Following up on my last post, here’s a quote from xanga’s “Getting Started” tips:

“Have something you’ve been dying to get off your chest?  Post it to your weblog and achieve the cathartic thrill of self-expression.  It feels great to decompress after a long day and write in your Weblog… and if it gets too personal, you can always make your post private!”

Could it be true that “the cathartic thrill of self-expression” is (most) often only the long-promising but short-lasting satisfaction of the flesh in having fulfilled its ever-present goal of self-seeking, self-betterment, and self-promotion?  To be sure, the ability and the opportunities and the feeling of expressing oneself, especially in the midst of aching or rejoicing, is a God-given blessing.  But if I express myself merely “to get this off my chest,” then isn’t it possible and even likely that I am simply bound up in myself?  If so, then the double-edged sword of the Spirit — the Word of God — must be wielded to hack through my selfishness and to make even such a thing as an online journal wholly and purely others-centered.  I write for your sake.  I read for your sake.  I meditate for your sake.  Somehow, someway, I will find myself destitute of personal ambition if I will truly be Christ-like.  It sounds radical, I know.  But perhaps that helps prove, rather than disprove, its biblicity.  Jesus was a radical.  Which makes radically following Him normal.  May we be no less than He was, and may He make us far more than we are.  “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not look out for your own personal interests, but for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).