Any readers that are Christian might want to stop reading now and delete all their favourite blogs from their bookmarks. And if you are Christian and keep your own blog, watch out. It’s not that I have any problem with the combination of Christians and blogs personally, but some people do.
The Evangelical Restored Church of God has deemed blogging to be un-Christian. The monthly publication of this church, Ambassador Youth, has pointed out that blogging has become a socially accepted practice, just like “dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving”. What about teenage pregnancy? What about drug abuse? Paedophilia? They missed a few opportunities there.
Kevin D Denee, writing in Ambassador Youth, notes, apparently without a trace of a comedy routine, that blogging “often makes the blogger feel good or makes him feel as if his opinion counts”. How dare those godless bloggers do anything to feel good or even consider, for a fraction of a second, that their opinion counts. They should have long since learned that the only opinion that counts is that of god, delivered, naturally, by the very human leader of their church and coloured heavily with that leader’s own agenda. Expressing their own opinion indeed. These people should be burned at the stake.
Denee also noted that, “Much of this is simply blathering on blogs – mindless words and idle communication. Blogs can be summed up as people talking about almost anything, but really nothing. There is no purpose to much of the contents – no direction.”
So what? Ninety per cent of regular conversations fall into this category anyway and, to be honest, it’s also a fair description of a large number of church sermons I’ve been unfortunate enough to endure. From any faith, not just Christian ones.
Funnily enough, the church recognises that there are “some professionals and specialists who use blogs to serve a proper purpose”. I wonder if that includes me? Their last piece of advice is to maintain friends the “old-fashioned way” through “actual personal contact, as well as letter writing, emailing or instant messaging”. Now they’re just trying to be cool by suggesting that email and IM are old-fashioned.
I’ll leave it for you to decide what’s un-Christian. If you want to read all of Denee’s alarmist and sensationalist article about the evils of blogging, you can find it here. But I warn you, “much of this is simply blathering”.
