Responsible Blogging

Cruising through the SBC Aggregator, as I do pretty much daily, I found this post by Marty Duren. He sets out pretty clearly what he wants to accomplish, and what he doesn't want to accomplish, with his blog.

Interesting that this should come up right now. Over at Blogcritics, we've had a bit of an uproar about a post that was borderline libelous (in some peoples' opinions) concerning an actor and his girlfriend. I can't comment on it, because I have only read the edited version of the post (and the comment storm that followed), but I DO know that it caused the editorial staff at BC to do some thinking about the fine line separating free speech and irresponsible journalism. And there has been talk around the internet about weblogs as online diaries, and what could happen in another ten or so years with those "innermost thoughts" that were put out for public consumption.

I like Marty's list. From what I've read of his blog, he does an excellent job, and I wish I had found his blog sooner. And he's inspired me to try and write my own "purpose statement."

1. My primary goal is to educate. My pet peeve is Christians who have decided that logic and reason are the enemy, and have therefor abandoned all attempts at understanding anything. God is not the author of confusion. I don't believe that He would ever leave His creation without the capacity to understand Him. We do that through learning and study. We have a rich intellectual history, and we've all but abandoned it because of what other people have said about us.
2. I also want to challenge peoples thinking. I want to change what the perception of evangelical Christian is to many people -- for the better.
3. I want to hold up a mirror to Christian society. When we do something dumb, I want to show how dumb it was, NOT to bash people, but so that we can learn from our mistakes.
4. I want to learn. I end up learning about a LOT of things just by writing a blog post about them. I learn more when people comment.

There's my four. I'm not going to say what I don't want to do, since that will only jinx me. I WILL steal one of Marty's ideas and say that I need to be careful with humor, because I tend to be rather sarcastic. It becomes more obvious when you hear me than when you read what I say, so I may keep the humor to the podcast (whenever I get it started -- more on that later on).