My Journey

Stepping out of that myopic existence I began to get an inkling that there existed a world of truth that I wanted to encounter, and so I set off.

kevingdrendel12 Comments
Walking

It’s time for a little update, not much, but I am no longer new to blogging. I have been at it a few years. Not that I have gained any particular stature. I simply can’t claim to be new at it. I still write as part of my profession, but blogging is more interesting. Blogging is my way of sharpening ideas and fleshing them out. It’s a journey, and I know I don’t always “get it right”, but I take it seriously.

I have been on a journey for truth since I emerged from the haze and confusion of adolescence, much of it self-induced. Stepping out of that myopic existence I began to get an inkling that a world of truth lay in front of me to encounter, and so I set off. I didn’t realize, then, how much faith is required to seek truth.

Continue reading “My Journey” →

The Importance of Our Identity as Citizens of Heaven: Moses, Aliens, and Strangers

Our identity as Christians informs (or should inform) how we see the world

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

The importance of identity is not just a 21st Century trend. The significance of a person’s identity dates back to the Ancient Near Eastern culture preserved in the Bible.

Parents commonly named their children based on prominent identity markers. For instance, Isaac and Rebekah named their second born, Jacob, who was born clinging to his two brother’s ankle. Jacob (Ya’aqov in Hebrew) meant “supplanter,” “heel-catcher,” or “he who follows on the heels of.” The name became part of his identity not just literally; it corresponded with actions to acquire his older brother’s birthright from his father by manipulation and deception. (Gen. 25:26; 27:36; and Hos. 12:2-4)

God often gave people new names to go with their identity in relation to God. After a personal encounter with the Lord, God gave Jacob a new name: Israel, which meant “struggles with God,” “wrestlers with /God,” or “God prevails.” (Gen. 32)

The naming of children and God renaming people according to some key characteristic associated with their personal identity, or a new identity God gave them, is a common theme in the Bible. Groups of people were known by ancestral names, like Israelites, Amalekites, Hittites, etc. Thus, I find significance in the name Moses gave his first born child: Gershom.

Moses was the son of Hebrew parents, but he was placed in a basket in the Nile when Pharaoh ordered the killing of all male Hebrew babies. The Pharaoh’s own daughter found Moses and adopted him, though she allowed him to be nursed by a Hebrew woman who turned out to be Moses’s mother.

Moses grew up in the privilege of the Pharaoh’s house. He was educated in all the ways of Egypt, learned to read and write, and was familiar with Egyptian history, culture, religion, and philosophy. He was Hebrew by birth, but he was Egyptian by upbringing.

Moses must have known that he was Hebrew. It was probably obvious by his facial features, and he might have even been circumcised. He was schooled in Egyptian ways and thinking, but he was probably painfully aware that he was not Egyptian by birth.

One day as he observed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man, Moses stepped in and killed the Egyptian. I believe Moses identified with the Hebrew man because of his Hebrew ethnicity. He fled into the desert in Midian for fear of punishment from the Egyptians for the murder.

In Midian, he was accepted into the family of a Midianite, married a Midian woman, and settled down there. When his wife, Zipporah, gave birth to a son, “Moses named him Gershom, saying, ‘I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.’” Exodus 2:21-22

Moses named his first son Foreigner because he identified as a foreigner himself. Despite being raised as an Egyptian in Pharaoh’s family with all the privilege associated with the royal household, Moses could not escape the fact of his Hebrew heritage. That knowledge influenced his personal identity.  That identify as an outsider – a foreigner – was reinforced in his persona when he settled in Midian to the extent that he extended that identity to his firstborn son.

I find significance in that story and in the realization that Moses identified so poignantly with being a foreigner. That same identity – of being foreign – defined the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt. It remained with them as they wandered 40 years in the Levant wilderness, and, God sanctified that identity for the Israelites in the Mosaic Law:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God….

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.“

Leviticus 19:9-10, 33-34

The Israelites lived 430 years in Egypt by the time Moses led them out of that land. Their memories of the promised land were ancient history. Their memories would be like modern Native Americans recalling the history of the United States in 1596. European settlers at that time comprised a few thousand people at most in precarious settlements in the New World inhabited by millions of indigenous people.

The Roanoke Colony had already failed, and no English settlements remained. Some Spanish missionary and military expeditions existed in the south and west, and French and Portuguese fishing camps existed in Newfoundland. Jamestown (1607), Quebec City (1608), Plymouth (1620), and New Amsterdam (New York, 1624) were not yet established.

Some 430 years later, the Native Americans may identify as outcasts in their own country, like Israelites identified as foreigners in their “home” country of Egypt. The Israelites lived there, but they were not assimilated into Egyptian culture, and they lived there without all the benefits Egyptian privileges.

Though Moses was raised with Egyptian privileges in the royal family, he never lost his Hebrew identity. In that sense, Moses identified similarly to the way Christians are taught to identify themselves in the New Testament: as people of God who are foreigners and exiles (1 Peter 2:10-11), “foreigners and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13), who are now “fellow citizens with God’s people.” (Ephesians 2:19)

For Moses, though, he probably didn’t even feel at home with his own, Hebrew people because of his upbringing. He was raised separately from them. His Hebrew features (and perhaps circumcision) reminded him of his heritage. He could not escape it, but his personal connection to those Hebrew roots was not yet intimate.

Even so, the sense of foreign identify was profound enough that Moses was compelled to come to the aid of a Hebrew stranger. Moses identified with the plight of the Israelites who lived as vulnerable foreigners in a land they could not call their own.

I and my fellow Christians should have the same profound sense of living as strangers in a foreign land in this world – if, indeed, we are citizens of heaven. This realization hits home today as I watch what is happening in the streets of American cities.

Do we identify with the aliens and strangers in our country? Or do we identify with the government that has recently adopted more oppressive and strong handed tactics to deal with immigrants in this country who are not wanted here? If you are not sure these connections belong together, bear with me awhile longer.

Continue reading “The Importance of Our Identity as Citizens of Heaven: Moses, Aliens, and Strangers” →

To Go Or Not to Go to Egypt: That is the Question

The difficulty interpreting Scripture the way we might want to read it

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

How should people read the Bible? I suppose that’s an age old question. I am not here to claim that I know exactly the right way to read the Bible – a fool proof way of reading every passage of Scripture to understand exactly the right meaning of every verse (as if there is only one way), but I am certain of some wrong ways to read the Bible.

Anyone who has devoted substantial attention to the reading of Scripture and how to interpret it well has heard the terms “descriptive” and “prescriptive.” The difference between the two is deceptively simple: descriptive passages tell us what happened, and prescriptive passages tell us what ought to happen.

The Bible does not signal to us when a passage is descriptive or prescriptive. Some passages can both be descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Some passages are prescriptive, but we need to have the wisdom to ask, “Prescriptive for who?” For the people in the narrative? For all people at all times? If we don’t ask these questions, we can make some bad assumptions and reach some bad conclusions.

My reading today gets me thinking about these things. Genesis 46:2-4 says that God spoke to Israel (a/k/a Jacob) in a vision one night, and this is how the dialogue went:

“Jacob! Jacob!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes.”

This passage is descriptive. It is telling us only what happened. At the same tine, God speaks to Jacob and clearly tells him what he ought to do. Thus, the passage is also prescriptive – at least for Jacob. What God said to Jacob is clearly not a statement of what 21st Century readers ought to do. It wasn’t even a statement that other Ancient Near Eastern people of God ought to do in their own times.

Interestingly, we can see a pattern in the Bible of people going to Egypt. Abraham went to Egypt almost immediately after he arrived in the Promised Land (the land God said He would show Abraham when he was still Abram). There was a famine in the land of Canaan (the promised land), just as there was a famine in the land when Jacob and his family made their way to Egypt.

Mary and Joseph also went to Egypt. They were warned by an angel of the Lord to flee and go to Egypt to escape the plans of Herod to kill the Christ child. Going to Egypt is embedded in the story of Jesus, the Messiah, who was God incarnate. It doesn’t get more holy or sanctified than that! Right?

Going to Egypt seems to be an established and accepted thing for God’s people to do. Both Jacob and Mary and Joseph were told in no uncertain terms by God or His angel to go to Egypt. Though Abraham wasn’t told to go to Egypt, God blessed him with sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels while he was there (Gen. 12:16), and he became very wealthy. (Gen. 13:2)

If we read these passages prescriptively, we might logically conclude that anytime a famine occurs, we ought go to Egypt. We might also think that going to Egypt is always the right thing for God’s people to do.

We intuitively know, though, that going to Egypt whenever a famine occurs is not likely the right way to read these passages together. That is because they are descriptive (describing only what happened) and not likely meant to be read prescriptively – at least for us. God was being prescriptive to Jacob and to Mary and Joseph, but he wasn’t laying down a rule for everyone in all times and places to follow.

God told Jacob and God told Mary and Joseph they ought to go to Egypt, but we know that the instructions were given to these particular people in their particular contexts that are not likely applicable to us in our times and circumstances. That doesn’t mean that these stories and God’s instructions might not have some application or particular relevance for particular people in their own particular circumstance in their own times, but there is no generally applicable, prescriptive value to be gleaned about going to Egypt.

In fact, we don’t have to look very far to find some very different instructions from God about going to Egypt. It wasn’t long after Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea to escape captivity in Egypt when they started complaining that they had it better in Egypt. (Exodus 16:2-3) As time went on, they complained often about the abundance they remembered in Egypt (Numbers, 11:5; 16:3), and they rebelled against Moses, asking for a leader to be appointed to lead them back to Egypt. (Numb. 14:2-4) Years later, as Moses was preparing the people to enter the Promised Land, God (speaking through Moses) warned the people about Egypt, saying, “You are not to go back that way again.” (Deut. 17:16)

The Prophet Isaiah warned people about going to Egypt and seeking Pharaoh’s protection. (Is. 30:1) The prophet Jeremiah said, “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there, then the sword you fear will overtake you there, and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and there you will die.” (Jer. 42:15-16) The Prophet Ezekiel also told the people not to remember Egypt anymore. (Ez. 23:27)

Moses and the Prophets gave some clear and stern warnings about going to Egypt, yet Mary and Joseph were told years later to flee to Egypt with the baby Jesus. These things are confusing if we try to read every passage in the Bible prescriptively – even the ones with clear commands from God.

So how should modern Christians read scripture? Do we go or not go to Egypt?

Continue reading “To Go Or Not to Go to Egypt: That is the Question” →

The Alex Pretti Shooting: It’s Black and White

The black and white narratives could not be more divergent

kevingdrendel6 Comments

I am reeling in sadness today, and I realize my sadness is multi-layered. The shooting and death of Alex Pretti on the cold streets of Minneapolis yesterday is tragic, regardless of the narrative anyone believes about it. The narratives we believe also expose the polarization in the United States of America and, more specifically, the dark and tragic reality of the polarization in the body of Christ in this country.

Yesterday, as I read how believers from other countries are responding to the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minnesota, I was struck by how united they were in their narrative of what happened – unlike believers in our country at the moment.

The narratives we are telling are wildly divergent, despite many videos from different angles. The narratives people began to tell immediately after live coverage was shared to a watching world diverged as dramatically as black and white, and people have planted Christian flags on both sides.

The President and the Department of Justice issued public judgments while the crime tape was still being stretched out to mark the area for investigation. Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist, they said. He had a gun and intended to commit mass murder. He was at fault for opposing the efforts of ICE to carry out their duties. It was a tragedy that he is dead but it was his fault for being there, getting in the way, and carrying a gun (which is ironic in itself).

At the same time, people immediately accused ICE agents of cold-blooded murder while the blood still oozed out of Pretti’s lifeless body in the frigid street. Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse, they said. He was a great guy who cared for people. He had a conceal carry license protected by the 2nd Amendment. He stepped in to help a woman, and his hands were not on his gun. ICE agents are at fault for unjustly, mercilessly, and wantonly killing him for expressing his First Amendment rights.

I realize that people, including me, rush to judgment on these things because of their biases. We have all seen the same videos, and we have reached opposite conclusions in keeping with our own beliefs and narratives. If you disagree with me on everything else, I hope you have the integrity and honesty to admit this much.

Christians who focus on Romans 13, law and order, the culture war, and support the President and governing authorities come down on the side of the administration’s narrative about what happened. Christians focused on the Biblical theme of justice for the poor and needy, not oppressing the foreigner, loving your neighbor, and caring for the least, come down on the side of the opposite narrative.

The facts are the same. We all saw the same videos. They differences lie in the the way we view the world and the basic assumptions that inform our worldviews.

But, how can that be? Shouldn’t Christians be unified in Christ? Don’t we all believe that Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God through whom all things were made who gave up his life on the cross to save sinners from sin and death and rose again to give us hope for our own salvation? Why aren’t we all unified in our “biases” over this incident?

As Christians, we have sung, “They will know us by our love.” We have read the words of Jesus, who said, “The world will know us by the love we have for one another.” We have read that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life..” We follow a crucified savior who gave up his life because he loved us. We have all received by faith the righteousness extended to us by the grace of God, not because we earned it, but despite the fact that we didn’t.

Yet, we are divided by the narratives we have embraced as we watch the same videos and reach exactly opposite conclusions.

This troubles me, and it should trouble you if you are also a believer. Not necessarily because I think I am right or you think I am wrong about the narrative, but because it reveals that Christians, who claim to have a special hold on truth given by divine revelation from God with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are no different than anyone else in the world. Our unity in Christ doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t even seem to exist.

Continue reading “The Alex Pretti Shooting: It’s Black and White” →

Who Do We Obey? Augustine, Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church, and the Guidance of Revelation

A choice between two cities

kevingdrendel3 Comments

The book of Revelation is often treated as a puzzle about the future to be solved. But for the early church—and for Christians living under pressure—it functioned as something far more prescient: a guide and encouragement to be faithful when political power demands allegiance that belongs to God alone.

That is why the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church matters so deeply for Christians today. Their struggle was not about partisan politics or policy disagreements. It was about lordship. Who has the right to command the Christian conscience? Who gets our obedience when the state demands what Christ forbids—or forbids what Christ commands?

When Obedience Becomes Worship

The crisis in Nazi Germany was not simply that the government was unjust. It was that the state demanded moral and spiritual loyalty. National identity became sacred. Political obedience became a virtue. Silence and complicity in the face of injustice was praised as faithfulness.

Scripture warns us that this is always how idolatry works.

“No one can serve two masters.” (Matthew 6:24)

In the City of God, St. Augustine contrasts the City of man and the City of God. We owe our allegiance to the City of God, though God calls us to live in harmony, as best as we can, with the City of man. Loving God is first, but loving man is like it. We cannot love God and fail to love people who God loves and created in His image.

Revelation is encouragement and exhortation to us when the City of man exhibits the characteristics of the beast. Revelation describes the beast as a power that compels allegiance to itself in everyday life through economic pressure, social belonging, and fear of exclusion:

“So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.”

(Revelation 13:17)

The issue is not technology. The issue is worship – your heart, your devotion, your allegiance.

Bonhoeffer: Discipleship Is Visible

Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw clearly what many Christians hoped to avoid: there is no such thing as private faith when public injustice is at stake. Throughout the Prophets who repeatedly warned God’s people about coming judgment, the issues were twofold: idolatry and injustice.

Idolatry and injustice always go hand in hand. Augustine said that our true allegiance is revealed by what one loves, serves, and obeys.

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God even to the contempt of self.”

(City of God XIV.28)

Injustice always flows from misdirected worship – misdirected loyalty, priority, and desire. Augustine called injustice robbery, because it robs people made in the image of God of what God intends for them.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warned against what he famously called “cheap grace”—grace that forgives sin without transforming obedience. Transforming obedience is the kind of obedience that forsakes self-interest out of love for God and man.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

That call is not only about personal holiness. It is about allegiance. Bonhoeffer understood that following Jesus means concrete obedience, even when that obedience is costly, unpopular, or dangerous.

Faith that quietly accommodates injustice, he argued, is not faithfulness at all. God “upholds the cause of the oppressed,” and “watches over the foreigner,” and “sustains the fatherless and widow….” (Psalm 144:6-9) That is God’s heart, and that character marks those who love and serve Him.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

1 John 4:20

The Confessing Church: Saying “No” to False Authority

In 1934, pastors and theologians gathered to issue the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Their message was simple and bold:

“Jesus Christ… is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

This was not abstract theology. It was a refusal to allow the state to define truth, identity, or moral obligation. It was a rejection of the idea that national destiny or political leaders could speak with the authority of God the Father. The City of man is not the City of God.

In the language of Revelation, the Confessing Church refused to bear the name of the beast. They chose instead to bear the name of the Lamb:

“They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” (Revelation 14:4)

The Danger of Complicity

Later in his life, Bonhoeffer pressed further. He argued that the church sins not only by acting wrongly, but by failing to act when injustice reigns.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”

According to Bonhoeffer, Revelation 14 warns that worship of the beast is not limited to overt acts of loyalty. It includes participation in systems that oppose God’s justice—systems that reward conformity and punish faithfulness—systems that oppress the poor, needy, foreigner, widow, and orphan.

“If anyone worships the beast… he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath.” (Revelation 14:9–10)

This is not a threat meant to terrify believers. It is a mercy meant to awaken them. We must not give our allegiance and our heart to Empire – the beast in our age. We must give our hearts, desires, and allegiance to God alone.

Revelation as a Call to Endurance

Revelation does not tell Christians to seize power. Revelation gives us the hope that the Lamb who was Slain will prevail despite the chaos, injustice, and oppression that reigns in a world controlled the beast. The urgent message is to endure patiently and be faithful. (Rev, 13:10)

“Here is the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

Endurance means refusing to let fear, convenience, or comfort decide our allegiance or obedience. It means trusting that faithfulness matters, even when it costs us socially, economically, or personally.

Bonhoeffer lived—and died—by that conviction. We can too.

Why This Still Matters

The beast in Revelation does not always look monstrous. Sometimes it looks respectable. Sometimes it speaks the language of order, morality, and security. Sometimes it rewards the loyalty of silence.

The question for Christians has never changed: Who is Lord?

Revelation, Augustine, Bonhoeffer, and the witness of the Confessing Church remind us that allegiance is not just what we say—it is what we do, what we tolerate, and what we refuse.

“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

For What Did Charlie Kirk Die?

Was Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr?

kevingdrendelLeave a comment
Savannah, GA, USA — 2025: The US flag was at half-mast at the Savannah City Hall dome on September 13, 2025, to honor the memory of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed on September 10. (iStock Photos)

I hope you will stick with me on this one and give me some grace. I have let my thoughts on the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk sit on the shelf these last three months to let the dust settle and the emotions wane.

I began writing on the topic when the awful news of his murder was still echoing loudly like shock waves in the air. I began writing the next day, after waking in the middle of the night with a question floating in my mind: Why did Charlie Kirk die?

Different people have different answers to that question, no doubt, but it seemed to be a question prompted by God to me. It challenged me to take that question back to God in prayer.

As I engaged God, the question changed slightly to this: For what did Charlie Kirk die? That question has hung in the air for me the last three months now, though the shock waves have settled into a kind of numbness. Many people have “moved on”, others are entrenched in the narratives they formed long ago, but I think the question still yearns for an answer that months of quiet contemplation might provide.

Continue reading “For What Did Charlie Kirk Die?” →