I've discovered something interesting about myself and blogging: You can't really say what comes right to mind, despite what blogging is. "Blog" is shorthand for "weblog," which had been short for, "web-based online journal." A little pet-peeve, if I may. Particular entries on a blog are entries, or "posts," in the common speech. They are not, contra a beloved evangelical leader who shall remain nameless, called blogs themselves.
Correction: He's not beloved, except maybe by me. He's a disturber and a troublemaker, and that's why I like him. I probably had to turn in my evangelical card and decoder ring, but I still enjoy making as much trouble for people as possible. It's a trouble we need right now.
I can see you, you know. You've got your ESV Bible, your seminary acceptance letter in hand, an impressive array of checkered shirts, and a habit of saying "context" way too many times. But maybe you didn't go that way, either. Maybe you've been burdened with others' problems of poverty, racism, and a thousand other things. If you're a jerk, you look down on your brethren secretly or not for not being quite as concerned as you are. If you're not a jerk, you at least feel your faith should do or say something about these things. And that's good.
In either case, you need to listen to me. If you'll pardon the crudity, you have no idea what in God's name you are talking about. At all. And I don't mean that in the cheesy "Mastered by Divinity" way that you'll learn to laugh about as your way of saying that you grew from this experience, whether you did or not. I mean,--without intentional disrespect--that the very greatest among you know close to nothing. What you know now is highly selective; what you will know then is also highly selective. And that would be fine, but for the fact that the questions that truly matter are the ones you'll be discouraged from asking. Well, the first, you are more than free to ask, so long as you give the "right" answer: "Who is Jesus Christ?" The second follows from the first, or at least it should: "What is the Church?" It's not as though no one you'll meet ever asked this, nor do I suggest that no one has an answer. But I will say that as you truly explore and discover the answer to the first, the second will recur. And again. Even after you feel it has been answered. Even after other people get tired of answering it for you.
Do not quench the Spirit, and do not quench your question, even if you lose your whole life in the asking. Jesus, after all, did say this very thing.
Of all the things I learned in the days I was one of you, Reformed seminarian, I'm the most grateful that I learned to ask these two questions. Don't say I didn't warn you.