{"id":699,"date":"2007-07-27T12:34:44","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T12:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/im_still_around.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:45:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:45:33","slug":"im_still_around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/im_still_around.shtml","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Still Around"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while, I thought I should post, well, <em>something<\/em>.  I&#8217;ve not been a very good blogger of late.  \ud83d\ude1b<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been busy with things other than posting of late.  I just don&#8217;t have anything on my mind, so I fill my schedule with other things.  Actually, the truth is closer to I&#8217;ve had big things on my mind that I&#8217;ve been avoiding an not knowing how to post about them, I&#8217;ve shrunk back into other minutiae.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve had thoughts of posting on some stuff, but not many.  There are several, many actually, blog posts that I&#8217;ve been meaning to link to as well.  Maybe later.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve spent the last couple of years chasing answers on big questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is church?<\/li>\n<li>What about Kip?<\/li>\n<li>What about the UP?<\/li>\n<li>What about discipling?<\/li>\n<li>etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Throughout all of that, and intertwined with it, is the big questions of What is Christianity? and Who are Christians?  After all these years, I&#8217;m still not quite sure how to treat or think of those outside my historic Restoration Movement circle.  I once knew exactly what to think.  &#8220;If you&#8217;re not for us your against us.&#8217; summed it up.  Judgemental, condescending and harsh are other words for it.<br \/>\nYet in my retreat from those ways, I feel as though I&#8217;ve lost something.  It seems most folks who claim the name &#8216;Christian&#8217; take it at face value when others do as well.  I learned not to do that from the ICOC, but to look for some sort of evidence.  Actually, we would assume that you weren&#8217;t until you passed all our tests.  Clearly, many who claim the name aren&#8217;t, but it&#8217;s not my job to say who, but I simply can&#8217;t just take it at face value when someone claims the name of Christ.  Judgement is not good, but discernment is.  But what does that look like?<br \/>\nSo, where I am now is that I&#8217;ve come to grips with the fact that I just can&#8217;t know all these answers.  It&#8217;s not my job to draw lines in the sand or build walls.  I&#8217;ve come to terms with that truth.  I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve emotionally let go of it quite yet, but I&#8217;m there intellectually.<br \/>\nWhat I haven&#8217;t come to terms with or figured out is what am I supposed to actually <strong><em>do<\/em><\/strong>.  Thousands and thousands claim Christ and I know some of them and meet some more all the time.  Some are clearly in the wrong, either misinformed or in denial.  I&#8217;m most certainly one of them as well.  What do I do about it?  I can&#8217;t in good conscience sit on my hands (although I have been) and yet I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s my place to speak.  Who am I, imperfect and wrong as anyone, to say anything?<br \/>\nMy response has been to slowly back away and sit down in the corner and watch.  The questions still swirl in my head, but no answers are forthcoming.  So I fill my time with the trivialities of life and ignore the nagging uncertainties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while, I thought I should post, well, something. I&#8217;ve not been a very good blogger of late. \ud83d\ude1b I&#8217;ve been busy with things other than posting of<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/im_still_around.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I&#8217;m Still Around<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I&#039;m Still Around - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/im_still_around.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I&#039;m Still Around - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s been a while, I thought I should post, well, something. 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Avoid it while, ironically, implementing it by failing to post anything of substance. I need to take a break, of sorts, from blogging. I've felt like posting some stuff, felt I should be posting some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Salguod.net stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/well_here_i_am.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":699,"position":1},"title":"Well, Here I am.","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"February 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome to my weblog. You may be wondering why anyone in their right mind would start a web site entirely for their own thoughts and ideas. Well, to start with, I've not often been accused of being in my right mind. It does sound a bit egocentric, doesn't it? Who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Salguod.net stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":665,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/04\/the_oppression.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":699,"position":2},"title":"The Oppression of Perfection","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't written much of substance around here of late, aside from my on going Quiet Time Journal study of Ezekiel. That's been a surprisingly enjoyable study thus far and your encouraging words on it are appreciated. I'm at a point where I enjoy my reading and look forward to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":474,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/04\/new_host.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":699,"position":3},"title":"New Host","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, I've finally chosen a new host. Actually had them picked out for a week or two. I've been dragging my feet because this is likely to be a big pain. I'm going to have to re-install MT and all my plugins, upload the other files (images and stuff) and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Salguod.net stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":319,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/04\/im_tired.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":699,"position":4},"title":"I&#8217;m tired &#8230;","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing new of significance to post, I'm just feeling pretty blah in general. Tired of trying to make a big deal of things, finding the Big Meaning in things. Work's been stressful, adding to things. One of things that attracted me to my church family some 16 1\/2 years ago\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":833,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2008\/07\/wordle.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":699,"position":5},"title":"Wordle","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"July 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Kansas Bob pointed me to a neat site called Wordle. It uses your RSS feed to generate what it calls \"beautiful word clouds\" of the text from your site. I plugged in salguod.net Saturday morning and got this: You know, I have to tell you, I wasn't sure what I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Salguod.net stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}