The Rule of the Positive

It is not unusual to get an email or run across a blog entry that is alarmist, negative, or even positively spiteful. I don't really have to point out that there is a strong current in American discourse - if it can even be called discourse - of "my way or the highway." And to me the most grievous kind of polarization is among Christians. Instead of "brothers and sisters in Christ" we call each other "liberals," "modernists," "conservatives" and even "heretics."

So one of the rules I have for this blog (and not even just because it is Lent) is to write as much as possible from a positive (and I don't mean optimistic) point of view. To say what things are, rather than what they are not. To be "for," not against. The result of my rule is that as I have edited each blog before posting, I have had to delete many statements that explain what it is I am not, what I am against, or what I do not believe.

The discipline of the positive has proved instructive for me; it definitely is much easier to critique than to explain. Normally, if I want to share an idea, I look for a way to contrast it with something else. Sometimes the idea comes because I hear or read something that I react to and I want to explore my thinking about it. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that. But sometimes I just want to blow other ways of thinking or doing things apart.

Sometimes, of course, the negative contrast is essential – from a conceptual point of view – for making a clear argument. But so much of what is on the Internet is the ranting of people against other points of view that I decided there was not much benefit in adding to that chorus.

This approach has led me often to ask myself, what am I for? What do I love, what is good and true and worthy of contemplation? Think on these things. Write about these things. That is what I am trying to do.