Friday, December 7, 2007

So that MySpace in Heaven is secured:

submitted by new contributor Clayton Mauritzen
Yes, but I'm just there for the dating scene.
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"Gas is high. Faith fill-ups are free."
submitted AND reviewed by frequent contributor Les DuLunch
Faith might move mountains, but it doesn't seem to work on my car.
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"Holiday musical December 15"
submitted AND reviewed by frequent contributor Les DuLunch
You're a church! Couldn't you at least call it Christmas?!?
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"Are you challenging the ordinary? Live the extraordinary!"
submitted by Anna Gravier
I challenged the ordinary.

It won.
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Thanks for everyone who responded to yesterday's request for advice regarding the Atheist website. One of the things that I like about CCS (and, quite frankly, one of the only reasons I keep it going) is that it turns into a neat confluence of people with vastly differing viewpoints, all sharing a laugh over the same silliness. I don't think I should "turn off" any of those constituencies simply in the quest to pursue more readers. In other words: Just like I don't ever want Atheists to feel that they can't honestly share their viewpoints in this forum, I don't ever want my Christian readers to feel marginalized either. Robert (aka Bethany's dad) made this most excellent point via email:

"It seems to me that one of your goals is to get Christians to look at themselves as others sometimes see us or, to put it differently, to be a little more thoughtful in the way we present ourselves to the world. That you have fun doing it is a great bonus. If you're like me you started with the fun and then realized it was deeper later. That doesn't matter. The point is that if you're preaching at all, you're preaching to Christians, some of whom won't like that your blog is tweaking other Christians. That's the nature of blogs and I'm sure you get some email whining about that. By joining the atheist feed you would be giving the Christians who are pre-disposed to not like you another reason to ... dis-count you even more quickly."

Bruce (aka my dad) also made an excellent point in yesterday's comments section, as did friend of CCS Ironic Catholic. Others also made excellent points leaning the other way, both via email and in yesterday's comments section.

My decision to not pursue that end any further basically boils down to this: I want everyone to feel comfortable coming over here to share a laugh and maybe even share in some spirited (pun intended) discussion. Though a Christian myself, most of my negatively-slanted emails and comments come from other Christians (shocker, I know). Therefore I want to do everything in my power to make them feel welcome as well.

The only aggregated feed necessary at this point in time is the humor-blogs.com one. It's a neutral playing field, and people can come over here from humor-blogs and jump to their own wild conclusions about where I'm coming from... and I'm perfectly OK with that.

Whatever the case, please know that if you're reading this I'm glad you found your way over here no matter what flavor you are. We may disagree about big important matters, we may disagree about nit-picky little things, we may agree on everything....whatever. I'm glad you're here, I hope you feel welcome and I hope you'll come back, whether it's for the laughs or for something else entirely.

Thanks for everyone who commented about it. It's nice to know that a diverse collection of snarks and smart-asses can thoughtfully dialogue about some deeper issues.

I promise I won't let it happen again.
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Have a nice weekend,

Keep 'em coming.

7 comments:

  1. I work up early to work on my essay and couldn't avoid reading todays post when I saw the headline. Seminary sucks, but that picture is crap your pants funny.

    And crapping your pants will wake you up so that you can write every time!

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  2. it's good to know that snarking can cross the bounds of religious difference. Few things can!

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  3. Erik: Sorry about your pants. This site has been the death of a few computer monitors (via spewed coffee), according to some commenters, but these are the first pants casualties I have heard of.

    Bethany: I feel a chorus of "We Are The World" coming on....

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  4. "I won't let it happen again."

    --THAT made me laugh out loud. (As I smiled at the rest of the post.)

    Peace, IC

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  5. No worries Joel--Rickey's so comfortable coming here that he undresses beforehand. Keep up the strong work.

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  6. IC: Thanks. Couldn't resist.

    Rickey: Me too! But I'll stop now that I know you are!

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  7. Crap, I left a snarky comment here the other day but now it's gone. I musta did the word veri thing wrong.

    Anyway, it was really funny.

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