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.
