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.

Finding Quiet in the Holiday Noise

kevingdrendel1 Comment
Print

The Christian world rushes head long into another holiday season. The horses were straining at the gate weeks ago. Christmas sales were advertised before we threw out the pumpkins. The turkey population has experienced a significant decline. The holiday season has been in full-on assault. It will climax at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

How many holiday seasons have I experienced that came at me like a garish parade and left me with nothing but the sound of ringing in my ears? Too many!

My sincere hope is not to miss the deep meaning of our celebration this time around as the clamor fades into the cold, quiet night of winter. The trite but true “meaning of Christmas” is not found in the holiday rush, but in warm quiet reflection on what hope arose with the birth of the baby Jesus.

The Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords and King of Kings!

Jesus did not come with fanfare. Wise men had to seek him out, and they found him in a humble, quiet manager. They found him away from the bustle of the world.

He might be easily missed under the glare of neon lights in streets filled with frantic shoppers. He is easily forgotten in crowded shopping malls where rudeness often trumps good will. He is often ignored in the festivities of loud holiday parties.

Those things come at us like an assault on our senses. If we are not prepared for the onslaught, we will be swept up in the raucous current and deposited in the backwater at the end of another holiday season. Wishing we had done things differently languishes in the regret of the good intentions that haunt us when the lights and noise dim, leaving us emptier for the unrequited desire of wishing we had done better.

Continue reading “Finding Quiet in the Holiday Noise” →

If God Created the World…

For people who grew up in the Christian tradition, and who consider themselves Christians, the proposition that one God created the world is elemental. If you believe that God created the world, certain consequences flow from that fact.

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

Denali by Tellgren

For people who grew up in the Christian tradition, and who consider themselves Christians, the proposition that one God created the world is elemental. If you believe that God created the world, certain consequences flow from that fact. Continue reading “If God Created the World…” →

The Bad and the Good News

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

All people have a sense of ethics, a sense of right and fairness, regardless of the place a person was born on earth, regardless of access to books.

The Stoics valued virtue, virtue hammered out with self-control and achieved through self-will. The Epicureans valued happiness, and they determined that happiness was found in virtue. Others have championed virtue couched in different terms. Aboriginal people also have codes of conduct. By their philosophies and their conduct, people demonstrated knowledge of the nature of God, which is knowable and, indeed, known by people everywhere. God’s invisible attributes are known and understood. Jews or Christians do not have a corner on the trusth. When people do what is right, they demonstrate that the law is known to them; it is in their conscience. (Rom. 2:14-15)

Do we not clamor for justice when a wrong is committed? We are even  more concerned about justice when a wrong is committed against us! The fact that we have such a sense of justice is a testament to God’s justice that is evident to each one of us, whether we believe or not. That sense of right and wrong is written on our hearts; it is in our consciences.  (Rom. 2:14) God is just.

At the same time, we tend to excuse our shortcomings, usually by comparing themselves to others. Who has not thought, “At least I am not like s/he is!” No doubt, some people are more virtuous than others. God, however, can not be anything other than what He is: just and right. Justice and righteousness (rightness) is the nature of God. While we seek to justify ourselves in comparison to other people, God’s nature is utterly just and virtuous. He can not and will not be anything other than what He is.

All people, on the other hand, are imperfect. Who has not lied, been selfish, been lazy, etc? Every single person on the face of this earth has fallen short of the standard of virtue, regardless how it is measured. After all, “to err is human”. (Alexander Pope)

If God is utterly virtuous, His nature is nothing but virtuous, how can a person remain in His presence? Like one pole of a magnet repels the other pole, how can we stand in God’s presence with our sinful selves?

It is written that all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) All people are sinful; not one person is righteous as God is righteous. (Rom. 3:8-9)

If heaven were the distance of Japan from California, and we had to swim the ocean to reach it, the distance would not be greater than the distance between a righteous and holy God and ourselves. Thinking that any one of us could swim the ocean is foolishness. Some people are better swimmers than others, to be sure; but none of us, not the very best of us, could make the swim to the other shore. So it is with God and ourselves. We would be repelled like the wrong end of a magnet in the presence of an utterly virtuous, righteous, holy God.

We who have sinned, and sinned against God, are deserving of that justice. That means all of us. Who among us in perfect? We are, therefore, alienated from God, repelled from Him.

The Good News, the Gospel, is that God made a way for us! He provided a remedy for the problem of our sin. Through Jesus, and his sacrificial death on the cross, we are reconciled to God. (Col. 1:20)

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21) Jesus paid the price that justice demands! We are utterly unable to stand before God in our own flesh because of sin; but God the Son, who became man, and who was blameless, stood in our place to fulfill the requirement of justice.

We accept that sacrifice and the mercy of God shown to us in that act by simple faith. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation [atoning sacrifice] by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rom. 3:23-25 ) “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

Now is the time for repentance. There is no excuse. Right and wrong is known to all of us. (Rom. 1:20). If we confess our sinfulness, he is faithful to forgive us! (John 1:9) He forgives us not because we deserve it, but because He desires it. God became man, fulfilling the prophesies given to the Jews; He proclaimed the message, performed miracles, healed the sick; and commanded the attention of the World. Then He died for our sins; and He was raised from the dead to reconcile us to Himself.

Jesus is/was the “image of the invisible God….” (Col. 1:15) He is the “firstborn from among the dead.” (Col. 1:18) As sin came into the world through the first man, Adam, and along with it, death, so that all became sinners; so righteousness has been introduced through Christ, and along with it life, so that all who believe shall be deemed righteous and shall have eternal life. (Rom. 5:12-19) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself.” (2 Cor. 5:17-18)

The bad news is that we are imperfect beings separated from a perfect God by the very fact of our imperfection, like the opposite poles of a magnet. The good news is that God has provided a way for us to be reconciled, to flip our magnetic pole. And once we have been reconciled, nothing can separate us from God! (Rom. 8:38-39)

Post script

(John 5:24-29):

’Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.’

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:7-9) The time has come, and the time is now for us to turn from sin and turn to God. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short. His mercy is great towards us nevertheless! Even while we are sinners, and dead in our sin, Jesus died for us. We certainly did not and do not deserve such mercy, but He is faithful to forgive our sins. Indeed, that is God’s intention. He created us in His image and desires for us to have fellowship with and partake in God. In order to accomplish that, we had to have a choice, a real choice, to choose harmony with God or to choose our own selfish way. Sin, death, all of it is a necessary consequence of God creating us in His image. If we could not choose to sin, we could not really choose to love Him. We could not choose God and his righteous without knowing unrighteousness. In the end, we cannot accomplish any of God’s plan without God giving us what we need, accept for the faith and heart to accept it. We can not make ourselves right; we can only receive the salvation that God freely provides to us to bring us in right relationship with God; but we must choose to receive it. To receive it we must come to the end of ourselves, and there, utterly helpless, reach out to God like a child reaching out to its parent. In that moment, God’s perfect plan is accomplished. We are welcomed into His kingdom as sons of God, having freely chosen God, and we become partakers of His nature! We are born again, not of this world, which is sinful and dead, but of the spirit. We become partakers of His eternal life with the assurance that, just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so shall we be raised to eternal life with Christ who was the firstborn from among the dead.

Leaps of Faith

We are like children groping in a vast, dark room discovering and piecing things together the best that we can.

kevingdrendel1 Comment

Certain “aha moments” stick with me and are a continual point of reference in my life. Many of them happened, not unsurprisingly, when I was in college – a time when I was searching and open to learning.

For some background, I went to a small liberal arts college where a premium was attached to reading and writing. Philosophical discussions were not uncommon over food and drink. Professors would commonly gather in spirited debate in the one (and only) fast food joint on the campus as the students. I loved the academic atmosphere.

One ongoing debate among students was who was the smartest professor on campus. The debate came to an end one day when one of the favorites (a professor who taught Latin, Greek and Logic) took his own life one night. The scuttlebutt was that he came to the dire conclusion that God does not exist, and he ended his life.

The other professor who was most often championed as “smartest” when was one of the two religion professors on campus. He was enamored with Liberation Theology (the thought that God was maturing and changing with His creation, among other things) and otherwise had an “all roads lead to the top of the same mountain” view on religion.

His counterpart was Jewish. At the same time, one of the more popular professors (among the intelligentsia on campus) was an undeniable guru of Western Civilization. His Western Civilization classes were staples of the curriculum. Though there was plenty of partying and “normal” college life, my college was a cloistered incubator of discovery for anyone eager to learn.

The Western Civ prof (harkening back to college speak) gave a popular series of lectures in the evening (popular, at least, for the people more interested in political parties than dorm parties). These lectures were voluntary, but well attended. His lectures featured the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and the connection between science and faith.

His lectures were popular, I believe, because they propped up faith for the “smart” college student who grew up believing in God who was suddenly facing the disdain of the academic community. The overwhelmingly predominant worldview on college campuses in those days, and more so now, is anything but a worldview with God as the central figure.

This professor reasoned in these lectures that empirical, scientific evidence, reason and logic leads a person inevitably up to the steps of heaven to the door of faith. (The metaphor is mine.) He was arguing against the notion that faith requires a “leap” – a disconnect from the more “objective” grounding of science, reason, and logic.

I wondered, then, whether he was right. My intuition suggested otherwise, but I didn’t know quite why. I have been thinking about his premise ever since, and I have a better grasp on the reasons why I believe his premise isn’t true than I did in college.

Continue reading “Leaps of Faith” →

Spirit and Truth – A Matter of the Heart

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

It seems axiomatic that God’s focus is the heart of people. People focus on external things. The encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well is a good example. Jesus introduced her to “living waters.” Her  responses focused on cultural and religious differences between Jews and Samaritans. She was a product of that confusion over the proper place to worship (which mountain) and had, seemingly, given up on trying to figure it out. She had five husbands and was living with a man not her husband. The living waters to which Jesus referred was Jesus, himself, and he directed her focus to worshipping “in spirit and truth”. (John 4:4-28) It is fair to say that the particular mountain on which to worship was of no importance, though it had divided the Jews and Samaritans for many years.

Not only was the place of worship of no consequence in God’s scheme of things, but which mountain was the proper place to worship was not really the issue between the Jews and Samaritans at all. The real issue is the heart of people. An overarching message throughout the writings of the Bible is that people tend in their hearts to focus on the wrong things. God is continually testing the heart: “The crucible [is] for silver and the furnace [is] for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.” (Prov. 17:3)

Everywhere Jesus went in the Gospel accounts, peoples’ hearts were tested. If nothing else is clear in those accounts, one thing is apparent: an encounter with Jesus, the “exact representation” of God’s being (Heb. 1:3), exposed the hearts of those people in the way they reacted to Him. The Psalmist said that God knows the secrets of the heart. (Ps. 44:21) What impressed the Samaritan woman at the well is that “he told me everything I ever did.” ((John 4:44). Her reaction was to believe that he was the Christ, the Messiah of the Scriptures to which both the Samaritans and the Jews adhered.

It is not insignificant that Jesus exposed the Samaritan woman’s sinfulness. He baited her by asking her to get her husband, knowing that she had been married to five men and was living with a man at that same time who was not her husband. (John 4:16-18) Just as significantly, there was no pretense in her; she replied honestly, “I have no husband.” She did not try to keep up appearances. Her heart was exposed. Jesus knew her sin, and he knew her heart; but he offered living water to her. She did not attempt to make excuses or defend herself. She accepted it. The Samaritan woman believed.

Soon after the encounter at the well, Jesus was approached by a “royal official” in Cana whose son lay sick and close to death in Capernaum. (John 4:46-47) The term “royal official” suggests someone of position and power. In that moment, however, he was vulnerable. He had no power over the health of his son. His reaction to that predicament was to seek out Jesus, who was known in Galilee for having turned water to wine. The official’s heart was exposed in the act of asking Jesus to heal his son. He believed. His act of faith was rewarded when his son’s fever broke the very hour Jesus told him, “Your son will live.”(John 4:53)

After traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus healed a 38 year invalid at a pool. Jesus told him to “pick up your mat and walk”, and he did. (John 5:8) The man did not even know who it was who had spoken to him (John 5:13); he simply responded to the command. When Jesus found the man later at the temple, Jesus commanded him to stop sinning. (John 5:14) Significantly, the man’s reaction was to head to the temple after being healed, though he did not know who it was who had healed him. There Jesus found him, and the instruction was aimed at the heart – stop sinning.

The people who responded to Jesus in these three encounters were not the religious devout. They were a Samaritan woman, shunned by the Jews who believed in worship on a different mountain, living a life of sin; a royal official, a politician of sorts; and a sinful invalid. When some of the Jews, the religious devout, heard about the healing that took place on the Sabbath, their reaction was to persecute Jesus (John 5:16) and to seek to kill him because Jesus was “calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18) The Jewish law at the time forbade people to work on the Sabbath, even to carry a mat. (John 5:9-10) The irony, of course, is that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Scriptures and law that the Jews revered, but they did not recognize Him for who he was. (John 5:39-40)

In spite of their adherence to Scripture (and external rules and observances), these people did not recognize the very likeness of God the Father in the form of a man in front of them – the “exact representation of his being”. Their hearts were exposed. Jesus performed a miracle in healing an invalid of 38 years! Yet, they wanted to kill Jesus because he performed the miracle on the Sabbath.

We spend our lives keeping up appearances. God wants to break through the appearances and focus on the heart. In response to the Jews who wanted to kill Jesus, Jesus proclaimed, “[W]hoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life….” (John 5:24) How a person reacts to an encounter with God is a measure of the status of the heart.

Jeremiah proclaimed: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” (Jer. 17:9) The human heart is prone to wander from God; it is deceitful. We tend to compare ourselves to others, like the Jews and Samaritans. We tend to focus on our situations, our relative power and influence or lack of it. We even seek to justify ourselves in our religious observances. “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.'” (Matt. 15:8-9, quoting Isaiah).

God knows the heart. His aim is the heart. God is also the answer for heart problems. Our prayer should be, “Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind….” (Ps. 26:2) Lest we fail the test, however, we need to seek God sometimes to change our hearts: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Ps. 51:10) The good news is that God is up to the task: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ez. 36:26) Jesus changed the life of the sinful Samaritan woman trapped in a cultural heritage excluded from those considered the people of God (the Jews). Jesus changed the life of a royal official whose power and influence were unable to change the change the plight of his son. Jesus changed the life of the invalid, not just in healing his physical infirmity, but by setting him on a course to change his heart. Jesus directs us to change our focus from pretenses and preconceptions and to open our hearts to His word that brings eternal life when we embrace it. It is not about religious observance, but spirit and truth.