[Jesus thinking about the Dunning Kruger Effect]
My device is, and I say this through clenched teeth, glitchy. My ability, therefore, to blog in the spiritually higher plane to which I am accustomed is compromised to the uttermost as I go in and out of each blog post, cutting in links, sorting through pictures, and in otherwise manner contributing to this small corner of the internet. I am going to try to update my stupid wretched terrible device, along with praying and confessing my sins, and hopefully refraining from taking it and grinding it into powder.
Nevertheless, and in the meantime, I did want to say that I finally finished Moral Combat and I have so many words to say, so many. More than anyone will want to endure. It’s going to take me a bunch of blog posts—which means I will have to wait till next week. It was a fascinating read, which then, at the penultimate moment, devolved bizarrely into a recriminatory pro-Hillary propaganda piece. It was if Griffith attempted to spin a hundred years of multi-layered intractable Christian disagreement over sexuality and the Bible into Mrs. Clinton being a lovely Christian woman with nary a single political problem to her name. Anyway, I better not squander this moment. I will seriously cope with the book properly and in the fullness of time.
Let me pivot from that to deal with a comment on a post from last week (which, I am so sorry, I can’t link because it will take me literally hours, but the post was called How Long May I Laugh). I mentioned with sadness that Warren Throckmorton had apparently been, how shall we call it…chucked off of Patheos? Booted out? Told he no longer was blogging according to “strategic purposes.”
This commenter, though, thinks he was murdered. Here’s what she says,
“Curious and sad”??? “No longer blogging”??? Golly I wonder what you’d say about an axe murder. “I’m curious and sad that Joe is no longer with us. You can read his obit at this linky. Now listen to me harp on about how ignorant people are about how the gospel isn’t about loving your neighbor, it’s about how we’re so awful that we need Jesus to do it for us.” Or something. Sweet. Jesus. Your neighbor was murdered and it’s just …*shrug* Well at least you bothered to mention it unlike everyone else on this here evangelical channel.”
So, um. I didn’t say a lot that morning because I had literally read nothing about it, and had no idea why Dr. Throckmorton was removed. And I don’t actually, though I sometimes myself fail, believe it is a good idea to leap around commenting about things about which I know nothing. But, duly noted, it is undeniably better to completely embrace the Dunning Kruger Effect in every facet of life and online engagement.
Furthermore, not getting to blog is not the same as being murdered. I just feel like I should say this. If I were no longer allowed to blog here, I would be sadder than you, and possibly I, would ever be able to imagine. But it wouldn’t be the same as if I were actually killed. There a lot of things that are taken away from a person that feel like death, but they are not actual death.
Nevertheless, it does feel a bit like Alice through the looking glass, everything being turned upside down. I do not pretend to be able to understand why Dr. Throckmorton does not meet “strategic purposes.” I didn’t know we had any. I was under the impression that we were all wandering around the internet every day, talking about faith, theology, politics, movies, books, food, culture, news, and whatever else happened by. Dr. Throckmorton is brilliant on the breaking news part. I have often been, I am sorry to say, jealous of his ability to dig out the news. Would that jealousy had compelled me to work harder. It is a great loss that he is no longer here. I don’t know how to make sense of it.
On that note, and to my fathoms deep angst and sorrow, blogging may be light for the next few days, possibly non existent, while I deal with my technical issues. And my angst. And my sorrow.
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