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+Sharks, jellyfish, and the bad news
+###################################
+
+:status: draft
+:date: 1970-01-01T00:00:00
+:category: faith
+:tags: LGBT, homosexuality, blue ocean, centered faith
+
+Couple of comments while reading `this blogpost`_ by Dave Schmelzer and
+linked `position paper of Vineyard USA on LGBT issues`_.
+
+.. _`this blogpost`:
+    http://theblueoceanblog.org/jesus-good-hijacked-todays-controversies/
+.. _`position paper of Vineyard USA on LGBT issues`:
+    http://vineyardusa.org/site/files/PositionPaper-VineyardUSA-Pastoring_LGBT_Persons.pdf
+
+First completely nonsensical nitpick: as far as I know (and I may
+be wrong, but if I recall correctly I read it in some book by
+Philipe Cousteau) sharks have to swim because they don’t have
+operculum so they have to make water flow through their gills,
+otherwise they suffocate_ . Not that it would matter that much
+for Dave’s argument.
+
+.. _suffocate:
+    https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090820085118AAaL3jP
+
+But to the more interesting stuff. From the position paper:
+
+   William Shakespeare in his play, Twelfth Night, said this: Be
+   not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve
+   greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
+
+This is funny. Did they actually read the Twelfth Night or did
+they see it in a theater? Do they recognize that this whole
+quotation was not meant seriously but just as a bait for
+Malvolio? And if we ignore this strangeness, when following their
+argument, they could say just as easily that they want to discuss
+LGBT issues, because everybody else does it. I am not sure that
+it is the right reason, but anyway.
+
+OK, this is too long. I won’t have time to read all ninety
+pages. So back to Dave.
+
+I completely accept his argument that we should live in the
+centered set, but it seems to me it is a bit difficult to see the
+proper point of the post without getting lost in the juicy world
+of the relationship between homosexuality and the Christian
+faith. One strikingly interesting thing (at least for me) is that
+the whole post is completely meta-discussion. It does not discuss
+the Dave’s actual opinion on homosexuality itself at all. It
+seems that Dave has some homosexual friends, so he has to have at
+least some positive attitude towards them, but there is no
+biblical discussion on the matter itself. I have missed this when
+reading the post for the first time, and I got completely lost in
+the fiery discussion of the point which was not there at all.
+
+Let me thus start from somewhere else. We just returned a couple
+of days ago from a very friendly visit to our very conservative
+Christian friends. Although I tried to avoid it, I made some
+unfortunate comment about the Muslims and Christians praying
+together in my “local” Catholic church (of course, not being
+a Catholic makes this term a bit nonsensical). The result was an
+explosion of rather unbelievably harsh and ungrateful
+declarations about Muslims, among which the persuasion that
+Muslims and Christians praying together is just a masquerade for
+Muslims to achieve their dominance […]. It seemed to me very
+much like the antisemitism by Chesterton (or any proper
+Englishman of that time, I suppose). We can see how these
+attitudes could lead to Auschwitz, but it is unfair to judge them
+through the lenses of gas chambers, because they really did not
+know about the Holocaust, and they would be quite certainly
+against it with all their might. So, most of what my Christian
+friends talk vis-a-vis Muslims is absolutely horrible and
+despicable, but most of these people know nothing about the
+racism and they have never seen it in its most ugly ends, so they
+still feel free to play with those most horrible ideas, not
+knowing that it is an dynamite just ready to explode.
+
+However, only now, when I read the Dave’s post for the second
+time, I have recognized how contemporary and acutely needed it is
+now. And how much, by living among the bounded Christians, I lost
+a bit of the healthy perspective.
+
+security of the bounded set
+
+---------------------------
+
+One of the most important things which helped me to understand my
+attitude towards homosexuality was proper understanding of what
+the sin is.
+
+I understand the centered set thinking correctly, than obvious
+interdicts in the Bible should not be understood as zaps (and
+even less used as such to zap others), but as an advice why
+following the banned path will lead out of the center, Jesus, and
+the life in fullness (John 10:10). So, we should not steal
+because God would smite us, but because although it may seem
+tempting it is not a blessed God’s path to achieving fullness
+of life.
+
+-------------------------
+
+    When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no
+    doubt whatever of their meaning. If a father sends a child to
+    bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do. But suppose he
+    has picked up smattering of pseudo-theology. In that case he
+    would argue more or less like this: “Father tells me to go
+    to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not
+    want me to be tired. I can overcome my tiredness just as well
+    if I go out and play. Therefore though father tells me to go
+    to bed, he really means: ‘Go out and play’.” If a child
+    tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his
+    government, they would both meet with a kind of language they
+    could not fail to understand–in short they would be
+    punished. Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus
+    differently from other orders and exchange single-minded
+    obedience for downright disobedience? How could that be
+    possible!
+
+    -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, chapter. III.
+
+---------------------------
+
+Theological perspective is proposed and wins the day. It does
+just great for however long, but then its blind spots become
+evident and there’s pushback about it. The pushback ends up
+being too corrective, an over-reaction, so it too ultimately gets
+pushed back with something that itself is too corrective and
+over-reacting. And there lies the history of theology.
+
+Unfortunately, theology matters. And people who create bad
+theology and a lot of mess around themselves are usually not bad
+people. Liberal theology ...