Civil Discourse: An intro to the blog

So, I really wanted to open this blog by starting a short series of posts on civil discourse. I'll go into the specifics in later posts but basically there's a need for issues to be able to be discussed in Christianity without throwing "opponents" under the bus. We're culturally wired to be constantly trying to get ahead of each other, even if we're on the same team. Wide receivers in football are continually complaining about the lack of throws they are receiving, regardless of how the team is doing. In this economy, people do whatever they can to look better than other people applying for a job. Friends make fun of their "friends" just to get a laugh.

Christianity needs to be viewed more like a team working to make each other better for the success of the whole rather than a group of individual opinions fighting for personal traction.

I resisted writing a blog for a long time because I'm too prone to pride and narcissism as it is. It's too easy to base the worth of what you have to say on how many people respond to it. Frankly, that's why I made the URL "thejoetimmerblog." Well, it's also easy to remember but I hope that the over-the-top name helps me remember that I write because I can, not because I deserve to be heard. I write to the honor and glory of Christ and hope that once and awhile I say something that might be useful to someone reading it.

Too many blogs get started and stop shortly after because no one is reading it. I can't promise that I won't get tired of writing on a regular basis but I think I'm ok just writing for God's glory. I know He'll use it to mold me into who He wants me to be regardless of the number of views I get. If you look at my Facebook statuses or tweets you can see I'm not always funny or thoughtful... but baseball players get paid to hit the ball 30% of the time so I'm ok with falling short of perfection.

Civil discourse is the name of the blog. This is both because of the opening series posts and because I hope that regardless of what I'm writing about, the title reminds me of how I should be writing it.