Integrity and Criticism

Ordinary Time

Many of you have recently become aware of my long standing feud with Paula Deen. I appreciate your concern, but I'm still not going to discuss it on-blog, or in any way respond to public attacks.

You see this is a Certain Kind of blog I have here. I write it because it's fun to share my life in a small way like this with friends and strangers. I write here because it's a way of practicing theology on the ground. I write things about God and the Church and the Church's life with God in a way that I hope will be understandable, and invite people to sort out issues with me that I think matter to that life. Sometimes I do write things that are critical of fads and popular trends, but this is not a "watch blog." You will not find me writing posts on how awful it was that some other blogger wrote something on his or her blog. I've only recently discovered that some theology bloggers out there make a habit of writing about other folks' blogs, and they go back and forth saying rude things about one another and just look like complete asses. That would make my blog a different king of blog, and I don't do that.

I thought about this for awhile after Michael Spencer said something to the effect that if a public leader were to make a public response to criticism made by some guy on a blog, that leader would actually degrade himself in the public eye.

What's the lesson, friends? It's okay if someone doesn't like your buttermilk biscuits. There's nothing wrong with that. It is what it is, and it means what it means. If you think you need to tweak your recipe in response to someone's criticism, do it; however, you're not under any kind of cosmic obligation to do so. When the people you cook for and share the dinner table with say that your recipe is bad, that's a problem. Otherwise, when you know you've got a good recipe, you've got a good recipe, and life's too short to do anything but leave it at that.