Blogging in Christ — Issue 1

Why Write at All?

Every man who takes up the pen is asked, sooner or later, why he writes at all. The age answers readily: write to gather a crowd, write to build a name, write to turn attention into income. The question is not whether the writing will serve God, but whether it will serve the writer.

That motive must be purged before a single honest sentence can be written. For the writer is not a brand, and his page is not a shop. He is a herald, and a herald announces what he did not invent, to hearers he did not summon, for a King he did not appoint.

"I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase." (1 Cor 3:6)

So then the planting is real work, and the watering is real work, and neither is anything in itself. "So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." (1 Cor 3:7) Who then are the planters? "Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed, and each as the Lord gave to him?" (1 Cor 3:5) A servant does not measure his worth by the size of the field that answers him. He measures his faithfulness by whether he planted what he was given, where he was sent, and left the increase to the Lord of the field.

Therefore the first purge is of money. The word was received freely, and it goes out freely. "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Freely you received, so freely give." (Matt 10:8) The sentence admits no exception for the writer's craft, no paid room behind the free page, no price set upon what cost the writer nothing. The apostle's own ledger stands against every funnel that would sell the testimony: "I coveted no one's silver, gold, or clothing." (Acts 20:33) And again: "For we are not as so many, peddling the word of God. But as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ." (2 Cor 2:17) To peddle is to handle the word as merchandise, to adjust it until it sells. The herald does the opposite. He speaks in the sight of God, and the sight of God is the only audience that finally matters.

Yet the purge of money alone does not answer the question. A man may write for nothing and still write for himself: for applause, for a following, for the pleasure of being heard. That motive must be purged as well. "For we don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake." (2 Cor 4:5) The moment the writer becomes his own subject, the proclamation has changed its king. The herald's name is not the news. Christ Jesus as Lord is the news.

Then why write at all, if not for gain and not for a name? Because necessity is laid upon the man who has heard. "For if I preach the Good News, I have nothing to boast about, for necessity is laid on me; but woe is to me if I don't preach the Good News." (1 Cor 9:16) The prophet knew the same compulsion in his bones: "If I say that I will not make mention of him, or speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in. I can't." (Jer 20:9) The fire does not ask whether there is a market for it. It burns whether anyone gathers to watch it or not. A man writes, first, because the word is in him and will not stay shut up.

And to whom does he write first? Not to a crowd he has counted, but to the King before whom he stands. "My heart overflows with a noble theme. I recite my verses for the king. My tongue is like the pen of a skillful writer." (Ps 45:1) The pen is skillful precisely because the theme is noble and the recital is for the King. The first audience is the Lord. The page is written in His sight before it is read in anyone else's. That order guards the writer: what is written for the Lord's eye need not flatter the reader's ear.

The second audience is the writer himself. "These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." (Deut 6:6-7) The order is itself the method: on your heart first, then spoken, then taught. Writing is one way the word gets onto the writer's own heart. He sets the text down in order and tests what he thinks he understands against what is actually written. If no other man ever reads it, the work has still done its first work, because the writer himself has been taught.

This is also the warning against writing for its own sake. "Furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." (Eccl 12:12) A man can multiply pages the way a merchant multiplies wares, and call the pile diligence. But volume is not faithfulness. The herald writes when he has something given to announce, not when he has a schedule to fill. Silence, in this craft, is not failure. It is the space in which the word is heard before it is repeated.

For the herald does not invent his message. "Son of man, I have made you a watchman to the house of Israel. Therefore hear the word from my mouth, and warn them from me." (Ezek 3:17) Hear first, then speak, and speak from Him. The text first, the writer second, the reader third. "If anyone speaks, let it be as it were the very words of God. If anyone serves, let it be as of the strength which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen." (1 Pet 4:11) The writer's strength is supplied, his words are borrowed, and the glory belongs elsewhere.

And the command to write plainly follows from the same order. "Yahweh answered me, 'Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it.'" (Hab 2:2) Plainness is not a technique for reaching more readers. It is fidelity to the vision. A vision obscured by the writer's cleverness has been hidden behind its herald. Make it plain, and leave it where the running man can read it, whether he stops or not.

What, then, of the hearer? The herald sows, and he does not control the soil. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up in the last day." (John 6:44) No headline draws a man the Father has not drawn. No strategy supplies what only the Father gives. And yet the word, once spoken, is not left to chance: "so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do." (Isa 55:11) The writer's part is to speak truly; the word's part is to prosper where it is sent. "So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Rom 10:17) Hearing belongs to God to give, and the word belongs to God to send. Between those two sovereign acts stands the small, faithful work of the herald: to write it down plainly, freely, and truly.

Why write at all, then? Not to gather, not to sell, not to be known. Write because the word was given, because the fire will not stay shut up, because the King is the first hearer and the writer himself the second. Plant, and water, and let God give the increase. Freely you received; freely give. The rest is not the herald's to count.