{"id":132,"date":"2010-08-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/about.html"},"modified":"2011-04-23T21:54:29","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T01:54:29","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/about.html","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ryangaffney.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/08\/whole.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-150 at-xid-6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeace9970b\" height=\"410\" src=\"https:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeace9970b-pi\" width=\"212\" \/><\/a>So what&#039;s your blog about and why in the world is it called &quot;Fear of Whales&quot;?<br \/>\nWell I&#039;ll tell you.<br \/>\nIt was actually originally called &quot;Not That Kind Of Christian&quot; and subtitled &quot;The Ramblings of a Mad Heathensaint&quot; but eventually I grew to feel that that title was just a bit too in your face. that work christian hanging there in the title as if I had to fit it in someplace so people would know, offset by some pretty obvious divisive language. It&#039;s just no good for a title, it functions more as a summary.<br \/>\nThis is a blog about my theological thoughts. It&#039;s a venue of self expression for me, I write primarily for myself, and for God, and I invite you to read it with the understanding that not all the ideas contained herein are thoroughly developed, neither are they thoroughly orthodox (depending on your definition of that word) They&#039;re thoughts.<br \/>\nAnd I&#039;ve tried as hard as I dare, not to pull the punches.<br \/>\nThe new name &quot;Fear or Whales&quot; is an allusion to the Jonah story, and my own call to ministry. Christ called me as an 18 year old boy after I&#039;d seen my father in ministry for years and I didn&#039;t want to go. but you see the thing is, I&#039;m afraid of whales!<br \/>\nPerhaps less hyperbolicly I am willing to trust, that despite my preferences God knows what he is doing and it would not serve me well to fight that. I&#039;m not you&#039;re average minister, I&#039;m a bit of a square peg in a round hole among the christian community, I&#039;m a bit of a rebel with a cause, I&#039;m a bit of a giant nerd.<br \/>\nThese are my thoughts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So what&#039;s your blog about and why in the world is it called &quot;Fear of Whales&quot;? Well I&#039;ll tell you. It was actually originally called &quot;Not That Kind Of Christian&quot; and subtitled &quot;The Ramblings of a Mad Heathensaint&quot; but eventually I grew to feel that that title was just a bit too in your face.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,15,18],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-about","tag-blogging","tag-fear-of-whales"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>About - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/about.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"About - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So what&#039;s your blog about and why in the world is it called &quot;Fear of Whales&quot;? Well I&#039;ll tell you. It was actually originally called &quot;Not That Kind Of Christian&quot; and subtitled &quot;The Ramblings of a Mad Heathensaint&quot; but eventually I grew to feel that that title was just a bit too in your face.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/about.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-09T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-04-24T01:54:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeace9970b-pi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"rgaffney\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"About - A Fear of Whales","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/about.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"About - A Fear of Whales","og_description":"So what&#039;s your blog about and why in the world is it called &quot;Fear of Whales&quot;? 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