It is my one-year substackversary. [March, 22, 2024]
I actually hesitated for a long time before joining Substack. I had seen it from a distance and I worried about it. It seemed to me that the great temptation on substack, particularly for academics, was to become a substack ambulance-chaser.
What is a substack ambulance-chaser? It is someone whose primary aim is to generate new followers by responding quickly to whatever is the newest hot-button issue online.
I worry about this because it ends up valuing vice.
Responding quickly is not a virtue. Having the first-word on a topic is not valuable in the kingdom of God. The quick response is rarely ever the wise response, and it is more often than not antithetical to wisdom.
There is a real temptation to gain followers while losing your soul.
The substack temptation I see, and sometimes feel, is that our ends often become confused. We start writing because we want to bless others, and then suddenly we are writing because we want to be seen as right, or because we want to gain followers to validate our efforts. Gaining followers is not bad, of course, but it is a bad goal.
I gave substack a year when I started. I’ve really loved this community and have been pleasantly surprised by how this modality can be used to bless others. But the temptation to speak quickly is a real one.
As I enter in to my second year here, I am pondering what it might mean to use this as a place to cultivate being quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (Jas. 1:19).
It is the second part of that - being slow to speak - that can be seen as a vice rather than a virtue on a platform like substack. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
One of my most read posts in the past year was on the Rule of Life. There had been a flurry of posts back and forth on it, and I wrote a quick response. It was rushed. It was an over-reaction. It had no depth.
So I waited.
After a week and a half or so things started to cool down on the initial conversation, and I went back to what I had written to see if anything meaningful was there. I gutted it. But now I had taken the opportunity to sit with what I wanted to actually say, and how I wanted to say it.
After a couple of weeks of sitting with it I finally finished writing, and I scheduled it for about a month out. I didn’t want to. But I knew, for me, that this was a moment to practice not saying something quickly.
Dallas Willard used to practice not having the last word. That is a real temptation for many, especially many folks like myself who are academics. But there is a much greater temptation in the social media age: Not having the first word.
If we go several years back, there was a different internet kerfuffle, and several people - including many on Substack - scrambled to get posts done quickly. By the time they were posting, both on here and as articles elsewhere, the initial information had changed. The person who they were critiquing had put out new information that changed the original issue. I’ll never forget that one person noted this, but said that they decided to publish it anyway because the timing was important.
Timing is almost never important in internet kerfuffles. Timing is important when you want to collect followers. Timing is important when you are trying to win.
Writing comes with many differing kinds of experiences, and I have a wide-range of feelings when I write. If I write something polemical, I often hesitate to put it out, anxious about how it will be received. If I write something personal, I worry it will be misunderstood.
When I published my first couple of books, I remember that I really wanted to convince people I was right, not because I simply wanted to be seen as right (although I’m sure that was true a bit), but because I had been so impacted by these truths I wanted them more widely known. I wanted to convince people because what I had learned had helped point me to Jesus.
But I had an entirely different feeling after we published The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb. I didn’t feel the need to convince people I was right. I didn’t need to convince people that I was the one with all of the answers. Rather, I was driven by the desire to convince people that they needed to wrestle with these questions. In particular, I wanted them to see that we can do ministry in the flesh and do our devotions in worldly ways and not notice the difference.
But I wanted them to do more than just wrestle with the questions. I wanted them to do more than just wrestle with my work. I wanted them to bring these questions to the Lord, and I wanted them to wrestle with the Lord.
I think the best of Substack is like this.
It is important, at times, for those called to be teachers, to engage in critical dialogue. I do a good deal of it on here, although I try to keep it mostly pointed to conversations I am actively engaged in.
Few of us here are providing breaking news updates that actually impacts the real lives of people. Most of us are trying to cultivate a deep and reasonable wisdom to navigate the rough waters of this evil age. But we can all be tempted to think that our impact, reach, and significance is somehow determined by numbers. We are tempted to think our impact is related to how quickly we respond, or how savvy our titles, pictures, or notes are.
Instead, let’s be signs that point to Jesus.
Let’s begin to recognize quick responses and ambulance-chasing as vice, and react by unfollowing people who do so. Participating in this activity is enabling and valuing vice, and it is the very thing that often leads to the downfall of platforms like Substack.