Check out a recent post I did on Mother Earth News' Community Cluckers blog.

With a few notable exceptions, the heyday of blog comment threads appears to be over. Some blogs don't even host comments any more, but the ones that still do -- like this blog, for instance, which used to average comments in the twenties for every post -- has seen its comment discussion glory days gone by. Why?

Three theories:

1. Max saturation of weblogs.

In the olden days, the blogosphere was a smaller community, and people were more invested in and enthusiastic about the actual community feel of the medium. Even in the ubiquitous flame wars there was a sense of camaraderie going on, like the spirit in a town pub or coffee shop. Now that the blogosphere has expanded and exploded, everybody is too busy blogging themselves to comment on other people's blogs.

2. Social media has officially made us socially retarded.

Facebook is a prime example. It's friendship for people who don't know how to carry on actual conversations with people's faces. We are now used to using social media -- blogging included -- as a soapbox, confessional, or self-promotional platform instead of a living room or conference table. We just don't know how to talk to each other.

3. Burnout or simple lack of interest.

We're either tired of online discussions in general, finding them fruitless or tiresome, or the appeal of the comment threads in the days of blogging newness has passed. We're on to other things now.

I'm looking for edification. Not really after the provocative sites, or argumentative sites.

I'm pretty hungry for some good edification. Let me know if you have any recommendations. Thanks!

I've been blogging eight years, beginning with the launch of the Thinklings. In that time, I have come to identify certain blog community types. Gone is the heyday of scintillating conversation and good ol' fashioned scrums in blog comment threads, but these folks are still around in some forms and fashions. Here are the people you meet when you're walking down the street of the Christian blogosphere:

The Ironic Policeman
This is the guy who tells you you should have been out street evangelizing or working the food shelf instead of pontificating in your blog post. It is somehow lost on him that he could be doing those things instead of commenting on it.

The Yes-Man
This dude loves everything you write. He loves you. He's probably watching you through the window right now.

The Debbie Downer
This guy or gal sees the world through poop-covered glasses. Sure, Jesus is risen, but everything's going to hell in a handbasket anyway. And have you seen the price of handbaskets lately? How can a decent man cut it in this terrible economy? One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy, of course, but this person is overfertilizing to grow it. There's no blog post you can write for which they cannot devise a "yes, but" and thereafter vomit their angst upon you.

The Loyal Opposition
The opposite of the yes-man, and closely related to a Debbie Downer also, this person lives to critique, challenge, yes-but, and contradict. You're wrong about everything, and he's going to let you know. He starts comments with the world "actually" a lot.

The Drive-By Bible Shooter
He's got a lot of verses. Now you do too in your comment thread.

The Tail-Eating Snake
This is the guy who strongly criticizes you for strongly criticizing someone. Because strongly criticizing is wrong. Unless you're strongly criticizing strong criticism. Wait. What?

The Hipster Hypocrite
This person is very offended by John Piper, Pat Robertson, Mark Driscoll, and anybody that could be construed as fundamentalist or conservative, but loves all the disrespectful, crude Christian satire blogs. It is not Christlike to criticize Rob Bell or Don Miller, but it's awesome to make fun of unhip Christians like Jerry Falwell and Southern Gospel singers.

Heart-on-the-Shirtsleeves Guy
There is nothing you can say to this person that will not offend or hurt them. Alternately sad and angry, they are at the center of their own universe, and you mustn't poke them. They don't like that. They will hate you forever.

The Anonymous Character Assassin
This guy writes under an assumed name so he can smear you and all kinds of other people. Also known as the Cowardly Lyin'.

The Human Spammer
This dude or dudette finds a way in every comment to point back to something he's posted. "This reminds me," he'll get around to saying. "I wrote something just like this..." He doesn't understand that a good track record of insightful comments will get people to click over to his blog of their own interest and that consistently linking to his own stuff is a great way to kill that interest. He's not so much interested in contributing to a conversation as he is in treating the conversation like a progressive dinner, with his house being the next stop. Except nobody wants to go there.

The Bleeding Heart
This person cannot stand to see any kind of disagreement or debate. "Can't we all just get along," they think. They would love to say that conflict isn't Christlike but there's all those mean things Jesus said to people in the Bible.

The Zealous Fanboy
Not to be confused with the yes-man, this is a commenter who is obsessed with someone else and wants to always quote, recommend, and refer to that person. The Johns MacArthur or Piper are typical objects of obsession. He won't tell you what he thinks, but he will tell you what John MacArthur thinks. And so that's what he thinks too. It will blow this guy's mind when you disagree with something his idol says.

Who am I missing?

By "train wreck" I do not refer to the recent rhetorical explosions in some sections of the blogosphere over Bell's upcoming book Love Wins, but to the book itself. And of course I should say "alleged train wreck," because someone will inevitably point out that We Cannot Trust Anybody who criticizes Bell's work, so second-hand appraisals are (theoretically) rubbish. Still, I'm a gullible sort, so when somebody generally trustworthy has read the book and shows me examples of its train-wreckness, I am duped into believing them. Kinda like when I see video of a train wreck on the news I think to myself "Man, what an awful train wreck," and not "I don't believe it because I wasn't in it."

If this is all news to you, a little lowdown before a couple of helpful link-snippets:
Rob Bell's newest book Love Wins proposes to reeducate the masses on God's eternal plan for all of mankind. Turns out that what we've heard from the traditional church for ages about hell isn't may not be true-ish. In Bell's customary way, he provokes, questions, nudges, acts coy, and does that I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin' kind of thing. Allegedly. The response before the book has officially released involved much hand-wringing about Bell's hinting at universalism/inclusivism. Bell's defenders kinda-sorta said, "How dare you accuse Bell of heresy without reading the book! And what's wrong with a little heresy anyway?!" The hand-wringing was met by bet-hedging.

Well, the problem is that smart people have now read the book. And it turns out that when smart people see an arrow flying through the air they can in a somewhat reliable way estimate where it will land.

Tim Challies and Aaron Armstrong offer a strong review, which you should read. They quote Bell:

What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody . . .

And then he leaves the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe. People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways . . . Sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t . . . Some people have so much baggage with regard to the name “Jesus” that when they encounter the mystery present in all of creation—grace, peace, love, acceptance, healing, forgiveness—the last thing they are inclined to name it is “Jesus" . . . What we see Jesus doing again and again—in the midst of constant reminders about the seriousness of following him living like him, and trusting him—is widening the scope and expanse of his saving work.

Challies and Armstrong write: "That is what we know as universalism. And it is cause for mourning."

Challies and Armstrong, as well as others now getting their hands on the book, demonstrate Bell's lackadaisical use of Scripture and his flippant manner with doctrines hard-won for centuries.
Carl Trueman demonstrates Bell's outright deception:

On page 108 of his book (to be precise, an advance reader copy), Bell makes the following statement:

And then there are others who can live with two destinations, two realities after death, but insist that there must be some kind of "second chance" for those who don't believe in Jesus in this lifetime. In a letter Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 he considered the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking: "Who would doubt God's ability to do that?"

Again, a good question.

And so space is created in this "who would doubt God's ability to do that?" perspective for all kinds of people--fifteen-year-old atheists, people from other religions, and people who rejected Jesus because the only Jesus they ever saw was an oppressive figure who did anything but show God's love.

When the text is consulted, the context in which this statement occurs is absolutely vital to understanding what exactly Luther is saying at this point. I quote here the Fortress edition, which seems to be an accurate rendering of the German. I have highlighted the phrase Bell is citing, while also reproducing the important wider context:

If God were to save anyone without faith, he would be acting contrary to his own words and would give himself the lie; yes, he would deny himself. And that is impossible for, as St. Paul declares, God cannot deny himself [II Tim. 2:13]. It is as impossible for God to save without faith as it is impossible for divine truth to lie. That is clear, obvious, and easily understood, no matter how reluctant the old wineskin is to hold this wine--yes, is unable to hold and contain it.

It would be quite a different question whether God can impart faith to some in the hour of death or after death so that these people could be saved through faith. Who would doubt God's ability to do that? No one, however, can prove that he does do this. For all that we read is that he has already raised people from the dead and thus granted them faith. But whether he gives faith or not, it is impossible for anyone to be saved without faith. Otherwise every sermon, the gospel, and faith would be vain, false, and deceptive, since the entire gospel makes faith necessary. (Works, 43, ed. and trans. G. Wienke and H. T. Lehmann [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968], 53-54; WA 10.ii, 324.25-325.11)

In this letter, Luther is answering the question, raised by von Rechenberg, as to whether any can be saved without faith. Luther's answer is a clear 'no.' In fact, the letter is specifically aimed at refuting any notion that anyone can be saved by anything other than faith as Luther defines it.

So Luther's letter is a clear denial of the idea that God will save faithless people after they die, but Bell quotes one or two lines to argue that Luther believes the opposite. At best this is sloppy; at worst, it is deceptive. I believe the worst.

There's much more emerging (no pun intended) as more people read Love Wins. Don't be tempted by the smug "I told you so"'s likely to come from some of the stronger critiques to dismiss the obvious problems with Bell's thinking and methodology. This is important stuff.

Not to beat dead horses - although I've found that's one of my only skills in life - ha ha - but the thought crossed my mind when reading some of the comment threads yesterday that we were, all of a sudden, kicking it Thinklings-2004 style around here. In the early days of this blog things were a bit edgier for various reasons: the blogosphere was newer and more wild-westy, other social media had not yet spring up, we were all more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gender wars, etc . . . It wasn't unusual for things to get a bit chippy. We even had our share of enemies, along with delusional sociopathic blog-stalkers (really), comment thread grenade hurlers, trolls, rival group-blogs, detractors, naysayers, and fist-shaking curmudgeons. That wasn't always fun, but, frankly, I sometimes miss those days. It's gotten a bit staid since those early, heady times. I blame Blo.

A unique (and welcome) aspect of the debates yesterday was that we were getting comments from some folks who appear to be new to the blog. That hasn't happened in a month of Sundays and I credit Jared for the extra dose of Mojo. It did, of course, get a bit prickly and I have a partial theory as to why that might be:

I think it's easy for people to find our page header a bit off-putting.

So, with that in mind, I thought I'd leave a few disclaimers:

1. The name "Thinklings" grew out of an email discussion list we started a dozen years ago. When we named ourselves thus, we didn't even know there was a blogosphere. We certainly don't think we are in the same league as the original Inklings, but we do strive for the community and creativity of conversation that they had, back in the day.

2. All that "Intellectual Universe" stuff is tongue-in-cheek. I think Jared thought of that in the wee hours of our 2002 Christmas Moot. We don't really think we are the nexus (or the seven Samurai) of the Intellectual universe. Heck, there aren't even seven of us any more.

Now, I'm wondering if today's quote, which by complete chance is a C.S. Lewis quote regarding Narnia, is going to spark the debate again?

Some of you bumpkins out there might be familiar with Mother Earth News and Grit magazine. Shortly after Brandi and I became hillbillies (in May of '09), we had our rural neighbors driving up to our little farm in their golf carts giving us handfuls of old homesteading magazines including Mother and Grit. We were hooked from the get go!

Now I've been honored to be accepted as a regular blogger for Community Chickens, an online magazine from the publishers of the aforementioned publications. The blog is called Community Cluckers. Feel free to check out my first contribution, For Love Of Poultry.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

This morning I ran across this blog post by John Piper titled "How I Almost Quit."

My dad is a retired pastor, and I learned firsthand how being in ministry can be a tough gig. Despite a deep-rooted love for Christian theology, I've never felt an inclination toward full-time ministry myself. (Perhaps the primary reason for that, however, has been that for most of my life I've been unworthy to be considered.) With those things said, I offer this excerpt from Piper's post, as quoted from his personal journal circa 1986:

O Lord, have mercy on me. I am so discouraged. I am so blank. I feel like there are opponents on every hand, even when I know that most of my people are for me. I am so blind to the future of the church. O Father, am I blind because it is not my future? Perhaps I shall not even live out the year, and you are sparing the church the added burden of a future I had made and could not complete? I do not doubt for a moment your goodness of power or omnipotence in my life or in the life of the church. I confess that the problem is mine. The weakness is in me. The blindness is in my eyes. The sin—O reveal to me my hidden faults!—is mine and mine the blame. Have mercy, Father. Have mercy on me. I must preach on Sunday, and I can scarcely lift my head.

Piper's point was to say, "Beware of giving up too soon." Pastors need perseverance and prayer. Thank you guys for serving.

We've been experiencing periodic slowdowns on the site for quite awhile, as some of you I'm sure have noticed. It's getting worse and we had a good, long outage this morning. I think it's the server we're on.

I'm working on it, to prove out that hypothesis. I will let you know when we've switched over to another server, or come to some other solution.

(Of course, if no one produces any posts, we'll be like a tree falling in the forest anyway . . . )

WE GOT NO GAME!!!

The image below was our oroginal "logo", created way back in the day when we started this blog. I remember Jared dreamed this up at one of our moots.



Times have changed . . . Except for Phil's heroic, devotional and investigative posts, we got absolutely no hops around here.

I guess it's to be expected . . . A lot of the topics on that wheel have been talked out, or have changed subtly.

Politics, for instance. Our country's political discourse has gotten too whacked to talk safely about politics in this space, for the most part.

Sports? Have you looked at the sports teams in Waco, Houston, Nashville, and San Antonio lately? If it wasn't for Jared's inexplicable and bromantic devotion to Boston teams, we'd be sunk.

Theology. Yes. But many of our best conversations are in the past, and a whole lot of our best theological thinking happens on a particular Thinkling's solo blogs, twitters, and facebook statuses.

Of course, the real problem (if you could call it that) is us.

Phil's hanging tough, thankfully.

Jared is devoting himself to his life's work and passion: writing books and pastoring. Those things are more important than this thing, and thank goodness.

Bird's on hiatus (I miss Bird).

Blo's a Zephyr.

And me . . . well, I'm reduced to writing whiny posts about how no one ever writes posts anymore.

On a side note, the two greatest tools ever invented are duct tape and vice grips.

And Groundhog Day is one of the greatest movies ever made.

God loves you, Blogosphere.

Discuss in the comments . . .

"We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

"Everybody loves the Thinklings, but nobody wants to do the dishes..."

That's a very rough paraphrase of a certain P.J. O'Rourke quote that shows up in our queue from time to time...

Bill and Jared have normally handled housekeeping duties around here, so I decided it was about time I stepped up and did my part...

I don't know about you, but I actually use our blogroll. It's how I read blogs. I just go there from here. (Though this guy's blogroll is my favorite.)

I got frustrated with some of the blogs on our blogroll, checking them to find that the last time they posted anything Mike Huckabee had a shot at the presidency.

If you are a thinkling friend or regular reader, please don’t be insulted if I removed you. My main criterion was whether or not you update. Start updating again and maybe I’ll put you back up. ;-) And for the rest of you on the blogroll, consider this your kick in the pants. You don’t want to lose your coveted spot do you?

That said I’m thinking a shorter blogroll is better…a big long list just makes the quality stuff get lost in my opinion.

So mostly what I did was delete. There is only one addition and one change. Longtime Thinkling friend Lauren, moved from her old blog, called God Loves Lauren, to this new blog called "The Happy Wife". And I added "Biblical Preaching" by Peter Mead. If you preach or teach the Bible on a regular basis, you owe it to your hearers to read this blog.

So what do you think about blogrolls? Do you use them? Or do you think of them as friend lists?

If you've been in the blogosphere for any time at all, this post at The Spyglass should resonate. An excerpt:

It seems to me that the purpose of argument ought to be to help us together to find truth. This is not to say that it ought to be timid, or half-hearted, or accompanied by qualifiers that really, whatever you believe is fine, and it doesn't matter that you and I disagree; quite to the contrary, actually. If you and I disagree, then it could mean that both of us are wrong, or it could mean that one of us is wrong and one of us is right—or even, depending on the subject, that both of us have perceived an aspect of the truth but have drawn some false conclusions from it. Whichever is the case, this is profoundly important, not as a threat to either of our egos, but as an opportunity for our growth. If I believe something which is not true and you come to me with the truth, then I need to know this information—and how am I going to learn it, except by you demonstrating it to me? And how will you demonstrate it to me except through reasoned argument?

And here I thought we were the only ones who mooted . . .

Justin Taylor turned off comments at his blog. Then he turned them back on again. The first post after return is a fairly unassuming one, highlighting an interview with a member of the group Owl City, who is a believer. What ensued in the comments and at least one trackbacked post is a good example of the tyranny of hyper-spirituality in action.

For the record, I don't care for Owl City. I think I once made fun of their song on Twitter. I had no idea the guy was a Christian, and even knowing that doesn't make me want to revisit their music. It's a little, um, frou-frou for my taste, I think. In any event, I have no idea how Adam Young lives out his profession of faith in his life, but I certainly can't judge that based on what he does for a living, even if that living is "art." What's strange about evangelicals is how free they feel to tell others how to make "Christian art" while producing heaps and heaps of artistic garbage themselves every year. (In fact, many of those upset with Young for not singing about Jesus probably criticize the current quality of CCM, as well.)

I am a huge fan of Jesus-fixation, but if this guy wants to make his living singing about fireflies . . . well, okay. If I were to approach my need for him to need to always sing explicitly about Jesus, I should also say things like the following:

I demand Christian plumbers also make their, um, plumbing more explicitly Christian. Also Christian hairstylists, carpenters, loggers, software designers, helpline operators, and crossing guards. Why aren't you exhibiting the gospel, slackers?

I think this is what happens when the tyranny of hyper-spirituality kicks in.

What's worse is not the sentiment that Adam Young can't sing about stuff that doesn't mention Jesus, but that Justin Taylor can't even link to it. It's apparently not edifying to talk about a song about fireflies. Even in the context of an interview with the guy explicitly professing Christ!

Straining out gnats to swallow camels?

If you're heading to the Together 4 the Gospel 2010 Conference in Louisville, KY next month, I hope you will make room in your schedule to join the Band of Bloggers for their annual symposium and luncheon.

The panelists this year are Jon McIntosh, Justin Taylor, Trevin Wax, and myself, speaking on the subject of Internet Idolatry & Gospel Fidelity. A mere $25 gets you lunch, quality speaking, Q&A and discussion with the panel, and a stack of books. Quite a deal, I'd say. :-)

Details:

“Internet Idolatry and Gospel Fidelity”
2010 Band of Bloggers Fellowship
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 :: 11:00am
The Galt House, Downtown Louisville, KY
(in conjunction with Together for the Gospel)

Check out the Band of Bloggers website for more info and to register. Satisfaction guaranteed.*

(* This guarantee of satisfaction is not guaranteed.)

Once upon a time, in the days of yore -- oh, say, about 7 years ago -- The Thinklings were the 7th most linked to evangelical Christian blog. We were a top ten staple. This was, of course, before every megachurch pastor, Christian author, scholar, and other Christian culture personality started blogging. :-)
But we were big fish in a small pond. It was a tighter community then. Michael Spencer and The Boar's Head Tavern guys had been around a while before that, of course, but they were big, and so was Challies, Dan Edelen, Adrian Warnock (who tried (and failed) to make everybody big with his constant blogroll entrepreneurship), Eric Siegmund of The Fire Ant Gazette, and a guy who ended up on top quite a bit, Joe Carter of the Evangelical Outpost.

It pays to have been there in the "beginning." Most of the endorsements on my book came about from our having been compatriots in the early Christian blogosphere trenches with these fellows.
But times change. The Thinklings are not only not in the top 10, we're not in the top 100. There's the top 100 and then there's "everybody else," and we are these days everybody else. But never count out nostalgia, which is what I think was at work in Joe Carter's heart last week when he invited me to join some actual, current big guns in launching Evangel, a new group blog under the banner of the renowned First Things magazine that is designed to be sort of an evangelical doppelganger of NRO's Corner. I am honored and humbled to be in the company of the other names on the Evangel masthead and grateful to Joe for the invite.

My first post for the site is in response to an introductory question -- "What is 'evangelical'?" -- and is titled People of the Gospel.

In other news, I am pleased to share that I have recently signed on to produce a Bible study resource (with multimedia leader kit available) called God vs. Suburbia which will release from Threads sometime in the Spring of 2010. The study can be done by individuals but is designed mainly with small groups in mind, and it will highlight gospel-centered spiritual formation. Specifically, the book will be about how to subvert the idols of our age and culture (e.g. comfort, convenience, conspicuous consumption, individualism) with the rhythms of the kingdom of God (prayer, Scripture reading, fasting, generosity and service, community). I hope it will be a blessing to many.

In the meantime, I have completed the outlining stage of my next trade book, which is tentatively titled Postcards from the Revolution: Parables as Sabotage. I hope to have a submittable manuscript for it sometime in the next few months.

I want to thank everyone who has bought, received, read, reviewed, blogged about, glanced at, or even spit on my book Your Jesus is Too Safe. I hope it has blessed you.

Btw, Spring is currently wide open for me right now, so if your church or group might be interested in having me speak, preach, or yell at somebody, go here and let me know.

Thus ends the commercial. Fuh-givah-ness, please.