I think I'm going to try to resurrect "The Peace and the Passion" after several years of neglect (which were preceded by several years of obscurity and irrelevancy). I can't promise my followers (whom I can count on one hand) that this will become a blog of titanic popularity and life-revolutionizing insights, but I'll at least try to be thoughtful and occasionally witty. Probably the most likely outcome is that I could raise some eyebrows for writing down theological thoughts that may be unfamiliar to most evangelicals, so stay tuned for those. But, since I'm already here making this earth-shattering announcement, I'm going to offer a few thoughts on the topic of the Internet while I'm at it.
The truth is, I don't much like the Internet. Of course, I would miss it if it were gone, but I think I would actually be a better person if I had come of age in a time without the lure of online connectivity. Think of how many more books I could have read! Or written! For me, who has dragged my feet in joining the digital age, the Internet has not yet entirely subsumed my consciousness, and so I can still imagine a happy and industrious life without it. My relationship with the Internet is rather like my relationship with Doritos. I would be a better person without them. But still, they're just so darn tasty! On days when my willpower is low, it's easy to crunch through a few handfuls of synthetic orange cheese crisps. And it's just as easy to spend a thoughtless hour surfing the Internet and reading a few dozen unconnected articles and blogs. I feel about the same afterwards as if I'd just cruised through a bag of Doritos--sort of mindless and numb, and too eviscerated by unsated boredom to do much of any value afterwards. Maybe it would be better if I was one of those people who actually follow particular blogs and forward them on, who interact (in a manner of speaking) with other people on social media, or who find some joy in manipulating digital pixels in a pointless game. But I'm not--the only blog I regularly check in on is the Celebrated Magazine of H. Albertus Boli, which is not so much a blog as a running satire on the whole digital age. I do occasionally find something interesting to think about from the Internet, but usually it's in such rapid-consumption nugget form that it isn't easy to find a way to make it the sort of idea that one can savor, percolate, and infuse into the pattern of one's life.
So, if that's how I feel about the Internet's blogosphere, why on earth would I want to bring back my old blog? Well, I'm humble enough to recognize that not everyone out there is a crotchety Luddite, and so some hypothetical person living in some possible world may actually enjoy and benefit from a little bit of winsome theologizing. And it would probably be good for me to remake my relationship with the Internet into something a bit more creative and a bit less consumptive. So, with that in mind, I'm ready to join the millions of opinionated ideologues shouting out lines of unread text into the recesses of the world's computer servers!
(Now stop reading the Internet, and go read a book.)