Sunday, July 30, 2006

The Lazarus Effect

I don't imagine anyone is reading this ... and that's really OK. I imagine any audience I ever had has been sufficiently discouraged by my lack of posting that it's now kind of a ghost town bypassed by the information superhighway.

And that's really OK. Because while most of the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been insanely busy ... part of it is wondering what I have to write about. I've become more and more disenchanted with the name of this blog. Even though the intent wasn't to be self-important about my own thoughts ... and instead to say that the whole process of following Christ (of which I was trying to write) had to be something that was of infinite importance and not an accessory.

I still believe that. I think Christianity, for everything it is and purports to be, is something that if you're going to take it on it pretty much has to be central and not something dabbled in "a little."

But as a blog title, it's just not working for me. Mostly because no matter how you parse it, it feels like I (and not Christ or C.S. Lewis) am the one who is saying precisely what is "infinitely important" and what is not. But there's a couple other things.

First of all, it's a lot of pressure. And even though I've posted on some pretty mundane things, when you title a blog like this, it kinda feels like silly, cool stuff like my brother's "Monday Cat Blogging" doesn't really belong. Like everything needs really to be of "infinite importance."

Secondly, and probably more to the point -- more and more it sounds way too sure of itself for me. And, ironically, it seems to run counter with one of the things that very well may be of infinite importance -- humility.

I called this post "The Lazarus Effect" -- which is what they call when people who are near death with HIV/AIDS come back from the brink and are restored to relative health by antiretroviral drugs. That, of couse, refers to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead -- the final and greatest sign of Jesus' power in John's Gospel. But my favorite part of the story is when Jesus tells the people to roll the stone away from Lazarus' tomb, Martha warns him because it's been four days and the funk o' Lazarus is probably pretty bad by now (I think the King James Version uses the wonderful phrase "he stinketh!") And raised or no, I imagine he probably did (Palestine not being the most temperate of climates!).

So we'll see if this post really is me coming back to life again. And I suppose we'll see if "it stinketh" of not. And I suppose we'll see if I come up with a better title for this and get a burr in my saddle and change things up a little bit.

And so if you have been reading this ... maybe it will get you sufficiently curious to check back. And maybe -- wonder of wonders -- I won't disappoint? |
Mike at 7/30/2006 07:18:00 PM