White-Water Writing

Part of the attraction of blogging is its quickness. We're the first generation in history to have instant worldwide publishing. There are times, though, when it reminds me of riding the rapids.

Of course I'm not complaining; people who go rafting do it because they want to. They do it, also, specifically for the thrill of the speed and the danger. (Two of my friends nearly bought the farm* when their raft dumped them in a Class VI river in western Virginia earlier this month, but thankfully they came out of it alive.)

I've thought this before now, but then it had to do with the "danger" of getting caught publicly in a glaring error, which has happened to me more than once. In standard publishing, there's an editor and a long review process to provide a safety buffer between the writer and the readers. Here, it's just us.

The current discussion about the goodness of God has added a new dimension to this sensation. We're racking up comments at a record pace, and many of them are asking for an answer (like, now!) to a question that I've said will take several posts to complete.

I wish I still had my copy of Wenham's The Goodness of God, in which he addressed questions of this same type: how can we assert God's goodness in the face of apparent counterfactuals? I also wish, in a way, I had the leisure to do as he did, to write it all out before any of it hit the streets. He didn't have to say, "hang on, I'm planning to answer that question in a while!" The answer to the next question was in the next chapter. (As I recall, he did a great job of anticipating and handling objections, although I couldn't agree with how he dealt with the question of hell.)

Anyway, if this comes across as a complaint, then I've overstated it (and I don't have an editor to make sure I communicated it just the way I wanted!). I do this for the fun of it, just as rafters do. But if it also comes across as a request for patience, then you got that part right.

*An Americanism, translated here.

Posted: Thu - October 27, 2005 at 05:22 PM |

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White-Water Writing

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson