As a writer, or any kind of public and creative person, it is vital to remember the purpose for which one is creative. The more we understand the tangled reasons why we do something, the better we are able to handle the responsibilities of dealing with the repercussions of our art and speech. One of the more difficult issues that a creative person has to deal with is the problem of the hidden agenda. It is seemingly inevitable, as I have found out to my own grief, that people will act suspiciously towards one who is open and imagine hidden agendas in one’s words and behaviors. However, the existence of a hidden agenda is something that is within our own control. What are our intentions for speaking and doing? Since other people are not particularly skilled at divining our hearts, we have to examine our own and let them be purified from within.

There certainly are some people who write with a hidden agenda. They phrase their words carefully, seeking to lead a reader down a garden path to a change in belief or conviction for the purpose of selling them on a particular philosophy or worldview. Depending on their rhetorical skill, they may do this by a variety of fallacious ways, whether that be pathetic appeals to emotion, or stacking the deck in a particular way (both of which come fairly naturally to people, who tend to feel as if their feelings are the guide to the truth without bothering to acquire the actual facts of a situation). The possession of a hidden agenda may be a matter of conscious crafting of words and arguments, in their most dishonest form, seeking to justify sordid and dishonest and unethical means by one’s supposedly righteous ends. On the other hand, a hidden agenda may even be hidden to ourselves, some deep-felt but little-understood prism for viewing life that influences our conduct in ways that we may not ourselves understand.

For myself, I try to be aware of any agendas, hidden or otherwise, that I possess, at least so that I may write and live with a clear conscience before God and my mirror (whatever other people may think). Often I reflect on the reasons why I write. Primarily, my writing is a pressure valve to keep my own personal mental, emotional, and spiritual state in as close a state to equilibrium as possible. Primarily, I deal with my own concerns, what is going on in my own life, my own feelings and thoughts, and use this as a way to express those thoughts and feelings and examine them, as well as communicate them to others. As someone who wrestles with serious issues and desires to put them in a godly perspective, it is necessary to have a forum to do that with as little interference and conflict as possible. Thankfully, blogging offers that opportunity.

It is not uncommon for me to read the blogs of many other people in the course of my life, given the reciprocal trade of subscribing to those bloggers who subscribe to me. It is also not uncommon for me to read what others write, and to ponder on their intentions. With some people, it is very easy to see what they intend, given the fact that they have a narrow focus in their writing that is so specific and targeted that their main interest is clear and unmistakeable. Some people turn everything into a joke, for example, or possess a worldview that is so obvious and so strident that the content of their messages is possible to guess merely from the title alone, without much need to read the contents except to confirm one’s initial impression.

I would hope not to be so narrow myself. While I certainly have a very strong worldview and mindset that should be plain, I have often found that the complexity of my thinking often evades those readers who are most critical. It has been my experience that those readers who have been most critical of my writing (whether they have expressed this criticism openly or sideways, as is often the case) do so on account of believing that I have directed something at them. For such people, the fact that the sharp rapier wit of my tongue or pen may be directed at them for anything, merited or unmerited, is enough to disregard the entire balance of a work or the whole intent of something. Given that I write based on my own experiences and that which comes into my view, whether through reading or observing, it is to be wholly expected that those who interact with me, particularly those whose behavior causes me to reflect and ponder and muse often, is going to end up in my writing. In fact, it may even be inevitable. Nevertheless, there is always some desire in putting the particular and the personal in light of larger concerns of justice and righteousness, to be fair and equitable to the concerns of all involved to the extent that I am aware of those concerns and can act accordingly.

When one reads a work, it is useful to ponder on the possible intents of that work. Is the author open and honest about their intents, and can they be given the benefit of the doubt or not? Is the author using a particular emotional angle for therapeutic purposes or is he (or she) attempting to draw invalid conclusions from them. It is perfectly acceptable to read a given work and feel deeply sympathetic for the people involved, but to reject the conclusions or inferences that an author draws from those experiences. Simply because some people act in a way that is wrong does not mean that their worldview is wrong; often we have sound beliefs about matters but simply lack the ability to practice what we preach. Likewise, we may practice well in some aspects of life without having articulated the reasons why we do what we do, so as to be able to explain it to others or to understand it for ourselves.

Whether there is a hidden agenda or not in a work, and I have always tried to make any agendas of mine neither harmful nor hidden to anyone else, given the fact that agendas or purposes are inevitable, as all creations have a purpose, we ought to reflect on the importance of such matters not only for the author but to ourselves. We will all be held accountable for every word that we express, whether it was foolish or wise, and those who write and speak will have to answer for their words, the intent of those words, and the ends which those ends produced. I hope God is merciful with me for my own folly. However, we will also be held accountable for our own twisting of words of others, for our misinterpretation and misrepresentation of what others say. For the same scriptures which say: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (Matthew 12:36-37)” also say “As also our brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15-16).” Let us therefore strive to avoid idle words, or twisting the words of others and misrepresenting them, so that we may avoid condemnation both for speaking with hidden and corrupt agendas or for imagining them were they do not exist and judging people wrongly.