On My Own?

Watching the traffic stats on this blog is so amusing.

For a guy who writes so much about religion, most of my traffic is apparently not specifically Christian. In fact, most of it is folks who come looking for computer help, mostly Linux stuff. Even my criticisms of Linux get a lot of traffic. For my religious and moral stuff, some of my regular readers aren’t even Christians, or at least don’t profess it. Yet I insist my Christian faith is the whole driving force behind what I write here.

The other day I picked up a used book by a fantasy author I used to love. It’s been a decade since I had seen his stuff, and this was published since then. I hated it. It was dreary, utterly failing to reach the hunger I once had. Yet I can affirm it’s pretty much the same as what he had always written. I moved on, and no longer need what he offers.

The same with almost all the religious material I used to chase in books and on the Net. Not a single church I know of is doing what I am doing. Another way of saying that is not a one of them would tolerate me long if they knew what I was doing. If they read my stuff, they’d be pretty unhappy. I know. I’ve tried to share it.

Sometimes I’ll write something which seems to catch a lot of Christian attention. My page hits will go up and up. Then I’ll mention my distaste for Israel and my theology regarding that country, and suddenly at least half that traffic disappears. When I visit Christian websites where I used to spend a lot of time, they have little to offer me. A couple of forums feel really foreign now. There seem precious few common interests. When I stopped posting, it was because they didn’t want to talk about what mattered to me, and vice versa.

I speak to my Lord every day, several times. Yes, I’m referring to a mystical experience, a spiritual encounter. There’s precious little I could tell you about it, only that it’s more real to me than the world around me. You’ll notice I avoid implying it gives me special powers, that it makes me better than other Christians. Nor do I allege they don’t commune with Him simply because I don’t have much in common with them. It’s not total isolation; there are several who chat with me via email often enough. There are some I see in meat space rather regularly. But there aren’t very many of them.

By no means am I complaining, just stating the facts. Nor is there any attempt to be elitist. No one has to tell me the stuff I write is way out on the fringe of the mainstream. My only complaint is not how much attention I don’t get, but that no one else seems to have caught on to the same concepts, the same topics.

FYI, this blog averages between 100 and 150 hits daily; it was less than 50 until after I wrote that series on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6. Weekends are a little lighter. Most of it is older Linux articles, HOWTO stuff. That’s pretty consistent. The main page varies wildly, 10-50, but who knows whether that represents any significant reading? I get very few comments, so I really don’t know what my visitors are thinking. I suppose it’s not too bad for a guy who basically mutters to himself a lot. There was never any intent to draw a lot of traffic, just put this stuff where a handful of friends could find it.

Thanks for stopping by!