I did something this week I don’t recommend. I read my own blog like a stranger.
Not the way I read it when I write it — slow, every word weighed, the argument stacked one brick at a time until the wall stands up on its own. I read it the way you read it. The way most folks read anything now. At a scroll. Caught the headline, caught the picture, caught the first line in the share box, and kept moving.
And I’ll tell you what that man looks like from out there on the highway, doing fifty past his own front porch.
He looks mad.
Not mad about a thing. Just mad. Mad as a default setting. Mad like it’s the only gear the truck’s got. You line up the last two months of headlines end to end and skim them at scroll speed and you don’t come away thinking there’s a fellow making careful arguments. You come away thinking there’s a fellow with a grudge and a keyboard, and Lord help whoever he’s pointed at this week.
Now I could tell you that’s not fair. I could tell you that if you’d read the things instead of skimming them, you’d find the argument under the heat, the both-sides honesty, the man putting himself on the table before he puts anybody else there. And that’d be true. I work hard at that and I stand behind it.
But here’s what I had to sit with, and I’m going to be straight with you because straight is the only thing this place was ever supposed to be about.
Some Of That Read Is Earned
Heat aimed at one target, over and over, for a long enough run, stops reading as conviction and starts reading as a grudge — even when every single piece is fair on its own. That’s not the reader’s failure. That’s mine. Five sharp swings at five different subjects, folks call that a sharp writer. Five sharp swings at the same subject, folks call that a man who can’t let something go. Same blade. Different impression. And the impression is the part that travels.
So I’m not going to stand here and tell you the skimmers are wrong and you all just need to read more carefully. Some of you read exactly enough to catch something true about the man holding the pen. I’d be a hypocrite to swing at everybody else’s blind spots and pretend I came without one.
Which brings me to the part I actually want to talk about. Because there’s a command in the book that’s got my number on it, and I’ve been about as good at dodging it as anybody.
We Love The Commands That Let Us Keep Our Distance
Here’s a thing I’ve noticed, and I’ll point it at myself first so nobody has to wonder where I’m standing.
We are real fond of the commands we can keep from a recliner. The ones that don’t cost us anything but a feeling. We’ll share a post that says the right thing. We’ll tell somebody else what we think about so-and-so. We’ll carry our concern about a man clear around the county before it ever occurs to us to carry it the twelve feet to the man himself. We love the obedience that happens at a distance. It’s clean. Nobody’s face is in front of you while you do it. Nobody can answer back.
And then there’s the command nobody put on a coffee mug.
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” Matthew 18, verse 15, ESV. Go. Between you and him alone. Not go tell three people. Not go post about it sideways where he’ll maybe catch the drift. Not send word by proxy and hope it gets there softened. Go. To him. Alone. Face to face, where it costs you something, where he gets to look back at you and say his piece too.
That’s the command we skim right past. Every faith designation under the sun — and I don’t care which letters are on your sign out front — we have all gotten expert at the long way around. We’ll do anything for a brother except the one inconvenient thing the book actually asked: show up in person and say it straight.
And I’m the man writing this, so let me say it plain about me. I am as guilty of the roundabout as anybody reading. I’ve nursed things I should’ve taken to a face. I’ve let a distance stand because closing it was harder than living with it. The book’s got my number on that, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t just because I’m the one who gets to type today.
So Here’s The Invitation, And It Runs Both Ways
If you’ve been reading this blog and you’ve got a real concern about the man writing it — not about a take, about the man — then the book you and I both claim already told you what to do with it. Same instruction it gave me. Go to him. Direct. Alone. My door is open and it has been the whole time. You don’t need a middleman. You don’t need to send it around the long way and hope it lands soft. Come straight at me. I will sit down, I will hear it, and I will not hold it against you for caring enough to say it to my face instead of behind it.
And I owe you the same courtesy. So that’s the commitment, out loud, where you can hold me to it: when I’ve got something to take to a man, I’ll take it to the man. Not the proxy. Not the recliner version. The twelve-foot walk.
“Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Paul wrote that to the Galatians in the same breath he told them to restore a fellow gently. Keep watch on yourself. That’s the part that turns this from a club into a mirror, and I’d rather hold the mirror.
Where This Is Headed
Now — since I’ve got you, a word about where this place is going, because some of you have only ever caught it pointed one direction.
The lens isn’t changing. The heat isn’t going anywhere either; I built it on purpose and I’m not apologizing for it. What’s changing is what it gets pointed at. There’s a lot of life behind this keyboard that’s got nothing to do with the things I’ve been swinging at lately — forty years in worlds most of polite society looks down on, a stretch of road most pundits have never driven, a raising-up by men who were already grown before the Depression let go. The same honest eye is coming for all of it. Faith stays in the mix. It just quits being the only thing on the menu.
If all you ever did was skim, I don’t blame you for the impression you walked off with. But the door’s open now — to read the whole thing, and to come straight at me if you’ve a mind to.
Truth over comfort. Still. Always. That part was never going to change.
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