Watchblogs

***QUOTE***

I’ll [Michael Spencer] leave you with some words from “Tavernista” Jim Nicholson. Jim is not a college graduate, but still manages to write and spell remarkably well.

I have said it before, and it bears repeating: The entire watch-blog enterprise is a bankruptcy of the worst form. If you have nothing better to do on the Internet than demonstrate that you can pick apart what we idiots here at the Tavern have been talking about, you need a life. Unplug your laptop, push back from the keyboard, open the door and walk outside. Talk to your neighbors. Walk the dog. Play frisbee with your kids, or, if you don’t have kids, borrow your neighbors, or better still, find someone of the opposite sex who doesn’t find you entirely repulsive and have some. The universe will not perish because you step away from your post guarding against the BHT Mongrel Hordes for long enough to be a human being in the real world, and you might actually find you like it once you get used to the idea that the world is more than what’s contained in a backlit LCD display flickering in your dark bedroom. Who knows? You might even find the strength of character to move out of your mom’s house. Which, by the way, she’s been meaning to tell you, after 32 years, it’s about time.”

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-further-adventures-of-an-uncredentialed-blogger#comments

***END-QUOTE***

i) The problem with armchair psychology is that, never having met the patient, Nicholson doesn’t know what he’s talking about—not that this has ever been any hindrance to the bores…uh, I mean…the boars.

This didn’t start with my trolling BHT for things to pick apart.

Quite the opposite—they came to me. BHT popped up on my site meter a few days ago, so I went over there to discover the source of the attraction. It turned out to be Bridges’ post on the election of Frank Page.

But in the course of locating the link I stumbled across TBR’s hit on Helm, Carson, and conservative apologetics generally.

ii) I quite understand the monkeys’ resentment of watchblogs. They resent watchblogs for the same reason a burglar resents a German Shepherd. A life of crime, whether domestic or doctrinal, is so much easier when conducted under cover of silence. All that yapping spoils a quiet heist.

iii) I deeply appreciate Nicholson’s sage pastoral counsel on how best to spend my time.

And I quite agree with him that time spent at BHT is ordinarily a poor stewardship of our God-given time. And Nicholson would do the blogosphere a great favor by reminding everyone concerned that BHT is a waste of time.

An especially deserving candidate of that advice would be a certain Mr. Spencer who, while commending Nicholson’s advice to others, is moderator of the BTH, as well as maintaining his own blog, along with a radio podcast, as well as the IM underground.

One rather wonders what time is left over for sermon preparation. Come to think of it, that would explain the quality, or lack thereof, of his…oh well, never mind!

iv) It is quite true that Triablogue has very different priorities than BHT.

Out of curiosity, since Nicholson brings up the issue, I input the names for the four leading contributors to Debunking Christianity into the search engine at BHT and pulled up exactly zip each and every time.

Unlike the art of group thumb-sucking, mastered by the monkeys, watchblogs like Triablogue are actually concerned with engaging the wider world of unbelief.

Yes, Virginia, there is a real world outside the Tavern.