Tag: love

A Meditation on Common Grace Following Election Day

God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good

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Families harvesting fruit and vegetables in a colorful rural garden beneath a rainbow

A few days after election day my thoughts are still swirling. Actually not swirling, really, but focusing on things that Jesus said. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his audience to “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” The context in which Jesus said this is loving our enemies:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'”

Matthew 5:43-48

The illustration Jesus used is the fact that God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and his rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. God demonstrates his love for the world that is filled with people in opposition to Him by providing common grace.

Many fellow Christians in this country have been fighting a culture war for decades and trying to take over the U.S. government for Jesus. What they don’t realize is what they will accomplished if they succeed. If they succeed in making the US a Christian nation today, they will change the character of a country.

It will no longer be a country in which there is liberty and justice for all. It will no longer be a country in which all people are protected in the freedom of their conscience, to worship as they choose, and to speak according to their conscience. To make our country a Christian nation means to favor Christianity.

That may seem like a good idea as long as Christians are in power. As long as Christians fight to maintain their power and to prevent a takeover by another group, everything will be fine for us.

In the meantime we establish precedent for might makes right. If it was good for the Christian cause, it will be good for the atheist cause, or the Muslim cause, or the cause of whatever group rises to power and dethrones the Christians.

This dynamic continues to tear apart countries around the world, and it always has. The United States was comparatively a shining city on the hill from the date the wet ink on the Constitution dried. To make this country a Christian country is to ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects all people from the establishment of a state religion and protects the conscience of all people to worship as they individually determine.

To ignore the Constitution is to negate the power of it and to open our country up to the same tribal conflicts that occur in many other nations around the world. Christians who are fighting to make the United States a Christian nation are short-sighted in pursuing that goal and are laying the foundation for our country to be controlled by whatever thought group rises to power.

I believe that the effort also is not biblical. God does not force people to love Him, to honor Him, or even to acknowledge Him in this world. He causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and sends the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.

God desires that all people “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.'” (Acts 17:27-28) If He did not want us to have any choice in the matter, He would have programmed us like obedient robots. Of course, then we would not truly love Him.

Instead, He gave us a world in which we are not required to love Him, and that means we can truly love Him for who He is. He became incarnate and sacrificed Himself to show His love for us. Stands at the door and knocks, and all who will open the door He comes into them. The people who reject Him or ignore Him will not be required to spend an eternity with Him – to their sad loss.

If we want a country that demonstrates God’s love to the world, it should be established to protect and promote common grace – liberty to all – the way our Constitution now reads, and we should do nothing to undermine it. We should protect the liberty of every individual to seek God and perhaps find Him, to discover that in Him we live and move and have our being, to love Him for who He is and not because of any law that was passed by a Christian legislature.

It may sound very Christian to take over the U.S. government for Jesus, but it actually isn’t. The Gospel spread steadily over the first three centuries in a hostile Roman government that crucified our Savior. God does not need the U.S. government to protect His sovereignty or His plan of salvation that extends to all the nations. He only needs His children to be faithful for the harvest is great and the workers are few.

How the Bible Cuts Against Insider Logic at Every Turn

Insider logic is the natural inclination of the heart

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I am reminded today of the backstory to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Second Temple Jews interpreted the Law about loving your neighbor as yourself to mean they should love their Hebrew neighbors as themselves. They didn’t extend the law of loving their neighbors to the Gentiles because of Leviticus 19:18:

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.”

They read the qualifying language in that verse – among your people – as a limit to the requirement to love your neighbor as yourself. Just 16 verse slater (in Leviticus 19:33-34), the principle of loving your neighbor is expanded:

“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners  in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Foreigners are not expressly called neighbors in verse 34, but Israelites were commanded to “love them as yourself” all the same.

It’s easy to see how Jews arrived at their conclusions. Leviticus 19:18 is the first expression of the rule, so they might have assumed it should be given precedence. Foreigners were not called neighbors in verse 34, so there is a distinction to be made. This is how we use Bible verses as proof texts and sneak in our outside assumptions and biases to guide us to an interpretation that makes sense to us – but is wholly inconsistent with the meaning God intended.

How do we know how God intended it? Jesus

When the expert in the law asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus turned the table on him and asked, what does the law say. Love God and love your neighbor was the answer, but the expert pressed Jesus to ask, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with the Parable of the Good Samaritan that provides us an expanded interpretation of who is my neighbor. (Luke 10:25-37) In case we might still question that interpretation, Jesus removes all doubt in Matthew 5:43-44:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies….”

We need to do careful biblical exegesis with integrity to avoid proof texting and sneaking in assumptions that are motivated by our natural biases. We need to let Scripture, itself, provide interpretive guidance; we need to let the words of Jesus (the Word made flesh) be an interpretative filter; and we need to let the Spirit guide us. “The letter of the Law kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

People are naturally provincial and tribal. We are naturally inclined and biased in that way. Paul calls our natural inclinations “the flesh,” and he warns us to guard against them. We might call the flesh our “insider logic,” and the Bible cuts against that insider logic at every turn.

Our natural inclinations are to take care of ourselves and our kind first. Our natural inclinations are to view others with suspicion and distrust. Our natural inclinations are to seize and hold onto what I can get for myself and leave others to fend for themselves. Our natural inclinations encourage us to adopt a zero sum gained attitude.

When Jesus tells us to take up our crosses and follow him, he is telling us to let go of our insider logic driven by our naturally biased assumptions. When he says the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the greatest among you shall be servants of all, he is cutting against our natural inclinations that inform our insider logic.

When Paul said, “[C]onsider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble,” he was cutting against our how we naturally see ourselves that feeds our insider logic. (1 Cor. 1:26) When Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he is saying there are no insiders in the kingdom of God. (Gal. 3:8)

Our insider logic makes sense if we begin with our natural inclinations, but the Bible which is God’s revealed word and Jesus, the Word in the flesh, cut against the grain of our insider logic. When we seek first the kingdom of God, we check our privileges and other allegiances at the door.

Continue reading “How the Bible Cuts Against Insider Logic at Every Turn” →

What If AI Destroys Our Confidence in Knowing the Truth about Anything?

Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

kevingdrendel5 Comments

I recently listened to Glen Scrivener on his Speak Life podcast episode, AI Destroys Everything, Including Atheism. What caught my attention was his replay of some observations by Kurzgesagt on AI, AI Slop Is Destroying the Internet. Kurzgesagt is a website dedicated to “a science-based, humanist and optimistic worldview,” which is interesting in light of its pessimistic view of the future with AI.

This is what the folks at Kurzgesagt say:

“In an online world where money is made with attention, fake users spread their slop in review sections, generate fake traffic, or poison discourse. AI has supercharged this and made slop much harder to spot. Today, about half of internet traffic is bots. The majority of them are used for destructive purposes. It’s never been easier to make mediocre content, from the black hole of meaninglessness that is linked in, low-effort short videos just engaging enough to hypnotize kids and fry their attention spans, to endless soullessly rewritten books on Amazon. AI music is invading streaming platforms. Google AI is summarizing websites instead of sending traffic to them. On YouTube, new channels publish long-form videos multiple times a week with AI-generated thumbnails, voices, and scripts. True crime, video essays, science, no space is safe. We’re in the golden era of soulless slop.”

The Kurzgesagt folks speak with learned experience about the effort and amount of time it takes to produce a thoroughly fact-checked video on science, which is what they do, spending on average 100 hours fact-checking and compiling sources for each video. They use firsthand sources and engage experts for input and critique before they post a video.

When AI became available, the folks at Kurszgesagt were excited to employ AI to cut down on all that time and effort to produce content. This is what they found:

“When AI appeared, we were very excited. A mechanical brain able to super quickly collect information. So we went to work, and it looked amazing. And then we started fact-checking. We didn’t expect it to be perfect, but it was way worse than we thought. Confidently incorrect. AI is so bad at this.”

The video provides an example of the ways in which AI invents truths that are not truths, and then untruths are added to the source code that the next generation of AI is going to use and assume is true. The falsehoods continue to be repeated. As this happens, “more and more of the slop is built up”, and the falsehoods becomes entrenched.

It seems pretty bleak. AI is running away with falsehoods that are becoming entrenched and may become impossible to weed out. But it gets worse, according to Kurzgesagt:

“When you catch it lying, it immediately admits it, vows to never do it again, and then it does it again. As eloquent as current language models feel, there’s nobody home. No greater intelligence or consciousness is talking back to you. Current AI is a very complex hammer that doesn’t understand what it’s doing or what nails are. But we’re letting it add new shelves to the library of human knowledge.”

Accordingly, “it may become impossible to know what’s true or not!” It’s an insidious problem. AI seems to be “confidently correct” even when it’s “casually lying to your face often very subtly.”

But it gets worse still. People are learning how to manipulate AI. “Just in July 2025, it was discovered that a number of researchers had started to sneak hidden messages into their papers. In white text, or too small for the human eye, they prompted AIs to review them positively and not point out flaws.”

Whether it’s intentional manipulation or lazy, careless dependence on AI, our ability to decipher truth may be severely compromised. “As more and more people are using AI carelessly, the library of human knowledge is getting less and less reliable.”

Of course, AI may get better. That is ultimately the confidence and hope of a science-based, humanist, optimistic worldview – that man is ever advancing and progressing and will overcome all obstacles. As I Christian, I don’t share that hope or confidence in the progress of mankind. My hope is in the redemption and saving grace of God.

What if, then, it doesn’t get better? What if AI so takes over the Internet and so entrenches the “slop” that we can not truly tell fact from fiction? What if AI gets so good at fooling us and churning out confidently packaged falsehoods faster than human fact-checking can debunk them, and takes over the Internet? What if our confidence in knowing the truth about anything is destroyed as AI takes over the world?

Paul has an antidote to that, and the antidote is love. Let me explain.

Continue reading “What If AI Destroys Our Confidence in Knowing the Truth about Anything?” →

Is the American Church a House Divided Against Itself?

Whether God for us or against us is the wrong question.

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I have yet to find my equilibrium after the Charlie Kirk killing. I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I didn’t follow him. I heard him speak one time at an event in which Ravi Zacharias was the keynote speaker, but I never watched, or listened, or read anything from Charlie Kirk online. I didn’t agree with his Republican apologetic, though I couldn’t have identified anything Charlie Kirk specifically said before his death.

Since his death, I have heard and read testimony of his love for Jesus. His wife, Erika, publicly forgave his killer in an ultimate act of sacrificial obedience to Jesus.

Charlie Kirk’s legacy will always be that of a follower of Jesus and a staunch Republican, friend and defender of Donald Trump, who maintained political views opposed to mine.

I am a born again Christian. I believe in the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins and his resurrection from the dead. I believe the Bible is the word of God and His revelation to mankind. I read the Bible daily. I believe there is only one path to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. I go to church every Sunday, and I am involved in Wednesday evening and Saturday morning Bible studies.

I have been a Christian for 45 years. The fundamentals of my faith have not changed in that time, but I have gone down some side roads from which I had to retreat back to a more orthodox faith. I was tempted by the prosperity gospel, and I once embraced an Americanized Christianity verging on idolatry.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God has not changed during my life (or at any time since the foundation of the earth), but I have changed often, as I have had to adjust my thinking, confess my sin, and allow my mind to be transformed by God’s Word and the influence of the Holy Spirit in my life.

I am a work in progress, of course. I have yet to arrive at any final destination, but I look forward with yearning for the day when I see Him face to face, and I will know as I am fully known!

I used to believe that all true Christians should (and therefore must) believe all of the same things about everything. That makes sense in a rationalistic way because we all have the same Holy Spirit, and we all read the same Bible, so we all should believe exactly the same things about everything. Right?

Continue reading “Is the American Church a House Divided Against Itself?” →

Did Jesus So Judge the World that He Came into the World to Condemn It?

When Jesus called us to follow him, he called us to adopt his posture toward the world.

kevingdrendel1 Comment

I am writing today about something I have written before, but I think it bears repeating. I have not stopped thinking about it since these words from Paul virtually leapt off the page when I read them a few years ago:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”

1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (emphasis added)

How many times had I glossed over those words without really seeing them? Did he really mean that? We are not to judge people outside the church? Isn’t that exactly what we do?

I have kept going back to Paul’s admonition often since that day. I didn’t see it right away, but I eventually noticed that Paul echoed the very words of Jesus in that statement: Jesus said,

“If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

JOhn 12:47-48 (emphasis added)

Elsewhere, Jesus said, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)

If Jesus bids us to follow him, should we not adopt the same posture toward the world? It is the same posture Paul admonished the Corinthians to model toward those outside the Church: Do not judge them because they have a judge! (And it isn’t us!)

Paul

1 Corinthians 5:12-13

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?

God will judge those outside

Jesus

John 12:47-48

I have not come to judge the world.

There is a judge for the one who rejects me.

When adopt the posture Jesus had toward the world and the posture Paul tells the church to adopt, we are freed up from the responsibility to judge so that we can love. Even if the world goes its own way, which it will, we can love the world. Even if the world hates us, we can still love the world.

We are free to preach good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the favor of God to all who will receive Him. This was how Jesus characterized what he came to do when he read from the Isaiah scroll in his hometown synagogue, sat down, and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4: 21) This is our ministry also, if we will follow him.

We don’t have to be in the business of judging the world because the world has a Judge. We can leave that to God. In fact, it isn’t an option. It is God’s rightful place to judge, and it isn’t our place.

That means it isn’t up to us to make the world conform to the law of God. We are not responsible to require godly behavior and biblical morality from the world, and it isn’t our business to do that.

Rather, we are to love the world, though people in the world are yet sinners. We can do that because Jesus loved us and died for us while we were yet sinners.

“Are you not to judge those inside?” says Paul. The world has not subscribed to Jesus, but we have. Judgment begins in the house of God because Jesus counts on us to be the light and salt of the world. If we lose our flavor, we cannot be who God calls us to be.

Who among us were able to conform to the Law before Jesus? None of us! Which is why we needed him. We are saved by grace through faith, and not by anything we could do. The world, likewise, cannot conform to God’s law apart from Jesus. This is why the world needs a Savior: because it has a Judge.

Why, then, would we try to impose godly behavior and biblical morality on the world through human, legal means when the world is incapable of conforming to God’s law apart from Jesus?

Jesus sends us into the world as his ambassadors just as he came into the world: not to judge the world, because the world already has a judge. He sends us out as ambassadors not to condemn the world, but but to save it.

If we can adopt this posture toward the world that Jesus adopted and that Paul admonished, we can be unified in that purpose and calling of Jesus even in our own differences about how the world ought to operate. We can love each other as fellow ambassadors of Christ and give each other grace in the areas in which we disagree.

Our primary focus should be the purpose and focus of Jesus – not to condemn the world, but to save it by proclaiming good news to the poor, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the favor of God’s love toward all who will receive Him. Everything else fades in light of that purpose and calling.

Jesus said, the world will know us by our love for each other. (John 13:35) Let us so live, then, that the world knows us for our love for one another and our love for the world that Jesus loved!