NT Wright on Blogging

Thanks to our blogger Regent Alum, Matt Jones, I learn about this little quote from NT Wright about physical anger and habits being transferred to the blogsphere. I find his writeup insightful. Thanks Matt for spotting this. Do check out his website for other great blog articles.

I checked out the book and found more of Wright's perceptive words.

"Everything is interconnected, and when people feel the floor shaking and the furniture wobbling, they get scared. Test this out. Go to the blogsites, if you dare. It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean and untrue things while hiding behind a pseudonym - well, if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage doesn’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack. Yes, I have pastoral concern for such people. (And, for that matter, a pastoral concern for anyone who spends more than a few minutes a day taking part in blogsite discussion, especially when they all use code names: was it for this that the creator God made human beings?) But sometimes worldviews have to be shaken. They may become idolatrous and self-serving. And I fear that the has happened, and continues to happen, even in well-regulated, shiny Christian contexts - including, of course, my own." (NT Wright, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Downers Grove,IL: IVP, 2009, p26-7)

Of course, the context of Wright's argument here is that what is considered a 'new perspective of Paul' is not exactly a new rocket-science idea. What the blogging platform has provided is to transfer (not transform) an old perspective from the offline terrain to the online domain. In other words, some things have not changed. Describing his 35 years of writing on the subject of Paul, his experience with detractors has NOT been 'disagreement' but failing to meet his opponents' expectations and 'wants' (20). Moreover, Wright claims that those who disagree with him often did not listen in the first place.

Wright is precisely right. As I reflect, blogging does not change the person. It is simply a change of platforms. What was previously paper is now electronic. Self-publishing is overtaking conventional publishing. Distribution by hand is replaced by distribution by wire (and wireless!) In other words, the content may be the same but the medium is different. Whether the medium has changed or not, people has not changed. Didn't they say that a leopard does not change its spots?

At the end of the day, we need to remember that for all views whether online or offline, God is watching.

conrade