Having my parents in town was nice. We ate at a lot of excellent restaurants, saw some movies, went to the Minnesota Zoo. They left Monday afternoon, so now I have to wait another month to see them again. Monday evening, Ron and I went out on Big Marine in his speedboat, and we fished among the bulrushes, catching several croppies, sunfish, and peanut-fish. The peanut-fish were beautiful: they are bluegills, and their skin looks like a twisted leopard hide with splotches of black on blue. My sermon on Sunday went well. I personally didn’t like it, I thought it sucked, but lots of people told me that it really touched them, so it’s all good. I’ve been working on my Bible Study for Romans 8, and last night we talked about Integrity at Youth Night in the Upper Room.
I love teaching. If this internship has taught me anything, it’s that I have a gift for teaching. Getting up in front of people and just expounding upon the scriptures fills my veins with energy. When the topic is somewhat controversial, I have a tendency to be a jackass about it, but oh well, we all have our flaws. I enjoy dispelling traditional views that are unsupported by scripture—the anger of the people whose views are being challenged, the looks on their faces, just gets me more energized and exhilarated than anything. Yet my hope in teaching is not to get them to become carbon-copies of my own belief; I want them to think things through for themselves. If I present them an interpretation of scripture that they do not agree with—such as my interpretation of Romans 7—then my wish is not that they adopt my interpretation blindly but they study the scriptures for themselves and become confident and well-rounded in what they believe. I don’t want them to be like the fish at Big Marine, gulping down the lure without thinking, being foolish. A portrait of Minnesota:
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