Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Frustration!

Been away for a while! I've got entries backed up elsewhere, so while I'm still trying to stay up on schoolwork stuff I'll reproduce some of what I've got up there. It's all stuff from the last couple of weeks, but I just haven't had the time or motivation to keep up on two journals.

Now to ponder the queue of blog-essays I owe a fellow blogger. Topics include domestic violence in the marriage of God and Israel and probably some stuff about God's mercy and justice (if I can find a way to say it that isn't regurgitating what Important People have said.)

While I'm on that topic, I'm really tired of this whole business of writing Biblical commentary. There's so little to say that's new or interesting, because every time I find an new and promising topic I learn that it's only interesting because of a translation error. There's nothing interesting for me to do, and if I'm not interested I'm bored. If I'm bored I'm unmotivated to spend hours writing, and in that case the writing doesn't get done.

Then there's the tendency of Biblical commentators to sit counting the angels on the head of a damn pin because there's nothing interesting left to discuss but darn it, they still wanna write about the Bible. Screw that.

2 comments:

James F. McGrath said...

Why not try exploring how Paul's argument in Romans 2 might be applied to an inclusive view of other religions? It seems to me that the chance to argue for an episcopagan understanding over against a fundagelical one might just grab your interest! :)

Cobalt said...

Except that that isn't a new topic either. I could link a dozen bloggers who do the same thing every day, and find a dozen books on Amazon for why religions should just get along because Jesus wanted y'all to stop hatin'.

Romans 2 caught my interest in class recently because the things in it are easier to relate to current issues. It's easier to see why these topics matter now. But that only gets me so far. If something clearly matters I probably care just enough to go read one of the billion articles already written on that subject, but as far as writing one of my own? If I don't have anything new to say I feel like I'm wasting my time and the time of anyone unfortunate enough to read my regurgitated exegesis.

That's what keeps catching me before I write anything. It's all been done to death.