Blog rage

Blogging, so different from the staid old dame of print magazine culture, has me thinking about the issue of politeness. One is told to be "thick skinned" to get along in this new game. Thick skin is skin imperviousness to the arrows that come by Night, and the Christian who trusts in God has that.

There's a lot I like about blogging, being a neophyte to the form. I like that the reader gets an equal (and often much more than equal) say on the topic at hand. It suits my sensibilities as a wallflower and person with sober judgment about my modest abilities.

I liked one commenter's analogy to "road rage." Road rage, there's another mystery. My guess is that we have road rage --- say, as opposed to pedestrian rage --- because the buffer of chrome and glass between car-sheathed people has a dehumanizing effect.

I have just reviewed with profit an old bit of advice from Francis Schaeffer:

Every man is my neighbor and is to be treated in a proper human, man-to-man relationship. Every time we act in a machine-like way toward another man we deny the central teaching of the Word of God --- that there is a personal God who has created man in his own image.

The woman at the cash register is your sister first, the cashier second. So is the blogger.