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.

The Exclusivity of Truth

We cannot take the position that all religions are getting at the same truth unless we claim the kind of superior knowledge that we say no one has a right to claim.

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On the Right Road - Ellen Posledni
On the Right Road – Ellen Posledni

Most people are not comfortable with atheism. They believe (know?) there is something greater than us, a cosmic Being or some Divine Truth. They intuitively know that the universe did not form itself out of nothing. But many people are also not comfortable with the exclusivity of religious propositions, especially in this post modern, pluralistic world.

In my opinion, the statement that all religions are equally true just doesn’t hold up. I say this having studied world religions in college and being a religious nerd for the last 40 years.

There are some similarities among religions at the surface, and there are some shared principles, but the ultimate, fundamental propositions of the various religions cannot be aligned with each other. Each of them has principals that are exclusive of other principals of other religions.

Most people who are realistic and honest (in my opinion) don’t attempt to say that all religions are true, in this ultimate sense, because it simply isn’t a tenable position, but that thought creates a dilemma. It makes us uncomfortable in the increasingly pluralistic world in which we live.

Continue reading “The Exclusivity of Truth” →

6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College

College, for me, was a time of great spiritual growth. Even in that secular academic environment, I thrived both in faith and in academics. You can too. You can grow in your walk with Christ – not in spite of the challenges of an unbelieving, or even hostile, secular environment, but because of it!

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I have been reading for some time about how this generation of youth coming out of “the Church” are not as biblically literate as past generations. I do not know, myself, whether that is true or not, but I do know that many people of faith struggle in college.

Outside of Christian colleges, the academic world is, generally, is not very friendly toward faith. Those academics who are not actually hostile to the kind of faith that the Bible teaches simply put up with it as if it were some sort of oddity that people with lesser intelligence and more naivete get caught up in, but which has little relevance to anything intellectual.

That is far from the truth, of course. The intellectual underpinnings of faith are deep and wide. For the Bible believer, however, faith leads and the intellect follows. That is not the case for most of academia. Even for those who give some intellectual assent to faith in the academic world, intellect is the leader, and faith (if we can call it that) is the follower. That is not the faith of Abraham that God counted as righteousness. Our Christian colleges and universities include many of these people in their ranks. Continue reading “6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College” →

The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe)

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The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe) is a redemption story. Jane Roe, of course, is the name of the plaintiff used in the case that challenged the Texas abortion law. It went all the way up to the US Supreme Court, and, in 1973, Roe v. Wade overturned all the state laws that made abortion illegal.  Continue reading “The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe)” →

Conversion

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Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon by Chris Fraley

Salvation is the free gift of God, but we are so reluctant to turn to Him and accept it. We are separated from God by a yawning chasm when we remain in sin, refusing to turn to Him, refusing to yield. But when we turn, ever so slightly, when we yield, ever so slightly, He is right there in an instant, spanning the gap, ready to accept us as we accept Him. what a great and wonderful God we have!

I urge you to read the conversion story of Eliza below. God stands at the door. When we knock, He opens its. We just have to knock.

Catholics, Pentecostals and the Body of Christ

God’s sheep hear His voice. God knows His own. They sit in the whole spectrum of churches on any given Sunday morning or Saturday night, and some of them do not visit churches very often at all.

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A Sheperd by Lauri Heikkinen
A Sheperd by Lauri Heikkinen

The article, A Classic Pentecostal Encounters Charismatic Catholics, takes me back to the early days of my Christian walk. I was raised Catholic, but I found little attraction to church as a child. We went to church religiously, a practice I later came to appreciate about my parents, but there seemed to be nothing in it for me. I even felt uncomfortable in church.

I went through some very rebellious teen years, wandering lost through the haze and fog induced by alcohol and drugs, drifting to the edge of the precipice, before I woke to the emptiness that I had inexplicably been embracing. That was not my conversion, but just the beginning of walking in a new direction.

Fast forward just a short while to college where I entered like a kid in a candy store with a new found passion for knowledge and truth. I thought I had left religion behind. Actually I did (and have never returned). What I did not realize is that I would discover the life that religion seemed to enshroud like an empty tomb. Continue reading “Catholics, Pentecostals and the Body of Christ” →