The Gong Show–Or When We Christians Don’t Have Enough Sense to Stifle It

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I don’t blog as much as I used to. Part of that is because life intrudes more than it once did and age is proving me less adequate to the task of addressing all those intrusions.

But there is another reason: I simply don’t have as much to say. Past posts have addressed—and sometimes even well—the thoughts I felt the Lord wanted me to share. Nowadays, I don’t have that same spiritual prompting to opine on the latest scandal, lack, or cultural sickness.

Most of this increased silence has come about through wisdom. I’ve been more chastened by the vicissitudes of life and by the Lord’s discipline. The angry, young prophet isn’t as angry as he once was. If anything, I feel more compassion for people. They really are, for the most part, sheep without a shepherd.

Still, the Godblogosphere is filled with the opinionated. Amplified YammeringIt’s a sad commentary on our age, but it’s the highly opinionated who get the most site hits. Some writers feel they must contribute their thoughts daily to keep faithful followers faithful and ensure the meager revenue stream keeps flowing. Recently, a well-known Christian blogger felt obligated to opine on the legacy of the not-quite-at-room-temperature-yet Chuck Colson.

I say “had to” because one got the sense that the blogger was struggling with the entire commentary. I suspect that was for a good reason. The resulting blowback wasn’t pretty.

Jesus says this:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”
—John 5:19 ESV

I’ve written in the past about the most neglected verses of the Bible (here, here, and probably elsewhere too),  but the above verse is certainly one of the most ignored, particularly in application in the lives of Christians.

The reality of Christianity that sets it apart from all other religions is the inner presence of the Holy Spirit. Christians are to be supernatural people led daily by God, who dwells inside of them, guiding, empowering, and sealing for Heaven.

What should then distinguish the Christian from all other people on earth is the Christian, when confronted with addressing a spiritual need, speaks only what the Spirit says and only when the Spirit says it.

If this is critical to walking in true faith and in proper practice, how is it then that so few Christians ever learn to listen to the Spirit?

As it applies to this topic of speaking/writing, is the Holy Spirit always asking us to comment on this or that? Or is He more often silent (in which case we should be silent as well)?

It is not by coincidence that the Spirit chose the following as the opening of a certain line of thinking by Paul:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
—1 Corinthians 13:1 ESV

I believe with my whole heart that the key to being a Christian in 2012 is to do only what the Holy Spirit reveals the Father is doing. This applies to our commentary on life as well. Then we can be assured that what we say is from God and is fittingly gracious.

The plague of the Western Church today is too much talk and not enough walk. We seem to lack even the common sense of pagans when it comes to shutting our traps for a moment. Instead, we feel driven to pontificate on this topic and that. Given how poor much of that pontificating is, I suspect the Holy Spirit has little to do with inspiring it and much more our own inflated sense of importance.

Zoo Update

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Sorry for the extreme silence lately, dear readers. It’s been a zoo here in recent days. Good stuff for the Edelen household, but it makes me wonder how bloggers who write epic posts every day manage the feat. Plus, since I write for a living, sometimes I don’t want to spend my nonworking time writing. Fellow writers know what I mean. Riding the chair all day can be a grind.

The good news is that my wife found a job outside the home while finishing some college classes she was taking to supplement her existing degree. This was a blessing from God, most assuredly. Our family is adjusting to this change, especially since I was assuming she would be home during my son’s summer vacation. Needless to say, that has been an unexpected responsibility for this work-from-home dad.

Business is typically down a bit during June and July, but this year has proven the most welcome exception. I’ve been in business for myself since 2003, and I’ve never seen this fall-off fail. But it has. Again, a good thing, but more business writing means less leisure time for writing deep thoughts about the state of the American Church. And then there’s our farm.

Stay tuned. I’m sure life will settle down here and you’ll see more posts soon.

Thanks for being a reader!

Feedback Wanted: Changes to Blog?

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Dear Readers,

It may be hard to tell, but I’ve made extensive changes to Cerulean Sanctum in the last two weeks. Much of this WordPress-based site has been rebuilt:

1. New or revised plugins

2. New SEO features and optimization

3. Rebuilt .htaccess server file

4. Revised caching schemes

5. And on and on…

If you notice any oddities in the blog now, please let me know. With so many different browsers out there today, the chance that something won’t render correctly goes up. Your feedback is critical.

Also, if something about this blog’s operation, accessibility, or look bugs you, please let me know. Content? Well, that’s another matter.  😉

And if you’re a Web whiz, any feedback you can provide on how to get Internet Explorer to properly render the shadow for the Cerulean Sanctum title in the clouds banner would be much appreciated. I’ve tried every CSS fix I can find online and nothing works. Firefox users definitely see the proper shadowing (not sure about Chrome or Opera, though I think they work), but IE users get just plain white text, which can get lost in the banner. Thanks!