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 Understands Us

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“My God, my God, why have You forsaken[i] [ii]me?” (Psalm 22:1)

These are David’s words, and they are words Jesus spoke when he hung on the cross. Many statements in the Old Testament are predictive and point to Christ, including this verse, which anticipates Christ hanging on the cross taking on Himself the sins of the world and being abandoned by the Father in that moment as a result.

While there is a predictive element, clearly, to this statement, I think there is something else going on. Jesus was undoubtedly harkening back to David’s words, but maybe He had another purpose in doing so. We see many times in the Bible that a single phrase has multiple meanings, more than one application, and both or all of them are instructive. Continue reading “God Understands Us” →

Theology, Science, Dreaming and Waking

Pitting the scientific myth against the theological Christian myth

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I am a great fan of C.S. Lewis. Not that I agree with everything he has written, I love his genius and insight that is marked by a truly Renaissance journey through all of the great classical literature, philosophy and rational, scientific discourse. He approaches Christianity from the opposite shore and provides a view that most churchgoers would never otherwise get.

I recently read his short essay (Is Theology Poetry?) that is published with the Weight of Glory and other addresses by Harper One. In classic Lewis style, he starts off with a very obscure, nuanced question (that few, if anyone, would even think to explore) and, from the seeming pedantry and narrow beginning, he opens up the discourse about half way through into a sweeping view of an eternal truth that is absolutely breathtaking. Continue reading “Theology, Science, Dreaming and Waking” →

8 Important Points About Judging and Judgment

There is a great divide between the World and the Church, and it is getting bigger. The fracture is even dividing the Church. What Jesus said about judging and judgment is critical to understand in this time.

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Judge Listening to Attorney --- Image by © Tim Pannell/Corbis

In a world that rejects the idea of sin, embraces moral relativism and demands that Christians tolerate everything (other than what we believe to be true), we naturally feel like we are being besieged; we are on the defensive. We know that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s righteousness, but our culture doesn’t buy into that idea, let alone any biblical truth that suggests a person shouldn’t simply “do what feels good”.

We tend to go to two extremes. Some of us get on our soapboxes; we get in the world’s face about sin and judgment. Some of us bow in deference to the current cultural norms of acceptance and tolerance. Neither one is a biblical response to sin in the world.  Continue reading “8 Important Points About Judging and Judgment” →

Revisiting Life and Death: The Gospel from Beginning to End

We can have every choice (but eternal life) without God, or we can let go of every other choice to choose God (and gain eternal life).

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Chris Frayley On Rock at River Bend

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

These familiar phrases from 1 Corinthians. 15:55 (quoting Hosea 13:14) jumped out at me as I read them again. Of course, I know that God has swallowed up death in victory through the resurrection of Jesus Christ! But, what does that really mean for us?

This statement is the tip of the iceberg, and it occurs to me that we cannot understand without remembering and contemplating “how we got here”. Therefore, we must go back to the beginning. Continue reading “Revisiting Life and Death: The Gospel from Beginning to End” →

C. S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church

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Thoughts and excerpts from Membership, published in the Weight of Glory and other addresses (by Harper One) by CS Lewis.

C. S. Lewis, the 20th Century English Literature professor, author and thinker, wrote Membership as a speech given at Oxford during World War II. In this speech, Lewis addressed the popular societal trend toward collectivism and the concomitant effort to relegate religion to private, individual belief.

His address was meant to be an encouraging call to Christian hope in a world threatened to be torn apart by war. We find ourselves in different circumstances, and the world as changed in many ways. We can no longer assume a Christian ideal as a collective rallying point, but is address remains stubbornly relevant in our modern world.

Lewis found irony in the dichotomy of exalted individualism in Western society that was, at the same time, becoming more collective in its political direction – individual rights and equality for all. In his typical style, he unravels the uneasy tension of this secular dualism at the seams, exposing the inherent incongruities and turning them on their heads, as he contrasts them to Christian paradoxes that, while seemingly inapposite, hold together in a more harmonious tension. Continue reading “C. S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church” →