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.

A Preface to the Problem of the Origin of Life

The problem of the origin of life is an Achilles heel, not for science, but for the materialist

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Particles of DNA strands flying through space to Earth.
Concept of the origin of life. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

Michael Guillen, who obtained degrees in physics and mathematics from Cornell University, where he studied under Carl Sagan and Fred Hoyle, and who taught physics at Harvard University, has a podcast in which he addresses the problem of the origin of life (among many other things). (See Science + God with Dr. G. Episode #44)

Guillen was an atheist into his late 20’s or early 30’s. Then he became a theist, and then a Christian. He has always been a “science guy”, however.

You can find the explanation of how he gravitated from atheism to Christianity in earlier episodes of the podcast. I am not going to address it here. I want to address the origin of life problem using this particular episode as a backdrop because I think he explains the problem well.

Before I do that, I want to preface the origin of life problem and put it in some context. The unspoken and unexamined assumptions we make can cloud our understanding, so I want to seek a little clarity first.

Continue reading “A Preface to the Problem of the Origin of Life” →

What Are the Minimum Beliefs Necessary to Be Saved?

I think we may be edging dangerously in the wrong direction to think that we can quantify what is necessary for salvation, whether it is right conduct or even right beliefs. Salvation doesn’t depend on us; it depends wholly on God and His grace.

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The following question was posed in a group on Facebook recently:

I’ve been wandering what is the minimum requirement for salvation or for one to be called a Christian. Paul says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Jesus says not everyone who calls him Lord will be saved though. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems that some correct beliefs are necessary but which beliefs are necessary for salvation?

Facebook isn’t always the best place for real conversation or soul searching questions, but I often feel compelled to provide as genuine an answer as I can muster. Especially, if I feel that the question is posted with sincerity.

As I took a moment to consider this question and wrestled with an answer, it seemed to me that he was asking, “What is “mere Christianity”, as my favorite author might have phrased it. I was tempted to launch right into a summary of my version of the essentials of Christian belief.

I considered for a moment what the minimum might be, but another strain of thought seemed to beckon me. Perhaps, the Holy Spirit? I yielded to it.

I was reminded of the rich young ruler, who asked Jesus the question, “Good Teacher, what shall I do so that I may inherit eternal life?” (Mk. 10:17) Jesus began his response by observing that no one is good but God alone. Then Jesus began to reference the commandments. Jesus has not finished the thought when the young man cut in and said, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth.” (Mk. 10:20)

We are left with the impression that, perhaps, the young man was proud of his piety and was looking for affirmation of his self-image. Perhaps, the young man was just naively enthusiastic about being good and holy. Neither attitude is one that really resonates in our modern, American world.

One thing that does resonate now, and likely resonated then, is the desire to quantify and measure what we must do to achieve the ends that we desire. This is a logical approach to life. Know what you are aiming for and take steps to achieve your goals.

This is a good way to live. I am not suggesting we should not set goals and take measured steps to meet those goals, but this is not how our relationship with God works.

The rich young ruler seemed to think he had kept all the commandments since he was a child. Thus, we might assume that he was looking not for a real answer to the question, but for affirmation that he had done what was required to inherit eternal life.

Perhaps, though, he sensed it was wasn’t enough. Perhaps, the question was more genuine than we give him credit for.

Either way, Jesus dispelled any notion that a person can be good enough, when he pointed out, “No one is good except God alone.” (Mk. 10:18) Jesus is clear, and later Paul, that a person cannot earn his or her way to heaven. That’s not how it works.

“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.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

Interestingly, Jesus didn’t argue with the young ruler about whether he had actually kept all the commandments. He glossed over it to ask to get to a more poignant point: Jesus said, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” (Mk. 10:21)

This is so like Jesus! He could have flatly told the young man, “Your are lying, or fooling yourself, to say that you have kept all the commandments!” But, Jesus didn’t do that. Mark says that Jesus “showed love to him”. Jesus didn’t burst the bubble of the young’s man’s self image, but he still got the point across: you lack what you need.

Likewise, he didn’t preach in the Sermon on the Mount against committing adultery, murder, etc. Rather, he said, “You have heard it said, “Don’t murder… don’t commit adultery…, etc. I tell you that the man who is angry with his brother…, and the man who lusts in his heart…, etc. has already committed those sins in his heart.” (Math. 5:21-30)

The point isn’t how good (or bad) we are. We lack what we need to have eternal life regardless of our piety. It doesn’t matter how good we are. We still lack what we need to have eternal life without God giving us what we need.

The theme is that nothing we can do on our own is sufficient to earn salvation. It can’t be earned, and it isn’t quantifiable.

This makes sense in light of the statement Jesus made to Nicodemus: that a person must be born again. (John 3:1-3) We are not made of the right “stuff” in our natural selves to have eternal life. We need a dramatic change to occur – to be born again – to have the right “stuff”.

Thus, Paul says, “I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable….  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:50, 53)

This is something we cannot do on our own anymore than we can cause our own birth. We are flesh and blood. We do not possess the imperishable “stuff” that is necessary to have eternal life. Only God has the “stuff” we need for that.

Thus, John says, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:11-12)

We cannot earn it. We cannot inherit it physically through our parents. We cannot decide to have it or decide to award it to someone else. We can only receive it from God – being “born” as God’s children.

With all of that said, let’s go back to the question. The question invokes Paul’s statement that declaring that Jesus is Lord with our mouths and believing in our hearts that God raised from the dead is how we will be saved. (Romans 10:9-10)

The question juxtaposes Paul’s statement with the statement from Jesus, “Not everyone who keeps saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will get into the kingdom from heaven, but only the person who keeps doing the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21) The two statements seem to contradict one another.

Implicit in the question, “what are the minimum beliefs necessary to be saved”, is the notion that not just any belief is sufficient: the beliefs need to be the right beliefs. The question begs for a formula of belief that is necessary to gain salvation (eternal life).

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What It Means to Be Called According to God’s Purpose

Abraham understood that God’s purposes were much greater than Abraham and Sarah, much greater than the land promised to them, much greater even than all his descendants that would populate the earth like the stars in the sky and sand on the seashore.

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Photo by Peter Avildsen

God calls us according to his purpose. He calls us as beings He created in His own image. He calls us as His image bearers, and He gives us the responsibility for being fruitful and multiplying and tending to the creation that He made.

We messed up His creation. We got it all wrong. We went our own ways. We sought to make a name for ourselves. We pursued our own ends.

Then God became flesh. He became a man and lived among us. He subjected Himself to the worst of our messiness. Unbelievably, He gave Himself up to us – and for us – to redeem us from our own devices. AND to redeem us for His purposes.

God invites us to become His children by accepting this great sacrifice that He made for us. He now invites us to give ourselves up to Him and to let Him take His rightful place in our lives and hearts and to make His purposes our purposes.

Sometimes, I believe, we have too small a view of God and His purposes. We tend to be satisfied to think that God merely desires to save us from ourselves, and we do not have a robust view of God’s purposes.

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Thoughts on Perspective, Science and Faith

As finite beings, We have no choice put to adopt our fundamental principles on faith. We do not have the requisite perspective to have more certainty than that.

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I have two blogs I maintain currently: Perspective and Navigating by Faith. Perspective and faith loosely characterize my journey over many years: trying to find perspective and understanding the value, the necessity, and the integrity of a faith grounded in reality, both observable and unseen.

Many people believe that faith is the opposite of fact and at odds with science and reason. I strongly disagree. I have come to believe that faith is inescapable for finite beings – both religious ones and non-religious ones alike – and faith lies at the core of everything we believe to be true.

I was listening to a podcast discussion recently when one of the participants said something like this: When we approach any evidence, we approach it with a perspective. This is a non-pejorative way of saying that we are all “biased”.

As finite beings we are all necessarily “biased” by our own perspective, our own experiences, our own knowledge, understanding and ability to grasp, synthesize and categorize what we know and understand. Our perspective is influenced and filtered through our location in the world, our place in the culture and society in which we live, the history that we remember, and too many other things to summarize them adequately in a short blog article.

The discussion in the podcast that prompts this writing focused briefly on the fact that we all bring assumptions to the table when we consider anything. Those assumptions, however intentionally or surreptitiously developed, are the bedrock of each of our worldviews. They are the foundations on which we stand. They are the filters through which we see the world.

Those assumptions are developed, to a greater or lesser degree, by some combination of our external influences, our internal leanings and reactions to those external influences, and our consciously or unconsciously chosen compass points we use to guide ourselves in sorting out the information we encounter.

At the most basic level, those assumptions are axiomatic. They are truths we take for granted. We cannot prove them, and we rarely question them without crisis. We are fortunate if they hold us in good stead, if they are well-enough grounded in reality and fact to be of benefit to us in our dealings with the circumstances of our lives.

If those basic assumptions are not well considered and well-grounded, we can be blown about by every wind. If they are not based in fact and an accurate grasp of the nuance of reality, they can prove little consolation or comfort in times of crisis. If they are not well-anchored in timeless truth, they can leave us adrift when we need to count on them most.

The unique perspectives in light of which finite beings approach any evidence is necessarily limited and biased because we are limited and finite beings. At best, we can only hope to orientate ourselves in the direction of truth. We don’t define truth. We don’t establish truth. We don’t’ generate truth.

This is necessarily the case with finite beings who can only approach reality from a particular location at a particular time in the context of a particular cultural, historical, and philosophical point of view.

If I was omniscient and all seeing, I could have ultimate confidence in my perspective. My perspective would be objective and factual. My perspective would be the measure of all reality.

But no human being can validly make that claim (though we may and often do think and act like we can). In all honesty and humility, we must each admit that we come at evidence from a perspective with bias born out of our own experience, cultural context, limited knowledge and limited understanding.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

As a necessary corollary to these things, which I believe with all the certainty that I can possibly ascribe to these things, we are creatures of faith. All of us. We have no choice put to adopt our fundamental principles on faith. We do not have the requisite perspective to have more certainty than that.

My conclusion in this regard is based on fact (that humans are finite beings) and “logic” or philosophy, which reasons from the fact that we are finite to conclude that our perspective is limited thereby. Because our perspective is limited, we must rely on faith in making our conclusions which, themselves, derive from the fundamental assumptions we also take on faith. We can’t escape these limitations because they are inherent in finite creatures such as ourselves.

Some people even in this modern age, however, have boldly claimed that science is the study of all the reality that exists. Further, they say, therefore, we no longer need philosophy or theology. (I have heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say this very thing.) I am going to push back on that idea in this blog post.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Perspective, Science and Faith” →

People Are Enslaved to Whatever Defeats Them

God saves us to set us free from sin. We are meant for a freedom that empowers us to be good, knowledgeable, self-controlled, enduring, godly, filled with brotherly affection and with love.

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The words that have become the title of this blog piece struck me in my daily Bible reading this morning. They are pulled from 2 Peter 2:19. I highlighted them in my digital Bible app.

We may tend to focus on the more encouraging provisions of the Bible and gloss over provisions like the one I am quoting here, but the Bible is a double-edged sword. It sometimes cuts to the marrow. It discerns and reveals the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is living and active… if we let it in to our hearts to do its job.

I am convicted today, as I should be, and I am encouraged, because God, the Father, disciplines His children whom He loves. God watches out for the ones He loves. He warns us when we are straying into dangerous territory.

If we are paying attention and willing to respond, these warnings will protect us. If we rush headlong ahead, not heeding the warnings, as we are apt to do, we find ourselves entangled in difficulties that can threaten to undo us if we fail to repent and turn around.

Even then, the going can be difficult. Bad habits are easy to form and very difficult to break. If we go too far down the road with them, we find reversing course to be very difficult, indeed. Forming new, good habits is many times more difficult than the path we followed into those bad habits.

Bad habits are easy to form because they come from a place that is instinctual. They are outgrowths of natural tendencies of people who simply do “what feels good”.

Bad habits form from desires that are common to people – not necessarily bad desires. Evil isn’t a thing in itself. Evil is the corruption of good. Bad habits for when we seek to satisfy our desires in the easiest, most accessible, self-centered and least beneficial ways.

For instance, loving God and loving our neighbors – the two greatest commandments of God – are wrapped up in loving ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, we have a hard time loving others. If we love others, we usually have an easy time loving ourselves. Loving God and loving people are intimately related to loving ourselves.

The popular idea of “self love”, getting some “me time”, and “focusing on myself”, however, can be a corruption of what is basically good. We are naturally self-centered. We naturally love ourselves more than others. When Jesus told us that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, he was implicitly acknowledging the fact that we are naturally focused on ourselves and our needs.

We instinctually love ourselves and seek what is best for us. We have to be purposeful, intentional and self-sacrificing to consider others, and especially to consider others ahead of ourselves. It isn’t natural, and, therefore, it isn’t easy.

Loving others isn’t hating ourselves; it’s learning to love others on the same level as we love ourselves. It is thinking of others on the same level as we think of ourselves.

Many people today are self-loathing, which is also a corruption of what is good. People who loath themselves are equally as self-absorbed as people who are corrupted in self-love.

We are made in God’s image, so to loathe ourselves is to loathe the very image of God. We shouldn’t confuse loving our neighbors as ourselves with loathing ourselves.

Self-loathing is a kind of self-centeredness. People who are self-loathing are self-absorbed in a negative way. Self-absorption and self-focus are a corruption of what is good, regardless of whether the result is pleasurable or painful.

The words of Jesus are transcendent. They direct our eyes away from ourselves to God and to others. When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”, he is speaking to the reality that our self-focus (the burden of the self) traps us into unhealthy and ultimately destructive behaviors that are more of a burden than a help to us.

Such is the burden of sin. When we are unable to overcome sin, we are enslaved to it. As Peter says, “We are enslaved to whatever defeats us.” And so, I have come back to the focus of this blog piece: these words in 2 Peter 2:19.

Continue reading “People Are Enslaved to Whatever Defeats Them” →