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 ...