Know What I’m Saying?

I rant, I scold, I coo, tickle and poke but I’m not changing any minds here.

Okay, something new. Newish.

Or at least, more spontaneous. For instance, the first line, with the ranting and cooing just came out and I left it in, even though it invoked parents and children, a subject I’m avoiding; not ready to tell my own story yet. Ordinarily I would have backspaced that puppy away and started over.

But lets see where this goes.

I’ve been careful with these posts treating them like miniatures–that’s the image in my head.  I try to make them as well crafted as a late apprentice with mostly the wrong tools can. Just now, the impulse to go back and tinker with the late apprentice business, should I change it to aged apprentice and go that way, play the geezer card? See the problem? If I include you in the decision making process we’ll never get anywhere, even though I let you vote in my booth. Let’s keep going.

So, what’s so great about being a Christian? In your own words.

That’s why I started this blog, as kind of a third party exchange where apologetic language–God talk–could be transmuted  to the world of secular talk. Let’s let the hubris of that statement stand on its own for a minute, like a traitor in the dock, before we send it down.

Okay, the job is too big for me, but it’s one that needs doing. Because we are talking past each other–believers and skeptics–as never before.

Eavesdrop sometime on a conversation among people with a common interest and mutual affection. Fly fishermen, bargain hunters, basketball fans. Guitar players, gardeners, hikers, star gazers. Knit and needle ladies with tea on and kitties purring; guys quiet, glass slipping in the hand, staring into the last of the fire. As cliche as the images are, the conversations are that authentic. People treasure authenticity. We are very aware, as a pleasure of life, when we are in those moments with other people. We are careful not to break the mood with the wrong word.

The thing I’m getting at is there is a very human, inborn, universal though culturally bound, way of speaking that listeners understand to be genuine. That is how Christians need to be speaking about God to unbelievers.

Back tomorrow to give it another shot.