How to Delete a Good Love Story

Last week I wrote a couple blogs about living a good love story. As many of you know, I write blogs on a whim. Essentially, I'm thinking out loud. What I never expected was to incur the amount of traffic the blog received. And for that matter, the feedback both negative and positive.

To be honest, I wrote the blogs and never reread them, even after all the traffic. I'm writing books at the moment and didn't feel the need to go back. I write blogs, misspellings and all, as a way of journaling through ideas. That said, after receiving critical feedback from people I greatly respect (along with support from people I greatly respect) I feared a backlash. Not a personal backlash, mind you, but a backlash against the actual ideas the blog presented. That is, I feared many would say "who are you to tell me how to live or how to love, I'm going to do anything I want."

I've seen this sort of backlash before in other arenas. I'm convinced a number of preachers drive as many people away from Jesus as they invite toward Jesus through the harshness of their rhetoric. I'm not interested, then, in driving people away from a good love story simply because I used language and presented ideas they found offensive. Especially when the ideas were generated in no more than half an hour.

Another reason to take the blog down is that love and sexuality is complicated. To address sexual matters, especially, is often a graceless conversation, and yet a conversation that can only be healing in a tone of complete and utter grace. My blog, while straight and toned to the language many use while talking over a beer, lacked the tone of grace. That was an enormous mistake on my part.

That said, I'll be revamping the blog posts into some sort of file that I can release to the public in time. I assure you, I'll be checking with my harshest critics before doing so to make sure I'm not offending more people than I honestly care to offend, and that the article brings more light than heat to the topic.

If anything I said personally offended you, will you accept my deepest and most sincere apology? My romantic and sexual history is dismal, which is nothing I hide because I am covered and confident of the grace of God. I'm not interested and see no benefit in shaming anybody. Any shame that was conveyed, I assure you, was unintentional and that sort of rhetoric has never worked to make me a better or more pure man and I've no interest in using it as a tool.

With much love and sincere appreciation,

Don

How to Delete a Good Love Story is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog