Milestone: One Thousand (1000) Veracity Blog Posts!!

Well, we finally hit another milestone: Veracity now has 1,000 published blog posts.

John Paine started this blog back in 2012, so now the blog is over 10 years old. Eleven years to be more exact. One thousands posts. That is a lot of Internet!

Back in the “dark ages” before Tik-Tok, John had kept asking me for months if I would like to write an occasional post, and after numerous attempts to push him off, I finally gave in, with my first post in late 2012. Over the past few years, John’s day job has kept him from posting, except for a short dive into YouTube a few years ago. Now, looking back, four out of five Veracity posts have been written by me. I never thought THAT would happen.

As I wrote about in 2019, the Internet blogging world has changed a lot since 2012. Back in 2012, blogging was still fairly new, and a lot of folks were writing and reading blogs. Audio podcasts were just starting to take off, and YouTube was in many ways still in its infancy. Other social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, either were relatively unknown or did not exist yet. Veracity is still one of the few holdouts, but most blogs have stopped allowing comments, due to the proliferation of trolls. My, how times have changed.

The social media explosion has had a tremendous impact on our post-modern world….. as well as the church. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but it almost seems like everyone has a podcast, or a YouTube channel, or whatever. Social media is the 21st century equivalent of the printing press that ignited the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, with Martin Luther’s pamphlets and printed books. Social media has been a two-edged sword, allowing us to easily keep up with friends and family members, while simultaneously corrupting our youth and triggering a massive mental health crisis among children. Social media has helped to educate people, as well as exposing corruption in high places, while simultaneously dragging down public discourse to intolerable levels. What was fun and helpful just a few years ago is now considered toxic, in many circles.

Nowadays, while podcasts are still popular, YouTube has pretty much taken over the area of media attention that was once the domain of blogging. Particularly when it comes to long-form blogging, the kind that I tend to gravitate towards, blogging has been on the decline. In a world where there is so much social media, it is understandable that long-form blogging does not mesh very well with short attention spans, which the new social media world tends to exploit and propagate.

But changes still are happening, in shocking ways. The big IT giants, including Google, have been struggling. Reports of a possible bankruptcy at Twitter would have surprised everyone a few years back. Other big social media companies, like Facebook/Meta, are laying off thousands of workers. Who knows? Perhaps traditional type blogging will make a comeback.

Veracity’s long-form blogging approach will never have the kind of outreach that some Christian YouTubers have, like Allen Parr (almost 1 million subscribers), Mike Winger (over 500 thousand subscribers),  Alisa Childers (approaching 200 thousand subscribers), or the amazing the Bible Project (a whopping 3.48 millions subscribers!!). But that is quite fine with me! Here at Veracity we dive into the tougher issues that I run into almost on a daily basis, working on a secular college campus, issues that are shaping the next generation of thought-leaders in our culture.

Perhaps your world is different from mine, but in the university/academic environment, the Bible is under continual attack, more so than at any point in modern history. The irony of this is that Christians today have more tools at their disposal to defend their faith than at any time in the history of of the church. Christians need to become familiar with the best arguments for the Christian faith. Otherwise, we risk losing future generations to a contagious unbelief and disregard for the Christian story told in all of its fullness.

Before something like “critical race theory” was a thing in popular culture, QAnon-type conspiracy theories politicized the church, or “transgender” was the topic of the day, discussions about issues like these were percolating on college campuses almost 15-25 years ago.  The trend is clear: Issues that captivate discussions in the university will eventually spill over into the wider culture eventually. If you are praying about how to reach the next generation for Christ, spend some time on Veracity to explore some of the challenges that need to be faced. If not for yourself, do it for your children and your grandchildren.

This is just one reason why I am “pumped up” about the vision of the Cambridge House, at the College of William and Mary. The Cambridge House is a “Christian study center,” dedicated to helping Christians students, faculty, staff, and friends of the college in the local community get to know one another better, and acting as a dialogue partner with the college, in expressing a Christian voice on campus, along the lines of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.” In a few days, I will post about the first-ever public lecture being sponsored by the Cambridge House, at William and Mary, where I work. Exciting times!!

Veracity’s motto has been “Sharing the Joy of Personal Discipleship,” with a primary interest in Christian apologetics, along with my other personal interest in church history. Veracity has been a helpful vehicle for delivering content for some of the adult Bible classes I have given, though Covid and other events at our church have dramatically changed things. Just five years ago, between John and I, we were putting out perhaps two blog posts per week.  But if you have been following the blog for a long time, that rate has fallen off quite a bit, to about one post every other week, with variations to that schedule every now and then (like the series on “historical criticism” of the Bible that I ran for several weeks early last year). It just seems like eons have passed since my first blog post in September, 2012, on seven approaches to the Bible vs. science discussion in the church!

Long time readers will know that I like doing book reviews: Some short reviews, but also some occasional extended reviews … meaning grab a beverage and curl up with your phone or laptop to read those! Audible and ChristianAudio.com audiobooks have been great for my daily work commute, as sitting down to read a book is something I never have enough time to do. But I find it beneficial for me to distill some of the ideas that I am learning about, and publishing them at Veracity for those who do not even have the time to listen to such audiobooks.

I have a few more posts looking again at the controversial “complementarian versus egalitarian” discussion taking place in many evangelical community settings. I also want to wrap up some reflections regarding the trip my wife and I took to Europe last year.

I am also grieving the loss of Dr. Michael Heiser, a significant scholarly figure who has helped many like me to have a greater confidence in Scripture. Heiser’s work has reinvigorated my study of the Bible, so I currently plan on a few posts that dive into some of Dr. Heiser’s many thoughtful insights and teachings, as a tribute to him, over the coming year.

I am not sure what the future beyond that holds. But thanks to everyone who has followed Veracity over the years to make it a success.

Happy One Thousand Published Blog Posts!!