Shut the Duck Up

I don't blog much.

It's not like I don't have plenty to say. I could blog every day and tell you all the meaningless details of my life.
(You wouldn't read it.)

It's time to be honest with myself, and to be honest with you five people who found this link on my Facebook page. I'm horrible at blogging. Why? Because blogs only go viral if they're about hot issues.

I know all about the issues; anytime I sign onto my Facebook page and discover that there is a theme in the statuses on my newsfeed, I can assume one of three things.

1. There's a big game going on.
2. Someone died.
3. Something controversial just hit the news, and everyone I know has an opinion.

The natural thing to do, if I wanted to be a successful blogger, would be to post my own slightly unorthodox, unexpected, or controversial opinion in the snarkiest tone I could muster and add to the slush pile. I would most likely offend half my friends, who would in turn offend the other half of my friends, and an argument would commence in the comments, and isn't that exactly what the Internet is for?

(What? You mean that's not why God invented Facebook?)

(Oops. I said the G-word. Bring on the spaghetti monster debate.)

In the interest of making this a successful blog post, then, I'll state my unorthodox opinion.

Nobody cares what my opinion is. 

If I wanted to spend hours debating the validity of the Bible, I would tell you that I think Phil Robertson was right to say what he did. If I wanted to be berated by elder church members for ignoring the teachings of the Bible, I would say that he deserved to be suspended. And if I wanted to twist the debate into one about the privileges of private businesses, I would point out that this is a matter of free speech, not theology.

But oh yeah--I don't want to start a debate. Funnily enough, I don't like arguing. I think there comes a point in certain arguments where someone has to take a leap of faith, and someone starting from the other direction is not going to take the same leap as you. There is a level of agreement we can reach, and there is another level we cannot. Ironically, we try to bridge the gap by screaming out our extreme opinions as if they're fact, and we refuse to take, "I disagree," as an answer. Is that tolerance? Or is it the definition of insanity? We've been arguing the same things for years, decades, centuries--pick a side, sure, but don't expect the rest of the world to be on it.

If you'd just shut up, people would listen to you.