This blog explicitly features my 2 pence about stuff, but the blog is about me as an author. Plus it’s hosted by Blogspot, so that has the potential to cause some issues if I use it to post certain pertinent-to-me-as-author-but-not-quite-about-authorship stuff I’m working on.
Sometimes, I just want to write an essay examining something, critiquing something, or just pointing something out. Like…what is the Biblical love that Christians are commanded to display towards others? I Corinthians 13 defines it, but what that chapter literally says and what folks say it means don’t always match up, plus there’s how words don’t mean quite the same thing across languages (or even generations), so it’s easy to assign or remove nuance that actually belongs in the word.
I finished the essay and want to post it and others I have in the works—some of which will be controversial in some circles for the sole reason that an unmarried female is writing them.
(There’s admittedly another essay or three in that thought.)
I have a knack for noticing elephants in the room that are best addressed but that folks don’t think to (or don’t want to) point out. This has proved true in…pretty much every job, field of expertise, and topic of study that I’ve explored. So I have to conclude that it’s a God-given skill.
Which means I really should be using it.
Due to various factors—including repeated scoffing and derision for being young, unmarried, and female, and someone who “nobody” would want to (or even should) listen to—I’ve often held my tongue.
I can hear some of you scoffing now. Nonetheless, I have restrained myself to when I’ve been explicitly encouraged to speak out or issues are so blatant I can’t ignore them.
And I’ve long had the uncomfortable feeling that God’s already answered my prayers that someone appropriate would point out the items I’ve noticed and I’m being recalcitrant. (It’s interesting that some of the accepted-by-the-righteous prophets and bearers of wisdom in Scripture are female—but that’s a topic for another essay, I think.)
It’s been a long time coming, but various things have coalesced into me finally accepting that I see what I see for a reason—and that reason isn’t to keep my mouth shut.
Posting my opinions and observations still feels weird. Even the recent post on the Paris attacks makes me uncomfortable, for reasons that boil down to: I know certain persons are reading this, and I know precisely how they’re responding. Because they’ve always wanted me to keep my mouth shut and stick to the shadows.
Even though I have always experienced more blessing when I stepped out and opened my “big fat” mouth.
What does all this mean?
It means I’m going to endeavor to keep piping up—and to say more—but this blog isn’t a good place for the sorts of things I’ll be addressing. This blog should be kept for stuff related to writing, and publishing, and being an author. That’s the purpose, and that makes sense.
And the essays are gonna appear over on http://blog.mistiwolanski.com, starting with “What Is the Biblical Love We Are to Display towards Others?”.
If you look up the word “love” in the dictionary, you’ll find definitions ranging from “A friendly form of address” to “A strong feeling of affection and sexual attraction for someone”—and that’s not including what it means in tennis (ref. Oxford Dictionaries).
Yet love is central to the Christian life, an integral part of the two commandments Christ gave to sum up the Ten Commandments:
28And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 29And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments [is], Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment. 31And the second [is] like, [namely] this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Mark 12:28–31, KJVAccording to this excerpt from Mark 12, Christians are to do everything out of these two precepts: 1. loving God above everything and 2. loving others in the way that we love ourselves. This is entirely consistent with what Jesus told the rich young ruler in Matthew 19, as well as with the other Scriptural commands about Christian love, such as is found in Leviticus 19:18, John 13:34, Romans 12:10, and James 2:8.
Studies into these verses so often focus on what is meant by “neighbor”—on whom we are to love—rather than what we are to do: love. Love is also the first fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22, suggesting it’s the first one that manifests in a believer, even before the rest of the list.
Keep reading over at blog.mistiwolanski.com.
I have plans for more essays along those lines, where yeah, it’s pertinent to life and therefore could go here, but…better not. Theological essays of 8k words might be enjoyed by some (or most) of you, but that doesn’t mean it belongs in the same web space as, say, thoughts on the viability and feasibility self-publishing. Which I should probably comment on.
But that’s all for another day.
How are you?
—Misti
