Pursuing Holiness

The internet, as much as I enjoy it, has helped lower the level of political discourse because it is far easier to type something directed at a stranger that you’d never dream of saying to the face of someone with whom you’re acquainted. It even affects the Christian blogosphere. I’m not alone in occasionally wanting “to not just debate the point, but to crush [someone's] argument into oblivion.” I also know that feeling is not consistent with 1 Peter 3:15-16:

But dedicate your lives to Christ as Lord. Always be ready to defend your confidence in God when anyone asks you to explain it. However, make your defense with gentleness and respect. Keep your conscience clear. Then those who treat the good Christian life you live with contempt will feel ashamed that they have ridiculed you.

If we are called to make our defense of our faith with gentleness and respect, how much more should we do so with respect to minor issues like the politics of our nation or any of the temporary governments of this world? Those things may feel quite important right now, but in the light of eternity, our perspective on them will be very different. By and large I think Christians do an excellent job of keeping debate civil, and that is why I’m joining Henry Neufeld, a liberal blogger (Threads from Henry’s Web) to make a rather bold challenge that we’re calling Philophronos Blogging.

philóphrōn: to think, have a mindset. Friendly, courteous, benign (1Peter 3:8). Deriv.: philophrónōs (G5390), in a friendly or kind manner.

Philophronos is defined by Louw-Nida in their Dictionary of the New Testament According to Semantic Domains as “pertaining to friendly concern and kindness toward someone.”

Christian bloggers should purposefully express our political beliefs with gentleness and respect, with the intention of setting the example for non-Christians. We’re not all going to agree. We don’t need to agree. But we can debate the issues in such a way that the debate glorifies God and points people to Christ. We’re challenging Christian bloggers who write about politics to write at least one post a week until the election - and hopefully after it - that adheres to the following guidelines.

• Consistent with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and Ephesians 4:15
• Assume goodwill and good intentions for our political opponents
• Wherever possible list supporting reasons why they have good intentions
• Negative statements are not personal and are factual
• If negative statements are conclusions, the facts that led to the conclusion are referenced
• Negative statements support the argument and are not gratuitous

Imagine what the political tone in the country would be like if all political debate adhered to those guidelines! Again, we believe most Christian bloggers are already doing these things, but we’re challenging the Christian blogosphere to do so in a more purposeful way, on the “pay it forward” concept that if we start this, others may just join in. We can have edifying and productive political discourse. Let’s work on blogging friendly - practice Philophronos Blogging!

If you would like to join us, you’ll be added to the blogroll and aggregator. But if you just want to let us know that you’re blogging Philophronos without joining, trackback to this post or the one at Henry’s. To join, add the blogroll or post RSS feed to your homepage and post a comment here or at Henry’s.
Since the reason for joining a blogroll is to publicly associate with blogs you have something in common with, and to gain exposure on those blogs, we do require that one of these be displayed on your home page while you remain on the blog roll.

Preferred method:
RSS - this provides a list of recent philophronos posts:
http://feeds.technorati.com/faves/philophronos/tag/philophronos?format=rss
(Please display at least 3 Philophronos posts.)

Alternate method:
Use the code for the traditional blogroll -
<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=1f6eb26cb6e76b42f0119c12cc9c8d33″></script>

written by Laura