Blog Problems

Here is the problem with blogs: Blogs allow others to see the surface of our being and blogs are merely a medium for us to present the surface of our beings.

Here's the scary thing about blogs: Blogs are an accurate picture of who we imagine ourselves to be. That is, beings that are what we present ourselves to be and what others observe us be by their presentation. This is not a complement.

David Wells writes in Losing Our Virtue,
“Native born Americans have become psychological immigrants, as alone in our huge cities and complex bureaucracies as the foreign immigrants who came ashore in New York…In our great centers commerce, the cities, as well as in the thoroughfares of conversation like television and the movies, surface appearance take on a powerful, symbolic role and become commercially potent. Style is the “commerce in appearances.” It uses what is a surface either to transform or to hide the person.” (143)

Our virtual presentation of our lives through the medium of blogs is the creation in cyberspace (whatever that is) of what we think we are in reality. The two could not be farther from the truth. We are not what we present ourselves to be. We are not always what others observe our presentations to be. It is folly to believe that we are. Unfortunately, we do.

I realize that I am posting this on my blog, shared by my wife (really upheld by my wife, which maybe is the manifestation of her virtual function as my ‘suitable helper’? I must stop this digression…). Our blog’s title is a declaration of two of our activities. It could very well be that we think that we are what we do (surf or cook or anything else). We could be that we are presenting to others that we are what we do. We are not. We are who we worship. And if we think that we are what we do or own or feel or whatever then we are idolaters worshipping ourselves. In this sense, I repudiate the monikers that Melia is a chef or a homemaker and that I am a surfer or a pastor or whatever. This is not to rebel against labels but to oppose the religion of our society that believes that our identities are tied to ourselves. They are not. Our identities are tied in a permanent knot to our Creator whose image, despite our sin, we still bear.

Here is the declaration of our identities from our Maker Himself.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

We are the image bearers of God to the creation given authority over all the earth to use it for our lives and the enjoyment and worship of God.

So the ocean, wind, waves, and the natural resources used to make the various vehicles and equipment created by man to live in the world that we have been given is a minor and really insignificant aspect of the much greater enterprise of men to exercise their delegated place in the cosmos. So, this is what it means that ‘joe surfs.’

The labor and insight of humanity to harvest from this planet all sorts of spices, vegetables, and meats and then to combine them into amazing meals that function to serve the family at multiple layers of meaning and significance is the rightful execution of the grand and glorious plan of mankind for our Grand and Glorious God has given it to us. In this sense joe’s “wife cooks.”

Identity is not what your meals look like, what company made your tools, and from what producer you garnered your materials. Identity is in the God who made you for his purposes and commissioned you for his mission.

This should change the preparation of every meal and every session. And this should change everything else, too.

This is what is wrong with blogs at some level. But maybe you just use to communicate with the 6 friends you have who live in different places of the world. For you, be encouraged, joe’s wife will resume posting.

Joe watched a surf film (click title for film's website)

Joe watched Thomas Campbell's "The Present." It's good. Especially Dan Malloy's surfing in Indonesia, but not his narrative skills. The film and Campbell's commentary made me think more about the worldview of it all- and mine.

Campbell narrates the conclusion to his film The Present thus, “And hopefully that is what we have tried to convey in this film, getting back to the basics of being thankful for the here and now on this beautifully strange functional planet.”

The author of Hebrews writes in 2:8-9 “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Both deal with the present, the here and now. Specifically, both teach how one is to view the present and what the present it is. Can Thomas Campbell’s view of the present be embraced with the Christian view of the present? First, we must understand what is the present. The Christian understands the present not in light of their conclusions derived by their experiences, their inward thoughts and meditations but because of the external word of God and work of Christ.

Hebrews tells what ‘the now’ is. Hebrews tells us how to view ‘the present.’ We view the present in light of the future. We look at the present in the light of what is not yet but what will be. The now is not yet for the Christian. Thus the present is the time of hope. Hope is not what one has but what is looking forward to having. The present functions not as our home, nor as our long awaited rest. The present is not subject to mankind’s apparent sovereign will. Nor is the present subject to the earth. The present is not just a timeline the consequence of ideas manifesting themselves upon persons, peoples, nations, governments, economies, lands and seas. The present, all that it includes, is subject to Christ for God has subjected it to Him. But this is not yet seen. It is told. And that vision is invisible as it is where God is and God is outside of our view. God cannot be rightly seen as in rightly known apart from divine revelation. This revelation of God by God is in the Word of God. Thus the right view of the present is a view is impossible to see for it is not yet visible. This view of Christ from the Word of God concerning the present yet to come is the hope of the church in the present. The church’s hope is based upon the present unseen reality of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’s position as King of all in the present and in the future. This is apprehended by faith in what has been done and said by God. Yet this reality of the present is proven in the past by Christ Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into God’s presence. It is also proven in the present by Christ’s enthronement at the approved and victorious position at God’s right hand. But in the present that is not yet seen. So our eyes are fixed upon the one we, the church, have seen, that is Jesus and him crucified and glorified. His present and future glory is in light of his past suffering and death. For His death was done in the past, believed in the present, and forever exalted in the future by those whom He tasted their death as their substitute because God is graceful.

The present is not “getting back to the basics of being thankful for the here and now on this fully functional planet.” The present is seeing & savoring the Son of God who rules over the present, who will be seen in the future as the Ruler of the new, fully functional, redeemed heaven and earth, and forever exalted as the Savior of sinners by those for whom He died. May this be the hope of those in the present and The Present. And thus, the present is the hope of the future – Christ’s return and establishment here, where we can see it, of His victorious rule as the Savior King.

Or maybe The Present is just a surf film that Joe should watch and relax. And if he has a meditative thought, it should be, “Wow, I don’t surf anything like that.”

Just pictures

Birds, Bees, and Gabby

Recent breakfast conversation...

Little Joe: Mama, I wish Gabby could have babies.

Mama: Well, son, she can't.

Little Joe: I know. She had surgery to remove her husband.