Bonaire Scenery

Here are a few photos I took on my two visits to Bonaire in the Southern Caribbean. The underwater photos were taken by Lynne Bentsen. Click here to view the whole album.

 

On the Fifth Day…

Two guesses where this picture was taken…

“Near Tucson” would be a pretty good guess, but this photo was taken on a tiny tropical island in the southern Caribbean, an island called Bonaire. For me, it gives new meaning to the phrase desert island.

I’m here in Bonaire to fill the pulpit at International Bible Church, where Totoram Baran is the pastor, while he takes a well-deserved holiday in the USA. Community Bible Church supports Pastor Baran as one of our missionaries, and for two years in a row, we’ve sent a short term team to serve here during the summer. I get to preach twice. I’ve divided my Romans 12:1-2 sermon (which I’ve been posting here in short segments) into two parts, one of which I gave last Sunday, and the second this coming Sunday.

Pray for International Bible Church. It’s a very small congregation, but they are developing a heart for spreading the gospel in this end of the earth.

Bonaire’s economy is entirely supported by the fact that it is one of the best places in the world for scuba diving. So this year, while I’m here, I decided to take the three-day course and get my open water certification. The underwater wildlife is AMAZING! That’s the reason for the title of this post, because it was on the fifth day that God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures.” Man do the waters teem! The other day, while snorkeling no more than 100 yards from the beach, I got to see a baracuda about half my size swimming slowly alongside a giant school of little silvery fish (like the school of fish in Finding Nemo that makes all the interesting shapes). All of a sudden, the baracuda turned and zipped through the crowd, grabbing one of the little fish for supper. WOW! I swam along next to this giant fish for about twenty minutes.

 

Seattle Scenery

Here are a few of my favorite photos from my Seattle Vacation. You can look at a bunch of them at http://picasaweb.google.com/dhs316/SeattleTrip2008#.

Sandy & Bob's Backyard

Hydroplane Racing on Lake Washington

Blue Angels over Lake Washington

Pike Place Market

Safeco Field

 

Ouch!

As most of the readers of this blog would know already, I found myself three weeks ago in need of the services of a surgeon. I had to call my brother at four in the morning on a Sunday (Feb. 3) to get a ride to the emergency room. By that time, I’d been in excruciating pain for about 5 hours. What I thought was some kind of bad gas turned out to be a bad gall bladder. It took a while for the doctors to figure out the exact nature of my problem, so I didn’t actually get the surgery until mid-day Monday.

This picture shows the two ways they do gall bladder surgery these days. The method on the left is the method you want. The method on the right is the method they use when Plan A won’t work. That is what happened to me. The right-hand picture here shows the place and the size of my incision pretty much exactly. Afterwards, the surgeon told me that my gall bladder was one of the worst he’d ever seen. They let me out of the hospital that Friday, and I’ve been recovering at Sheldon & Stephanie’s house since then.

Though I haven’t had a lot of personal experience with pain, I have taken it on faith for some time that suffering has two beneficial effects in the life of a believer in and follower of Christ. The first of these is: pain is purifying. Suffering of just about any kind is an opportunity to build up our holiness of character. James wrote, “Consider it all joy, brethren, when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Of course, it’s too early to tell whether this painful experience has enhanced my character much, but I can observe one such effect. I believe that in the future, I will be far more sympathetic toward others who are dealing with various physical ailments and pains. This is not only because I now know something of what they’re going through, but also because of the multitude of expressions of care and sympathy I have received in the last few days and the amazing way in which these cards, letters, e-mails, visits, conversations, and prayers—not to mention Sheldon and Stephanie’s unblinking hospitality—have been a true encouragement. Having experienced the comfort of this ministry firsthand, I can’t see myself passing up the opportunity to provide it anymore.

The second beneficial effect of suffering is this: Suffering is, in and of itself, a point of fellowship with Christ, and fellowship with Christ is the prize of life. Paul writes of this in Philippians 3 when he mentions his desire to know “the fellowship of His sufferings.” In this pain, I found myself thinking about this concept and, after lots of simple-minded begging for miraculous relief, asking the Lord for something of this “fellowship of suffering”—some new nearness of God.

This led to some interesting comparisons. From my perspective, my pain was pretty severe. When they asked me the scale of 1 to 10 question, I was answering, “Eight.” It was bad, but it could have been a little worse. But as I imagine the pains of Christ, I don’t think mine even get on the same scale. My pain, of course, was just the accidental consequence of living in a dying body; I did not and would not choose to have it. Jesus’ pain was something he took on intentionally and for the sake of others. While I was in pain, I never once feared for my life. Jesus, of course, knew that all his pain was to end in death. My pain involved no estrangement from God (or anyone else for that matter). Jesus endured the pain of the Cross utterly alone. Finally, of course, Jesus in his holiness, had to bear the imputed guilt of the sins of the world as he was unjustly executed on the cross.

Given the stark contrast here, one might well wonder, where’s the fellowship? None of us will ever suffer in a way that compares to Christ. Compared to his, my pain is hardly worthy of the label. In spite of that, though, I see two points of fellowship. The first is the simple human experience of pain, something which Jesus Christ also experienced, something he shares with us. The second is an extension of that. I mentioned earlier that this experience has created in me an ability I didn’t have before to sympathize with others. Because I know that Jesus’ suffering was human like mine but also vastly more extensive than mine, I also know that he can understand (by experience) any suffering I may be called to endure.

So my looking for the fellowship of his sufferings was kind of aimed in the wrong direction. I was looking for this pain to lead me to a deeper understanding of Christ. Instead, it was an opportunity for me to realize a bit more of his deep understanding of me. I’m reminded of the words of Corrie Ten Boom, someone who suffered much for Christ. She said, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” This experience has helped me to see a tiny bit more of the depth of God’s love in Christ, and for that I am thankful.

 

My Theological Nest

In response to my last post, OSC asked me to identify my theological pigeon-hole, so here goes:

My theology is sort of a hybrid thing. My dad grew up in the Plymouth Brethren church, but as we moved around the country following his military career, we didn’t attend Brethren assemblies, but mostly non-denominational “Bible” churches. When I was 15, we came to Nashville and began to participate in Community Bible Church, where I’ve been ever since. Our pastor for most of my time at CBC graduated from
Dallas Seminary in the 1950s, the era of John Walvoord and Charles Ryrie.

The hallmark of this tradition is Bible exposition, which remains the central feature of worship at CBC. The theory is that when we preach expositionally through a text, we’re doing better at giving “the full counsel of the word.” (I recognize that this approach has it’s own set of problems, one of which is that it overestimates its own “objectivity”). The thing a Lutheran would notice about it is the complete absence of liturgy. My brother’s wife grew up in the LCMS (they were married in a Lutheran Church), and from time to time, this resulted in my visiting a Lutheran service. I always felt a bit lost, not knowing how to follow the order (that’s not a criticism, just an observation).

Theologically, the distinctive feature of Dallas Seminary is dispensationalism. This was the result of a combination of the 19^th century Presbyterian penchant for systematizing theology and a biblical literalist reaction to German liberalism. Mix in a little American entrepreneurialism and the result is a new church tradition of anti-traditionalism. My own church came to be in the late 1950s when a group of people, mostly baptists and methodists, got fed up with the creeping liberalism of their mainline denominational Churches.

So that’s where I’m from: American conservative independent evangelical. My own studies at DTS led me to conclude that our tradition is a little too modernistic in the way it emphasizes individualistic rationalism, especially in hermeneutics. It also carries a big thread of Finneyan revivalism and a strong tendency toward pragmatism in ministry. In this way, OSC, we are largely responsible for the woes you bemoan so well. Sorry. It seems to me that lamenting the shallow theology of glory of our day is the thing that you and I have in common.

As it happens, my seminary curriculum “accidentally” included a fair dose of Lutheran theology, which I find both interesting and helpful. I took senior level seminars in both historical and systematic theology. These are courses in which the specific subject matter varies from one semester to the next. My historical theology seminar focussed on the writings and context of Luther himself, and my systematics course was a focussed discussion of Robert Jenson’s (leading contemporary Lutheran theologian, for those who don’t know the name) Systematic Theology.

Of course, I’m obviously not a Lutheran, and there are many specific elements of the Lutheran Confession that I would disagree with (but not want to argue about). When it comes to the sacraments, for example, I’m pretty much a Calvinistic baptist. As I’ve come to appreciate the necessity of tradition and community in all human understanding, I’m led to remain in the tradition I’m part of, in part to have some opportunity to shape it, but more so as to be fully engaged in the life of the Church and the promotion of the gospel.

There’s a lot more to the answer to this question, but maybe that’s a good start. By the way, OSC, you’ve intrigued me by mentioning your DTS grad friend who recently joined the LCMS. I wonder if I know him. There were a number of Lutherans in my Jenson seminar. There’s an e-mail link on the Subsidiary Awareness page; maybe you could drop me a line.