What Jonathan Edwards might say to those who blog
In my devotional reading I ran across these selected resolutions of the young Jonathan Edwards. I think they have much to teach those of us who live in the digital age:
8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.
12. Resolved, if I take delight in it as a gratification of pride, or vanity, or on any such account, immediately to throw it by.
15. Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings.
21. Resolved, never to do any thing, which if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise him for, or to think any way the more meanly of him.
(Resolutions 1 through 21 written in one setting in New Haven in 1722)
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2 remonstrances:
These are terrific, Toby. I was caught up by number nine:
"Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death."
Given how we so neatly compartmentalize and censor death so as to almost never see it until the nice viewing at the mortuary, I found this resolution to be particularly apt. There is much to be gained by reflecting on our finitude.
I was also struck by the resolutions and the comment that Mr. Drew made regarding contemplating death. Just last night I said to my wife something that will no doubt appear in a sermon someday. "People rush into the 3 most important events in their life with little forethought marriage, parenthood, and death."
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