Privacy Settings

If you're looking for help with placing limits on who sees your Facebook or blog posts, you'll have to keep looking because that's not what this post is about.  I know next to nothing about that and my input would be entirely unhelpful.

In the past few days I've been thinking again about something Shirley said to me several years ago about blogging.  She said that she doesn't think she could do that because she's too private a person.  I've never seen Shirley in a clinical setting, but she is a trained counselor and has probably given more thought to personal privacy variables than most people have.  I saw Shirley again recently and remembered what she had told me much earlier, although we did not discuss it further.  We did have pleasant interaction on a personal level.

Internal "privacy settings" is the subject of this post.

If privacy is thought of as a wall, with people having a preference for more privacy being thought of also as having higher walls around themselves, I'd have to admit that my walls are very low or nonexistent altogether--at least where ideas are concerned (i. e. where they are the currency of interchange).  I place a very high value on access to ideas--my access to others' ideas, others' access to mine.  I see high privacy walls as being a detriment to what I value a great deal.  My antennae shoot immediately into an erect position and then begin investigative maneuvers when I sense anything even hinting of an effort to obscure access to information or an unwillingness to consider information from "across the wall."  Obviously, a willingness or unwillingness to blog is not the sum of one's "privacy settings,"  but it is relevant, as Shirley indicated.

In matters like this, where we see clearly that our modus operandi is markedly different from another person's, most of us are prompted immediately to ask "What is normal?"--followed closely by the second question:  "How do I compare with 'normal?'"  We all have a compelling desire to be considered normal.  When we're forced to acknowledge that "abnormal" is a more accurate descriptor of us than is "normal," we have a second compulsion--to find a path to wholeness and hope, while still embracing the reality of our flawedness.  That is a monumental and often a lifelong challenge--a process I'm intimately acquainted with.

Several decades ago I was faced with the necessity of finding wholeness and hope in the process of dealing with an abnormality.  I went through the process of longing for a professional diagnosis, so I would at least know what I'm dealing with.  We had no money for seeking professional help, so I had to learn about my condition through reading and listening.  That process was useful, but, in the end, the most useful help of all was the realization that if I could learn to trust the Lord to show me how to think and act and I was willing to obey, I did not need a professional diagnosis.  From then on, in that matter, I was able to focus on trusting the Lord, listening for marching orders from Him, and trusting Him  to accomplish His purposes through me, despite (or perhaps because of ) my flaws.

A second reinforcement of that understanding occurred when I was soundly criticized for something I had written about homeschooling.  I was accused of usurping authority by what I had written.  I went round and round at first, trying to think of a way I could have done things differently to avoid that accusation.  I concluded that I would never be smart enough to make a good decision by means of painstaking analysis prior to any particular action.  My only  hope was to listen to God, obey God, and trust the results to God.  

I rely on the Lord similarly in the process of blogging.  Do I have normal personal privacy settings?  I don't know, but I do know that if I can focus on trusting the Lord, if I can take my marching orders from Him, and if I can trust Him to accomplish His purposes through me . . . If I can do all that, I don't have to have a diagnosis.  I don't have to be able to predict or control the outcome of what I do.  I don't have to know whether everyone approves.  I can see my offerings--not as the be all, end all of everything I address, but as the piece of the whole that I can offer with appropriate confidence and humility.

One specific commitment I have kept faithfully ever since I made it after a sermon Arlyn preached on the use of technology is that I will, every day, put Bible reading ahead of anything I do at the computer. (I don't use other computerized communication or media devices.) I usually wake up early, eager to begin the day, and I head straight for my devotions chair.  If I don't have a pressing schedule to meet, I'm free to stay there for several hours--till Hiromi gets up.  At that time, we sometimes each check the computer for the weather forecast or for any emails that need attention.  At other times, we go straight to preparing and eating breakfast.  Blogging happens either when nothing else is pressing, or when I can not continue with anything else until I follow the  prompting to get to the computer and write.

Blogging ideas often come to me in  my "devotions chair."  Often these ideas arrive in the form of questions.   This morning, for example, I was reading in 1 Timothy 1.  I have read the book through a number of times in the past few weeks--maybe 6-12 times, each time different in some way.  I've read it in several different translations, I've copied outlines for the book from three different sources, I've read a commentary alongside on one of the readings, and in other readings, I've consulted notes in a study Bible.  Right now I am in the final step of studying this book.  I have already read it through once, recording all the commands in the book, and I try to notice who the commands were directed to and notice whether they have a general application.  Next I read the book and recorded all the significant teaching that was not in the form of direct commands (teaching on the second coming of Christ in the Thessalonian letters is an example of this).  Then I sought out and recorded examples given.  (What did they do and how did it work out?)  Now I'm working through the initiatives section.  Here I write down what I feel that God is saying to me--things I will embrace and act on as needed.  It's a homemade system, but it works for me.

Over the past few days, from chapter one I wrote this down in the initiatives section:

Verse 12:  Thank God who has enabled me, counted me faithful, and put me into a ministry  (Paul said that about himself, at a time when he was suffering greatly from the constraints of that ministry.  Yet he was thankful for enablement, God's approval, and an opportunity for service.  I resolve to be thankful also for how God has blessed  me.)

Verse 16:  Allow Jesus Christ to show forth longsuffering in me

Verse 19:  Hold on to faith and a good conscience--to avoid making a shipwreck of faith

I'll spare you further details of where all my mind went in pondering these initiatives--and I'm sure I couldn't remember it all if I tried, but somehow, by the time I had finished praying and Hiromi got up, I had a burning desire to explore the matter of how differences in how we operate on the matter of personal privacy affects our experience in cultivating a thankful heart in the "slogging phase" of serving, where longsuffering enters in, where a good conscience and holding on to faith come in.  I could hardly wait to begin exploring the matter of personal privacy settings.

The first piece I read talked about how Asperger's Syndrome affects marriage relationships.  That was a good article, but the privacy aspect of the discussion related mostly to how important it is to lay down a stubborn clinging to privacy (secrecy) about problems, rather than an open acknowledgement of them.  Here, the desire for privacy was cast in a very negative light--as a detriment to resolution.  It wasn't what I was expecting to find, but reading it made me realize that I already have actually thought quite a lot about the matter in the process of living life and working through hard things in the past.  That's when I began writing.

Sooooo, now that you've seen the laborious details of how this usually works for me, is it presumptuous for me to say that I write as God directs me to write?  You decide.

Have I answered all the questions about how personal privacy settings relate to the initiatives of First Timothy one?  Definitely not.

Have I been faithful in following the promptings I've felt while communing with God?  I think so.

Can I predict or control the outcome of anything by what I've written here?  Of course not.

Can this blog offering on the subject be considered a valid part of the whole of truth on the matter?  I hope so.

Would more people benefit if more people engaged in thinking about and discussing the matter?  Probably.

Does it mean nothing good (or bad) has happened if no one responds here?  I hope not.