my church housegroup on the subject of worship (which my church will looking at over the next month or so), so I spent a fair amount of time this week researching that. I do hope to summarise my thoughts on that, not least as it coincided with the opportunity to attend a “flashmob” evening song outside St Paul’s cathedral. I have various reservations, which I attempted (and probably poorly at that) to summarise on twitter & facebook, which prompted some interesting responses. I’m still not sure whether or not I will attend. My aim will be to clarify my thoughts and allow for a more open discussion.

I also promised Gurdur a response to a piece he wrote a couple of weeks ago, though in trying to search for references I have not been very fruitful, and that which I have found has not been of the highest quality. My lack of brevity has again struck, and the response is likely to span several posts. At present, it looks like this:

1) the difference between a disciple & an apostle, and was Paul either?
2) Authorship of the contested Pauline writings (this is the one which is hard to find any solid evidence on) and
3) Paul’s guilt and self-forgiveness in relation to the death of Stephen. This is subject to change.

I am also approaching the end of a couple of books and will be reviewing these also. There are many more in the pipeline, but these are a little further away from completion.

I hope to be able to finish a good number this weekend, to be posted next week. In the mean time, have a good weekend.