Author: kevingdrendel

I am sixtiesh, an English Literature major in college and an attorney by profession. Faith informs my life, and this blog is about my faith journey.

God’s Purpose for Good

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Jacob with his sons before the Pharaoh, ceiling fresco by Johann Adam Remele in Joseph Hall, Cistercian Abbey of Bronbach in Reicholzheim near Wertheim, Germany

“But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.'” Genesis 50:19-20 ESV

I have written recently about the verse, Genesis 50:20 (things men might mean for evil God is able to use for good). (See God in the Dark) The message that God can turn the evil that impacts our lives for good is  powerful one. Though we might despair in our circumstances, especially when the evil we experience is caused by people, maybe even people we love, God is ever at work. God is able to redeem our circumstances, and, more importantly, redeem us.

As with any verse in the Bible, though we need to read it in context to understand the fullest, and most complete meaning. Genesis 50:20 was spoken by Joseph in a very specific context, so let’s take a look at that context and mine this well-known verse for some deeper meaning.

Continue reading “God’s Purpose for Good” →

The Observation of an Atheist Historian: What Makes Christianity Stand Out Among World Religions

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The radical quality of the love of Jesus stands out over and above all other examples. I have written on this before (the Christian expression of the Golden Rule compared to other religions). Most other world religions express some concept of the Golden Rule, but not in the way that Jesus did.

Other world religions state the Golden Rule in a limited way, such as not doing things to others that you would not want them to do to you. It’s the idea of refraining from doing evil. Under that concept of the Golden Rule, we simply need to avoid doing evil to our neighbors. There is no compulsion to do good to them. Ignoring your neighbor would be perfectly acceptable on this less golden iteration of the principal.

Most major world religions do not express the Golden Rule positively, as Jesus did: do unto others what you would have them do unto you. In this statement of the principal, doing unto others is an affirmative duty. Simply refraining from doing them evil is not the concept of the Golden Rule expressed by Jesus.

Jesus made this clear in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable begins with a man who was robbed and left injured on the road. A priest and Levite (the priestly cast of Judaism) walked by the man on the other side of the road, ignoring him, while a Samaritan (an outcast to Jews) crossed the road to tend to the injured man. The good Samaritan was the example of the person who demonstrated love for a “neighbor” because he didn’t just ignore the injured man lying in the road.  The idea of the Golden Rule that Jesus expressed includes an affirmative duty to do good.

To be fair, some religions come close to an affirmative expression of the Golden Rule, which I affirm in the previous blog piece, but there is one additional expression of the Golden Rule that stands alone: that is the concept of loving even our enemies and doing good to those who intend evil toward us.

I think of these things as I pause from listening to Douglas Murray in a discussion with Esther Riley on the Unbelievable? podcast with Justin Brierley, the host. (See Douglas Murray and Esther O’Reilly – Christian Atheism and the search for identity. The video is embedded below.)

Douglas Murray, an atheist and openly gay man, makes the observation that most Christian tenets can be found in other cultures, save one: that is the principal that of loving and forgiving even our enemies. Loving and forgiving our enemies is the ultimate statement of the Golden Rule.

Even when we have enemies who intend to do us harm, and even when they actually do us harm, Jesus says, “Forgive them.” The conversation got into some recent examples of that expression of love and forgiveness that I will explore.

Continue reading “The Observation of an Atheist Historian: What Makes Christianity Stand Out Among World Religions” →

Of Miracles & Snake Oil

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As I was listening to an interview of panelists and presenters from the last Unbelievable conference in the United States[1], I was struck by something AJ Roberts[2] said in a discussion about miracles. She opined that people do not believe in miracles in the West because of the western emphasis on rationality over experience.

When she said that, I questioned in my mind whether she was right. Not that I haven’t heard that before. I have even thought that before myself. But a thought occurred to me this time as she made this assertion in the context of a broader discussion about miracles by the thoughtful panelists.

We do live in a society in which education is valued and science and rationality is emphasized at the academic level. The United States of America was built on a foundation of free public education. This is why schoolhouses were built all across the frontier, and colleges followed as the frontier expanded.

As an aside, I note that most of colleges in the US that were established before the 20th century were religiously inspired and motivated. From the Ivy League schools and across the country, most colleges and universities in the US have religious roots, but that is a subject for another day.

As I think about that fact, I am reminded of another strain to the legacy of this country, a more popular influence. That is the strain of Americanism that gave rise to the snake oil salesman[3], the huckster, people searching for the legendary fountain of youth, circus sideshows and the market for elixirs that promise happiness, long life and improvement to the digestive system.

Interestingly, our American proclivity toward quackery may have grown out of a combination of pluralism and capitalism. Pluralism brought people from all parts of the world to the shores of the New World with Old World remedies that cowboy capitalist exploited with claims of false cures. Americans have been so taken by such false claims that regulatory industries have been spawned by our gullibility, yet the “snake oil claims” live on.

I think about all the people I have known and the silly, hairbrained things they have put their faith in. There is no end to the pyramid schemes that promise health and riches. We, in the west, have even developed variations of New Age, religious elixirs that promise to deliver all of the benefits of the old snake oils in shiny, metaphysical packages that boasts none of the sticky side effects of traditional Christianity, like the need to deal with personal sin and accountability to a creator God.

It occurs to me that, maybe, the apparent dearth of miracles in the US isn’t that we have an exalted idea of rationality. Maybe God doesn’t grant us many miracles as we will believe almost anything. What’s another miracle claim among many? We might be just a little bit too inclined to believe them and to focus too much on them.

When Jesus sent out 72 of his followers ahead of him to go town to town proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God and healing the sick, they came back excited that “even the demons are subject to us in your name!” But Jesus admonished them: “[D]o not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”[4] Jesus also warned that many people would do miracles in His name that are not His people.[5]

I have often wondered why missionaries report so many miracles that God does in other countries, why the average American seems to have never experienced or seen a miracle. Perhaps, it’s because we are too predisposed to believe anything, not that we are disposed not to believe. We have learned well the willing suspension of disbelief that we employ in our favorite forms of entertainment, and we have turned that practice into driving desire for our lives. (Thank about the Disney themes of love at first sight and living happily ever after.)

At the pedestrian level, outside the halls of academia, we have a history of being taken by extraordinary claims as long as they are smartly and provocatively packaged. Perhaps it isn’t that we are so grounded by rationality, but that we are willing to believe almost anything that comes down the road, as long as it promises something that we want and can access on our own without the bother of accountability to a God who can’t be manipulated.

We even have our own brand of Christianity in the US that caters to our preferences – the word of faith movement. Name it and claim it! Believe it and seize it! Deposit your prayers with holy confidence into the divine slot machine and out will come your healing, cash, whatever you want. All you have to do is believe.

I used to think often that Christians in the west don’t observe or experience miracles because we are more rationally minded, but I am not so sure of that as I write this. Maybe we are too easily fooled.

Continue reading “Of Miracles & Snake Oil” →

God In the Dark

We don’t expect to find God in our darkest places, and yet He is there.

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Jess Lester, journalist writing for Christian Premiere Magazine out of the UK, told her story recently on the Unbelievable podcast in an interview with Justin Brierley. She is Jewish by descent and culture, but she attended a Christian school in her youth. Her parents are no-practicing Jews, but her grandparents were observant.

She grew up with exposure to the Judeo-Christian world, but God was more of an intellectual idea to her than a personal reality. As a teenager, however, she consciously turned her back on God when her very good friend suffered a brain hemorrhage that left her unable to speak. Jess spent several days a week in the hospital with her friend trying to help her speak again, only to experience her friend suffer another brain hemorrhage that left her brain dead.

After her friend’s parents took her off life support, Jess was devastated. She poured herself into her friend’s recovery and prayed along with the family for healing, and God didn’t deliver. God took her friend, she thought, and it angered her. Why would He do that to such a good person?! This experience led Jess to reject God openly and consciously. Following her friend’s death, Jess lived in open rebellion and defiance toward God.

Over the next few years, things went from bad to worse for Jess. She drank, did drugs and slept around in open hostility to the God she thought took her friend from her. She also fell into depression to the point where she had suicidal thoughts and even planned her own demise.  She got desperate, admitting to her mother that she needed help, but the turning point came in a very unlikely place.

Jess attended a concert where a favorite band of hers, the 1975s, were performing. They sang a song that that was defiant toward God. She had played it a dozen times a day and knew the lyrics well. It wasn’t a Christian song in any sense of the term, but she found herself crying out in the middle of the concert these lyrics: “Jesus, Jesus show yourself to me!”

While the lyrics are meant more as a taunt than a plea, she made it her plea from her heart. Looking back now, she says this is when God responded. Subtly at first, it became more apparent to her as time went on that God was with her in her dark times, and He was reaching out to her. I won’t recount the details, here, but they are well worth listening to, along with the other guests that were interviewed for the Christmas Special – Dean Mayes, Jess Lester and Rupert Shortt Share Their Stories.

This story reminds me that we do not always find God in the pious, religious places where we might expect Him. God is everywhere, and that means He is with us in our darkest times and in the darkest of places. While the song that prompted Jess Lester to cry out was actually anti-Christian in its intended meaning, God used that song that Jess knew well as the vehicle by which she connected with Him.

Jess makes the point in telling her story that things men might mean for evil God is able to use for good. That idea of God using bad things for good purposes comes from the Old Testament story of Joseph, who was left for dead in the bottom of a well by his own brothers and taken off into slavery.

Continue reading “God In the Dark” →

The Top 10 Blog Posts on Navigating By Faith in 2019

Thank you, everyone who visited in 2019, and I hope you have a wonderful, faith-filled 2020.

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I started writing Navigating by Faith at the end of 2012 after a stretch of some gentle nagging in my heart and mind. I believed then that writing is what God wanted me to do, so I set out to write.

By the statistics, I haven’t taken the Internet by storm. At just over 10,000 views the last two years, I haven’t gotten close to the views some people get on a single post or video, and this year is the first in which I had fewer views than the year before. Pretty humble numbers.

While I look at the numbers (who doesn’t), I don’t write for the numbers. It wasn’t my motivation in the beginning, and I am reminded often that I write simply because I feel God has prompted me to write. I don’t really know the reason. I trust God will do what He will with it. I’m not sure it is for me to know.

I struggle at times to write. I don’t feel particularly insightful much of the time. When I do have some nuanced ideas coursing through my mind, the act of getting those ideas through a keyboard out onto a screen often seems to result in the dissipation of them. I find the subtlest and most poignant ideas sometimes elude me as I try to capture them in print. Almost inevitably, the ideas I begin with morph as I try to get them out.

I try to listen to the Holy Spirit and be inspired and guided by Him. For this reason, I don’t often plan what I write. Almost never. My writing is an extension of the things I am reading, thinking about and very often praying about as I meditate on God and what He seems to be saying in my inner being.

As I look back at my first blog post (In the Beginning Was the Word), I am reminded the guiding principal that has been with me since the beginning is the idea that God’s word does not return to Him empty; it will accomplish that which He purposes, and it will succeed in the thing for which He sent it (from Isaiah 55:10-11).  I am not sure how often I am able to channel the Holy Spirit when I write, but my hope is that I sometimes do.

To the extent that I have been able to speak God’s word (not scripture, but prophetic utterance), I have done what I believe God has given for me to do. The rest is up to Him.

I find it easier to write “intellectual” pieces (rather than inspirational or creative pieces). I find it much more difficult to be creative. In fact, it’s downright work. Trying to string together a series of blog posts on one difficult subject is also work.

If anyone has read my blog over time and has any insight into which types of writings seem to be most effective for me, or resonate most with you as a reader, I would appreciate the insight. Constructive criticism is welcome.

With that said, here are the ten most viewed blog posts for 2019 at Navigating by Faith in descending order:

It’s interesting to me that the oldest blog article on the top ten list for 2019 was also the most viewed in 2019. The writing of the old hymn, It is well with My Soul, is a true story that obviously resonates. In a chaotic and troubled world, I guess we need to know that God can be our rock that protects us from the wind and waves.

I am not surprised that an article on Donald Trump is in the top ten (second in fact). I don’t relish writing about him (or about politics for that matter). As Christians, I believe we are to respect the authorities in place, but we shouldn’t idolize them. No one has divided the world, the United States and the Church like Donald Trump.

I spend a lot of my time on the intellectual bases of faith. At least four top ten articles fall in this category. At number 3, an article on the earliest creeds tracks the great work of Gary Habermas that shows how the first followers of Jesus began to spread the word that Jesus rose from the dead right from the beginning. Habermas shows in this way that the resurrection isn’t a legendary development that arose generations after Jesus died. The resurrection was communicated as if it were a fact from the beginning.

Two of the apologetic articles are on the same subject: the Ebla Tablets. These tablets are Sumerian writings that date to the 3rd Century BCE and confirm many people, places and things found in the biblical writings. The contribution of archaeology in proving the reliability of Scripture as historical writings can’t be overstated.

Meanwhile, reflections on the death of Stephen Hawking, inspired by the words of John Lennox, who knew him, also has an apologetic bent to it. I continue to find it intriguing that nonbelievers and believers are counted among the smartest people in the world. It tells us that faith makes sense even to some of the smartest people, but faith is accessible to anyone.

Three of the top ten blog posts in 2019 were also in the top five blog posts for each of the last four years: It Is Well with My Soul: The Story; the Ebla Tablets Confirm Biblical Accounts; and C.S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church. They also stand as the top three blog posts of the blog going back to the beginning.

In fact, all of the top ten but two from the beginning are in the top ten for 2019. The exceptions are The Hobby Case Summarized (most views of which remain from the year it was published) and A Message in a Manger (maybe because I didn’t repost it in 2019 as I have in most years). They were ousted by Reflections on the Influence if Stephen Hawking and The Ebla Tablets Revisited in the 2019 top ten.

The top ten blog posts over the life of Navigating by Faith are as follows:

Thank you, everyone who has read this post looking back at 2019 and over the life of Navigating By Faith, and thank you everyone who has visited the blog, read the articles and posted comments. I appreciate the feedback. I hope you got something out of what I have done. Have a wonderful, faith-filled 2020.