Why I believe in blogging

by Dan Phillips

Preface. It's always popular in some circles to disdain blogging. Certain concerned souls seem ever to be coming up with dour reports on the state of blogging and grim predictions as to its future. It isn't hard to find writers fond of tut-tutting their alarm, and of delivering grave and deep expressions of angst and woe as to the evils and pitfalls of blogging.

Ironically, they often do so in blogs. Have you noticed? At heart, I think, some folks' real concern with blogging is that commoners are doing it, and doing it so artlessly. Too many bloggers (they seem to think) use all ten fingers while typing — or, even if they use only two, do not raise their pinkies.

This comes from the Raised-Pinkie Blogging mentality (hereafter RPB).

This mentality places a high premium on being dubbed "thoughtful" and "balanced" and "deep" and "non-reactionary." Betimes, these honorifics are extended by apostates, heretics, and false (or dubious) teachers who, were they to speak so of us, would send us to our knees, asking God if we'd lost something literally crucial. Such isn't the response of the RPBer.

But, see — oops. By using those terms (the A-word, the H-word) I just disqualified myself as an RPBer. That is likely at least one reason why this blog is not popular in such coteries, why even our posts on otherwise-beloved themes seem to escape notice. It is très vulgar and déclassé and hoi-polloi to employ such labels.

Bare-knuckled blogging, both rhetorically and temperamentally, is the opposite of the RPB mindset. Perhaps we should call it "plain-speech blogging" ( cf. Proverbs 29:5; 1 Corinthians 1:17; 2 Corinthians 3:12; 4:2; 11:6; 1 Thessalonians 2:5). It is frank, open and pointed about damnable heresies, ruinous errors, and the apostates who promote them. It does not flatter perversions of the Gospel, nor the twisting of Scripture.

To some, this approach is repugnant. One can be an RPBer and be completely sound on the Gospel. But what concerns me would be the RPB practice of apparently courting the admiration of apostates and heretics, perhaps welcoming them and shielding them from criticism and rebuke and (let's just say it) confrontational evangelism.

I am certain that Phil and Frank each could pick posts of their own that they had believed would start broad discussions — yet didn't. I could as well. This one would be my most recent pick. It is classic non-RPB material. Without nasty name-calling or insinuations, by the use of Biblically-based questions, it was relentlessly-focused, confrontive, and hard-to-wiggle-around — just the sort of thing an RPBer would abominate, while insisting on the centrality of the Gospel and the need for plain speech.

Transition: this has not been a vent. Now we can see, at the same time, both precisely why blogging is crucial and valuable, and precisely why certain individuals constantly denounce blogging and compose its obituary: because blogging provides instant, unedited access to the entire online world.

The potential. Take my smaller, more eclectic blog. Since March of this year, I have had visitors from well over 160 countries, ranging from the US and Canada to China, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kenya, Botswana, Sudan, and places I haven't even heard of. PyroManiacs' reach is still broader.

You think Paul wouldn't have dived into something like that — or, at the very least, assigned his apprentices to exploit the opportunity to get the Word out?


Statist and other totalitarians are working even now on ways to censor and control The Intrawebs, but at present the field is still wide-open. You and I can take the Gospel, which is God's power resulting in salvation for all who believe (Romans 1:16), and broadcast it to places Paul did not even know existed. With a few clickety-clacks. We can participate in the Word racing about and being glorified (2 Thessalonians 3:1). We can get a Gospel witness and a barrage of Bible-teaching where Christianity is either against the law, or severely restricted.

And nobody can stop us.

You think that isn't a golden opportunity?

The problem. Ah, but the RPBers and the others I've mentioned will point out that this makes room for abuse. Indeed and alas, so it does. Liberty occasions abuse. All open communication makes room for abuse. Wide-open means wide-open. Seasoned, savvy souls like Phil Johnson and rapier wits like Frank Turk are joined by heretics, idiots, fast-draw artists, GBAers, and countless other single-helix pre-limbic mutoids who ended up on the short end of the size-of-mouth/quality-of-brain ratio stick. Undeniably so.

The answer. So what is the answer? I think Thabiti Anyabwile responded exactly on-target when confronting a similar question during a panel discussion at T4G 2008. I wish I had his exact words and fear misquoting him, but his answer was to this effect: Thabiti believed in the openness of blogs, because they allow for self-correction. The "mainstream media" existed for decades in lofty isolation, uncorrected, unaccountable, peddling misinformation and lies mixed with truth. Blogging and alternative media opened the possibility of criticism — and blogging provides that same corrective to itself.

If I get something wrong, thousands of pairs of eyes see it, and thousands of pairs of hands (potentially) can launch into action to set the record straight.

"But they won't be seen by as many, and they aren't as inflammatory" one might object. Thus is the nature of the free market of information, and I see it as a good thing.

Let's say for the sake of argument that you think I occasionally say something of value. And who am I? Absolutely nobody. I started a blog in 2004, and had a handful of readers. Then there were a few more. Then bro Johnson thought we might combine with Frank (who I barely knew and did not understand) to make a team, and we pooled resources. Now I've got a much wider platform than I did. (Thank You, God.)

How did all that happen? God's providence, chiefly, using the means of my decades of study and dues-paying combining with X-degrees-Fahrenheit of passion and conviction, and letting loose. And here we are.

If thus with me, then potentially thus with anyone.

The sum. That's the great promise of blogging. Of course I believe in it. It has provided me with the broadest and most effective means of reaching out with the Word in thirty-plus years of striving, searching, and casting about, using tracts, pamphlets, book manuscripts, radio, and newspaper columns. I couldn't not believe in it.

And so, while others sniff that blogging is a humbug, I take the words of Scrooge's nephew Fred and say, "God bless it."

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