Blogging With Humility

My life looks good - I do confess
You can ask anyone
Just don't ask my real good friends
'Cause they will lie to you
Or worse - they'll tell the truth...

-Derek Webb

Many things in life are difficult to do in a true attitude of humility, and blogging is no exception. In fact, blogging is a particularly tricky case, as it so easily becomes a "look-at-me" activity. I prefer to think of it as "look-at-God," or "look-at-this-book," or "look-at-this-idea," but I fear that the self-centeredness is showing through more than I realize.

Writing by its nature can be a very egotistic discipline. In order to write well you have to be somewhat sure of yourself. As with singing, or playing chess, "timidity pays no dividends." E. B. White puts it pretty straight, describing the essayist in the Foreward to Essays of E. B. White:

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new "attempt," differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

(I realize it may be a bit of a stretch to compare blogger with essayist, but I have nothing to lose by it - except perhaps a bit of credibility - and the latter term seems so much heartier.)

Of course, humility does not have to mean timidity, and neither must surefootedness mean arrogance. But the vices that look the most like virtues are the hardest to detect and the easiest to justify.

In talking about humble blogging, I am not talking about some stream-of-consciousness exercise in which you outline the inner reaches of your heart in detail for all the world to see. This idea that humility means wearing your heart on your sleeve is a misconception. Plenty of people can wear their heart on their sleeve and remain as prideful as ever. Judicious transparency is a wonderful virtue, but it ought not to be confused with humility. The point of humility is simply to not entertain an inflated opinion of yourself. Of course, having a low opinion of yourself and always feeling inferior is not healthy either - in reality, the safest bet may be to have no opinion of yourself at all.

Out of all the blogs I read, mine is still my favorite, and that bothers me. There just seems to be a lot more chaff than wheat out there. To find blogs that combine consistency, humility, courage, clear thinking, and good writing has proven rather difficult. People who blog to make a splash often tend to be quite abrasive and sometimes even a wee bit arrogant. Any platform - especially one as powerful and accessible as blogging - has the potential to have a corrupting effect on the person using it.

As Trevin Wax observes:

The missing ingredient in the blogosphere today is humility. We need a good dose of reality. Just because see ourselves as hip and technologically savvy does not mean we automatically deserve a platform for whatever ideas we have or pronouncements we make. Godly influence cannot be manufactured. It comes with maturity and wisdom. And usually, the people who most deserve to be heard are the ones who refuse to participate in biting criticism and attacks on other believers.

Amen to that. The whole post is worth reading if you have the time.

I also resonated with these thoughts from a blogger named Owen Strachan:

It is easy to blog in an imperious manner. I have seen this in myself as I have continued blogging. I blog to hopefully improve my writing, to think quickly, logically, and rigorously, and to introduce ideas which may be worth thinking about. In the process of doing this, however, as one gains a readership, one can easily title oneself an expert. To put it less clunkily, blogging can easily go to your head.

I sense the danger for me is not so much outright vanity, but rather a haughty "style" that minces along with a bit too much care towards it's own feet and not enough towards where it's going. Reflecting on the tenor of my posts over the last year, I thought to myself, somewhat tongue-in-cheek: "I'm not prideful - I'm just good at concealing my humility." So you see the nature of the problem.

It is my genuine conviction that "He must increase, I must decrease." This does not happen all at once. It's a long, gradual process, not without it's share of pain. Thank God sanctification is so inexorable.

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