Why?

Look, guys! I'm entering the 21st century and starting a blog! Took me long enough.

Honestly, though, it wasn't until sometime last summer that I even thought about starting one. The idea had, of course, crossed my mind, but never very seriously, for the simple reason that I had no idea what I would write about. Some of my friends would blog about their lives, and that was nice, but usually they were doing something exciting like studying abroad or having babies or saving the rainforest. (Note: to my knowledge none of my friends have yet saved the rainforest. Sorry if I got your hopes up.) My life didn't seem terribly exciting in comparison, and I couldn't imagine anyone except my dear mom and dad wanting to read that. And even if they did, I anticipated it being exactly like every single journal or diary I have started my entire life--full of good intentions and anywhere from 3 to 5 entries. So that didn't seem worth it.


Others of my friends had special talents and they'd blog about those. But again, that didn't seem to be going anywhere. My best estimations at my special talents are being relatively good at linear algebra and doing an abnormal number of crossword puzzles per day. Also not terribly good blog fodder.


But finally last summer I realized what I needed to blog about. See, one of the things that upsets me most in life is the public perception of Christianity, especially as portrayed by the media. I find that Christians are often seen as hateful, hypocritical, irrational, judgmental, and other such particularly un-Christian qualities. And that grieves me. I hate that. I talk about it a lot, I complain about it till I'm blue in the face, but the one thing I've never done about it is actually do something about it. So this is me trying to do something about it. I have no illusions that this will actually do anything to solve the problem; I know that there are many others far more influential than I doing this same thing. I know that it is quite possible that literally no one will read this. And I know that it is very likely that I will get things just as wrong as the image that I'm trying to overcome. But I also know that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, so I'm going to give it a try.


Ok, so I said that I realized this last summer, so why has it taken me till now to actually start it? It's because for a long while I had decided I wasn't going to do it due to a certain sin struggle of mine that I discovered. Here it is: I really like to be right. I almost always think I'm right. So spending time writing and publishing little posts of what I think is right seemed like a rather good way of making that problem worse. After much consideration, though, I have come to the conclusion that this is something that I should do, which is why I want to appeal to you, the reader. (Assuming you exist. Haha.) If you read something I write and think I'm wrong, challenge me on it. Lovingly, please, but do. That's the reason for my little blog title, there. Well, admittedly it's largely due to the fact that I absolutely adore alliteration. (That little bit there was more technically assonance, but I couldn't resist.) But aside from that, it's because I do want to be malleable. I want to stand firm on what I know to be true, but in my opinions, in day-to-day matters, I want to be malleable, open to correction, and constantly getting better. So help me in that, if you please, dear potentially-existing reader.


Well, look, I've gone and broken my only rule of blogging--don't make your posts too long. Alas. I suppose with that, it's on to my first real post!