Dear Wormwood,
It has come to my attention that your client has started a blog. This is a rather amusing turn of events and can be used very formidably to our advantage.

First, it is important that your client is focused more intently on the ranking of his posts rather than the quality of his writing. If you keep him enamored with viewership, one of two things will happen; He will either get discouraged that his blog is not being read, and it will dissipate to nothing, or if the blog should become popular, he will then write to please his viewers, rather than being attentive to the enemy. His blog will then become attractively gossip-driven and less substantial, which is what we would prefer.

Second, make sure that your client is informed on the latest scandals, and keep him focused on the problems of the church. There are certainly enough pulpit mishaps to write about, and we could use all the publicity we can get. Keep him intent on writing about the arguments and disagreements between popular authors and pastors; outside observers find this rather amusing, and it makes Christianity look rather childish.

Finally Wormwood, instill in your client the need to constantly post, maintain and update his new blog, so that he spends more time in the virtual world and less time face-to-face with his family and friends. Keep him self-absorbed on what he thinks to be his great writing style; his incredible insight; and highly skilled journalistic abilities. Guide him to establish a virtual identity of self importance that transcends his practical day-to-day correspondence. With this wormwood, you will make great strides.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape

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Okay, that was my sorry attempt at a Screwtape letter. My intention wasn’t to demonize blogging, as I am a blogger myself. Blogging can be a very beneficial and rewarding discipline, but like all things, there are problems to be aware of. I hope this was helpful in pointing out some of those dangers.

A hundred years ago, when cosmologists observed the universe, they saw a lot of empty space, much like we would see if we look through a telescope. Today however, scientists are aware that this vacuum of space is not really empty, but occupied by what they define as “dark matter.”

The interesting thing about dark matter, is that it is not just this invisible gas-like substance that happens to reside in and between the galaxies, dark matter is the very backbone; the structural framework that is holding the galaxies together. Just like if you observed a Christmas tree from a distance, you would see the lights, but holding the lights together are the tree branches.

Dark matter, like normal matter, is detectable. One way that cosmologists know about dark matter is that it bends light that passes through it, much like light passing through a sheet of glass. It is defined as dark matter not because of a property of color, but because like gravity, it is invisible and it is still very mysterious in how it functions, as well as the substance that forms it. It is a rather perplexing phenomenon.

I bring this up to make a point about the spiritual realm. The dominating worldview in our secular environments is a reliance on observable physical matter. The idea of God must be proved in our categories of physicality to be deemed as true; and the detectable mysteries of love, consciousness, and beauty are reduced to chemical oddities.

I would gather that as the ‘real stuff’ resides in the areas of the unseen in our physical universe, that the ‘real stuff’ resides in the moral and transcendent spaces of our reality. From a biblical perspective, it is in the spiritual realm where the real battle is waged; it is in the area of the unseen. Therefore, let us have eyes to see, what is unsee-able that is.