A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

The great Samuel Johnson famously said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

I wonder how Dr. Johnson would have characterized the several million people who publish various thoughts on the Internet under what are called “blogs” and pass them off as writing? Are they writing for money, are they blockheads, or are they perhaps writing for some other reason?

All of the above are true. Some write blogs for money, some for fame, and some write because they can’t help but write. None of those make the writing good, except in this way: if someone has a gift, a facility, a talent for writing and uses it, even in writing a blog, that is good because the gift is being used. The worst way to treat a gift is to fail to use it. No one has to convince Barack Obama of that.

The president-elect of the United States seems to have a gift for marketing and public relations, especially when it comes to marketing himself. It is far from clear to me that he has a gift for leading, a gift for making tough choices, a gift for grace, or even a gift for change, because all of those things get swallowed up in the marketing.

President-elect Obama has now created a web site dedicated to — you guessed it — more marketing and p.r. for President-elect Obama. He’s already started campaigning for his second term (in fact he started doing so publicly in his speech on election night) and I’m confident we’ll continue to see that (and more) on a regular basis for the next two months or so. By that time he’ll have to actually start doing the job of President and stop campaigning for a while, and I fear it will be a shock to his system.

So I’m just a little concerned: I want Obama to be an excellent president, and I’m praying for that. And I want him to use his gifts in ways that honor God. But it seems to me that his best gift — self promotion –  is not a gift with which that is easily done.