Freshening the place up a bit

Having been inspired by Dave's example, I realized that I haven't changed the base template for The Supplement in a couple years. Unlike him, though, this is purely a hobby for me, and I'm not interested in paying for someone to whip up something nice. So a Blogger template change will have to suffice. Let's see how long I can stand it. :-)

Wise Words for the Intrepid Blogger (Including Me)

Here's a great observation about creativity, made by someone I've never heard of. I stumbled over it at some other blog. The hyperlink is a beautiful thing.

"[F]eeling creative" produces great work in approximately the same way that “feeling like a doctor” makes you a gifted thoracic surgeon.

Just so. Likewise, "I've got something to say" doesn't mean you should say it, and "I've got an idea" doesn't make it good, and doesn't mean you ought to share it. "I think I'm going to start blogging" doesn't mean that anyone will read what you say, and it doesn't mean that anything you say will be worth the price of an electron.

This little remark also reminds me of something I used to say about Greek and Hebrew: I knew just enough to be dangerous. The author's point, of course, is that hard work and lots of practice is almost always involved in becoming really good at something. St. Thomas said that attaining knowledge of the truth is very difficult. It's the same sort of observation.

Unfortunately it's easy for us to develop the opinion that we've become good at something when we really haven't. I look back at how much I knew then, or what I could do when I started, and the comparison might give me the impression that I'm a true artiste, or a regular Aristotle, or the next whiz-bang singer, or whatever. Unfortunately that's rarely the case. An eight-year-old knows a heck of a lot more than a toddler, but he is still only eight. But the combination of knowing how little I knew in comparison to how "much" I know, coupled with the insidious temptations to pride, make it all too easy to bloat my ego.

It's sad (and, for the expert, probably a mix of ridiculous and annoying) to see people who don't really know much about a subject act like they do - as when Joe Layman whips open his Strong's Concordance (complete with Greek and Hebrew!) and starts lecturing others on exegesis, or when he mines books for scare quotes that he doesn't understand. We look foolish when we act as though it's easy to attain knowledge of the truth. It's not - not in any field. Of course, there are those for whom it may be easier - but it has become easier for them, by and large, because of lots of hard work that you and I never see.

So what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? I have no idea. I have an idea or two about what it means for this blog, though. A major reason why I write is because, to a certain extent, "I have to do it." What I mean is that there's stuff in my brain that I need to get "on paper." I feel a subjective sort of compulsion to do this. But that doesn't mean that anything I say is worth a hill of beans. The most that can be said for certain about it is that I'm a windbag. But I'm no expert - not about much of anything, and certainly not about theology, nor about Catholic dogma. There aren't all that many genuine experts about anything in blogdom - at least, not in comparison to the mind-boggling number of bloggers and blogs. I am not one of those experts.

What am I doing here?

I've said before that I'm not an apologist, and I still mean that. And yet I have spent an awful lot of time discussing or arguing (depending on the occasion) stuff with Protestants, and on many another occasion I've discussed issues that I've learned about or identified myself with regard to Protestantism. So I suppose if someone were to describe me as an apologist, there would be a lot of evidence to support that claim, and I can't deny that there have been occasions where my purpose has certainly been to defend the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith. But I would still dispute being described as an "apologist."

First of all I would deny it on grounds of qualifications: I lack the expertise, tools, time, and temperament for it. But I would also deny it in terms of my intent: it is not normally my purpose to act as one at all, save perhaps in one or two significant respects.

For one thing, just because we are Christians we are supposed to "be ready always with an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you" (1Pe 3:15). But I think there is a more immediate reason for it in my case, and that is to be found in the fact that I am a Catholic convert. Conversion is a lifelong thing, but even moreso, I think, for the adult convert: he has learned habits of thought from a life of being non-Catholic, and if he's serious about thinking as a Catholic, and if he has the means and opportunity to do so, he will want to invest time in learning to do so. And part of that means "answering" for himself the things that he formerly believed. That's an inevitable part of renewing one's mind.

So that's a primary reason for the frequency with which I refer to Protestantism and its errors on this blog: completing my own conversion. I am quite sure that if my experience had been other than it was - if, for example, I had been raised Mormon, or Hindu, or something - the focus of my "apologetic" posts would be upon that tradition rather than upon Protestantism. The purpose would be the same: to "fix" what is broken in the way that I think by understanding how it is broken, and how I ought to think instead, and to instill Catholic habits of thought in my small brain. And like any habit, that takes repetition to establish.

So why not keep this sort of stuff to myself? Why blog about it? Because I can :-) Seriously though, there are a variety of reasons. Although I don't consider myself to be gifted to be an apologist, it does seem that I have some measure of ability as a teacher - something that has been affirmed by others. I enjoy teaching, and so one significant reason why I write here is to hopefully produce something that will be useful or helpful to others. If blog comments are any measure, God has seen fit to bless that purpose in some small way, and that's justification enough to me for continuing to make the effort of posting here.

A secondary reason is that by writing, I force myself to think through things more clearly and with more discipline than if I just sat here with stray notions rattling around in my head like a pachinko game.

And a third reason is that by posting here, rather than saving everything solely on my computer or in a filing cabinet, the stuff I've written has a better likelihood of being preserved. These posts serve as expanded notes to myself as well, and it would be disappointing (to say the least) if I lost access to what I've already written.

And of course it would be silly to overlook or deny the fact that it's fun to blog. :-)