Blogging isn't good for your soul.
I'm learning this.
Not so long ago, in a Facebook group, someone asked a question about the Bible and universalism. I found myself nearly ready to post a link to a blog post when I realized something: I was more interested in bolstering my reputation than answering the question. So I have a new rule: No more blogging about blogging.
Some of this is just consideration for you, the reader. You came here today to read some thoughtful content, not for me to talk about my plans for this blog, or that I'm nearing my 750th post here. You came here to think and reflect, so I try to keep my eye on that ball.
But the main reason, if I'm honest, is that sort of blogging -- or posts in Facebook that just lament my bad day or my diet or my newest round of headaches -- come from a very unhealthy place.
Take, for example, the notion of getting noticed for blogging. If I gain some noteriety as an academic blogger -- a rare breed among theologians -- it can create a rush of pride or envy or resentment, depending upon how it all sorts out. And none of that is particularly spiritually healthy -- especially, for me, the pride.
So I move right along, emotionally speaking, when such noteriety occurs. Don't indulge those demons.
I bring this up, not to talk about narcissism and online life (which I'll keep for another day), but to talk about self-esteem.
Self-esteem is violent. I don't trust it. Here's why.
Those of us who take the Bible seriously (think Genesis or 1-2 Corinthians or Philippians or Acts) know that rivalry is intimately associated with our self-concept. Specifically, most of us create, build up and maintain our self-esteem through rivalry with others. Our sense of self-worth is created and supported by some contrast and opposition to others. I am a self in that I am over and against others. Better. Smarter. More righteous. More successful. More authentic. More humane. Less hoodwinked. More tolerant. More insightful. More kind. More something.
I've been doing it again recently. And that sort of self-hood is inherently rivalrous. Rivalry creates the self. Rivalry is the fuel of self-esteem and self-worth.
Which means being a self is being violent. The definition of the self is an act of aggression and violence. To be "Julius McCarter" is to engage in violence against others, if not physically than affectionally. From sunrise to sunset every thought I have about myself is implicated in acts of comparison, judgement, and evaluation of others, allowing me to create a sense of self and then fill that self with feelings of significance and worthiness.
Don't believe me? Watch my spirit as it swells in announcing this or that accomplishment.
But of course this also works for those with a low self-concept. Those who define themselves negatively in comparison with others. The violence here is simply internalized, directed toward the self rather than toward others. But at the end of the day it's the same mechanism. You're either winning or losing the rivalry, having either high or low self-esteem, but in either case the self is still being defined by violence.
Things like blogging, given its nature, can bring these rivalrous feelings to the surface making them more transparent (if you are self-reflective). But it's just a symptom of a deeper sickness, that the self in inherently rivalrous and that self-esteem is a feeling of significance achieved over against others.
We feel good about ourselves by stepping on the heads of others, physically or psychologically.
In fact, I think this is what "original sin" is: Being a self makes us violent.
So how you blog non-violently? Non-rivalrously? How you do anything, think anything, believe anything -- particularly in relation to the self -- non-violently? Non-rivalrously?
How do you become a non-violent, non-rivalrous person? How do we overcome our Malthusian sins?
I think this is where Jesus' wisdom comes in: The self has to die. This isn't just a nice biblical metaphor for being less competitive or more loving. Though those are parts of it. Jesus is being serious. There must be a letting go, a surrendering, an emptying of the self. All efforts to define the self by acts of justification, the accumulation of evidence and data that the self is significant, have to be rennouced.
Or, to put it more positively, the self has to become a gift. It must be experience of gratuitous and surprising grace. That, I think, is the point of Romans 6. Only in the midst of grace can the violence of my self-esteem be undone.