Christianity/Theology

Abraham’s son Ishmael was part of Covenant! | Genesis 17.23-27

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised… and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you…. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”… As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.”…. Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and all the slaves born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him…. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; and all the men of his house, slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.
—Genesis 17.23-27

Yes, God said that Ishmael would not be the primary bearer and “administrator” of the covenant, but he still bears its marks. Reminds me of a reading from Lesslie Newbigin where he talks about how through our election and Covenantal relationship with God, Salvation is extended to all the nations. “Election” isn’t about blessing; it’s about responsibility to extend the Blessing to others.

Other peoples (even those not in the elect people of God) participate in and receive the full benefits of being part of the Covenant. To be elect is to extend these Covenantal blessings to all nations (as we see here with Abraham). To be marked as God’s is to be placed on mission.

Ishmael was still joined to the covenant! Praise God for his gratuitous grace!

See other Marginalia here. Read more about the series here.

Death & Life; Names & Vows | Genesis 3.20-21

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.
—Genesis 3.20-21

I don’t know why I’ve never noticed this before. Why does Adam only name Eve after they sin? Further, of all the things to do after receiving the curse from God, he does this covenantal, marital act: he gives her a name.

I know this isn’t in this text, nor was it on the mind of the original writer, but it reminds me of the odd line in Revelation where God promises to give each person a new name that only He and they will know.

It seems that in the whole sweep of redemptive history, the Bride of the first Adam received a new name when he brought death, just as the Bride of the second Adam receives a new name when he brings life.

See other Marginalia here. Read more about the series here.

The Privilege of Church-lessness: a Donald Miller post-script

/ Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

donaldmiller-bw-2Donald Miller put up another post sort of talking more about his church attendance thoughts, this time talking about how the doctrine of the “priesthood of believers” means he does sacraments on his own and whenever he wants because God has given us all “agency” in this world to do that kind of stuff. He longs that pastors would empower their people to feel free to do these sort of things as well.

I made my thoughts clear last week about how wrong I think he is on this stuff (especially so with the sacraments. He even says he does baptisms for other people even though he himself has never been baptized). I won’t rehash that here. I did want to bring up one thing I noticed in his other posts that was more explicit in this last post. He writes:

To be fair, I’m wired a bit differently. I’m creative and I’m a risk taker. I realize a mistake I often make in my writing is assuming people are wired the way I’m wired. They aren’t. Most people are looking to “do it right” and play by the rules. This saves them from the trouble I often find myself in.

I can’t get past the the feeling here that Miller is saying that “most people” (read: “those that go to church”) at least primarily go to church because they want to “do it right” and “play by the rules”; that not going to church is an act of freedom, while those that still go are bound by something Miller thinks he has freed himself from. It’s not that he necessarily thinks he’s “better” than others, but I fear he makes a dangerous division within the Body of Christ between himself and “most people”.
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The Body of Christ, Broken (a guest post for Restoration Living)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

family-old-moustache

Yeah, that’s my family (I’m in the front left). This was one Easter Sunday in the 90’s in Dallas, Texas, at a time and place where (I promise) it was absolutely appropriate to dress like that for Easter (except the glasses, of course). I look at this picture a lot, and not just to chuckle. I find it so oddly and powerfully symbolic of what life in the Bible Belt was like.

You see, my family was deeply wounded by “Church folk” throughout my childhood. Just as in the picture, people in the Church would live their Christian lives dressed up and looking good, all while wearing masks, disguising who they really were. When things were hard at home, people at church had no categories to process it. After all, to be a Christian is to be cleansed by Jesus and walk in new life, right? Failures, sins, and brokenness were seen as signs of some disobedience – some place where you weren’t “okay.”

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And so begins a guest post I wrote for a wonderful site that should be on all of your radars, Restoration Living. Read the rest of the post here.

Weekly Must-Reads {2.12.14} | Creation, Masturbation, & Communism

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

guy-newspaper-reading

Well, it’s been a good long while since I’ve posted a Reading List for you all to enjoy–too long, in fact. These were some of my favorite things I read this week. What were some of yours?

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In defense of creationists | The Week
Michael Brendan Dougherty

I referenced this at the end of my post yesterday, but this is a stunningly beautiful piece that wrestles with humanizing those that frustrate us the most in the Christian family. A must-read for sure.

Escaping the Prison of the Self: C.S. Lewis on Masturbation | First Things
Wesley Hill

Don’t overlook this piece too quickly. It is an incredibly powerful piece that speaks to how all of us–married, single, gay, straight–engage our sexuality in this world. It showed me how having celibate unmarried people in the world is necessary for healthy marriages, as well as how masturbation ruins even good friendships.

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Winter 2014

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

One of my best friends and favorite photographers.

thebreakfastdictator's avatardavid schrott is everywhere

January 2014 January 2014

This winter reminds me oh-so-much of the winter of my Junior year of college (2003). During my Junior project classes, the temperatures barely got above 20 and there was perpetual snow on the ground. This made it rather difficult to proceed with my figures in landscapes style of work that I was doing at the time. We tried once – on an 8 degree day. I don’t think we even made it through a roll of film that day.  A friend of mine hooked me up with a few indoor locations in downtown Lancaster and we got to shoot in the relatively warm (and snowless) interiors that was quite magnificent.

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The above photo was shot at dusk a few Saturdays ago after a light snowstorm breezed through Central Pennsylvania. This scene was no where as light as the image makes it look. It was basically dark out…

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I think we all need a reminder: Ken Ham is on our team.

/ Paul Burkhart / 4 Comments

ken-ham-banner

Okay, this one is a tough one to write.

Most all of us know by now about the Great Debate that happened a couple of weeks ago between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on whether or not Creationism is a viable model for human origins. If you’ve followed this blog for an real period of time, you know it’s no secret that I do not think it’s a viable model, and I’ve been quite vocal about that in this space.

So I felt the frustration when Ken Ham was treated like the stand-in for every Christian that wants to take the Bible seriously. I felt better when smart Christians responded well. I chuckled at those that poked fun of him and other Creationists, debunked their logic, or discredited the historical stream in which he finds himself. I gave into the private mocking.

I was then really encouraged when I read this report in Christianity Today that shows that Americans are not as divided on this issue as some polls make it seem. I was overjoyed with knowing that more Christians than ever were leaving the Ken Hams of the world in the dust of irrelevance, their budgets and voices shrinking in the distance.

As the discourse went on, I began to thinking to myself: I think we’re winning! But then yesterday, I felt like I woke from a fog and thought: Wait. Who are we fighting?
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Donald Miller is just plain wrong about church. But it’s not his fault.

/ Paul Burkhart / 6 Comments

donald-miller-bw-1

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, started a little kerfuffle last week when he wrote about how he doesn’t really go to church any more. He doesn’t learn much about God through sermons, and he doesn’t connect with God through songs. Church just doesn’t connect with him in any way and doesn’t fit within his own learning style, which is far more participatory. He says the Church is all around us and in believers so he feels free to “have church” in the way(s) that most connect him to God and others.

Well, this caused quite the backlash. He wrote again a couple of days ago in response, but it seems that most people still really disagree with him.

But here’s the problem: Donald Miller is absolutely right in everything he says if he still insists on calling himself an “Evangelical”, or at least using that as his frame of reference.

If you consider yourself an Evangelical in any traditional sense, and you’re looking at Donald Miller’s church practices with dismay, well then welcome to your future–the logical conclusion of your theology and how you’ve practiced church for a few generations now.
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This is why Genesis was written (and Ken Ham doesn’t see it)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Bosch-Garden-Earthly-Delights-Outer-Wings-Creation-WorldIf my Facebook feed is representative of the general population at all, then I can confidently say that most of you have heard about the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye about creationism and evolution.

On this blog, I try not to get too much into issues of great contention in the church family when I don’t think it’s necessary, especially when I think it would unnecessarily prevent someone from reading this blog with a free conscience, or just mess with their head too much. But this is the one issue that I have felt the freedom to be blunt, bold, consistent, and loud about my opinion. So, I don’t have too much to add to everyone else out there that was more or less lamenting this debate more than celebrating it. Maybe I’ll have some thoughts next week coming at it from a different angle, but we’ll see.

Today, I wanted to share with you a video from the in-person portion of my Hebrew class a couple of weeks ago. To get an A in the class I have to translate, memorize, and recite a section of the Genesis 1 in the Hebrew. To help us with that, my professor made a video of him reciting it and acting out the recitation in front of us.
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Abraham almost loses his son & he worships?! | Genesis 22.13-14

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
— Genesis 22.13-14

This is right after the whole “sacrifice Isaac” thing. To me, this such an odd response. Not only does Abraham worship God after this, which is crazy enough as it is, but he also sets up a memorial to remember this by! If I were him, I’d need some space from this God for a bit and I’d want to forget this incident as soon as possible.

I’ve always thought it odd that the book of Hebrews puts such an emphasis on Abraham and calling him the “father of faith” and extols his faith so much. Whenever I read that I think about how he had Ishmael with Hagar, due to a lack faith, and (twice) gave his wife up to be the wife of someone else because he was scared they’d kill him–another example of a lack of faith!

But then I read things like this and I think to myself, “Oh yeah, now I get it.”

See other Marginalia here. Read more about the series here.

A Sacrament Primer (and some questions I still have)

/ Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

infant-baptism-water-7

For my worship and liturgy class, we had to write up a little thing explaining how we would explain the Sacraments to an everyday person. We were also supposed to throw up some questions that we might still have about them. Here are is mine.

In the beginning of the Bible, we see God create what amounts to a “temple-world”. He wants to dwell in this temple, with his people, and make it his home. He ordains priests to care for it but they fail. So God puts in motion a plan and story to rebuild this world and re-prepare it for his dwelling.

The focal point of this story and our entire faith is Jesus Christ. He is God among us having come dressed in humanity. The Gospel of John says he literally “templed” among us, using our created humanity as something he was pleased to dwell in.

This is the Gospel; it is our life and strength as Christians.
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That elusive Rest of all rests…

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

oldrich-kulhanek-untitled2At my job, I have this client (nowadays they’re called “participants”) who’s unlike any other I’ve known. He’s got some sort of complicated cocktail of mental health issues going on. Whatever they are, they’ve come together to create the most agitated, anxious, hyper, manic, rapid-thinking individual I’ve ever seen.

He’s the kind of guy whose own thoughts race a million miles an hour in addition to the other voices in his head doing so as well. He craves attention and simply has to be the center of it at all times; the more people around, the more dramatic and performative he becomes. He acts out like a child in any way to get the attention he craves, all while his inside hums and buzzes with a constant anxiety.

He can easily talk non-stop for hours with random things setting off new associations and new lines of thought and one topic flowing into another topic that seems unrelated, save for a color, a location, or even a word in common with the prior one. The first time I met him, his thoughts became so fast and so loud, he started screaming and clawing at his head just to get them to quiet down.

He evokes little sympathy from those around him, including myself. He seems to thrive on the fact that he can so affect people–even if it’s in a negative, irritating way.

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Crazy thought of the day: God Died. [QUOTE]

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

“The task of witnessing to the gospel is to vitalize the astonishing fact of the gospel. The message “the Son of God has died” is indeed most astonishing…. God has died! If this does not startle us, what will? The church must keep this astonishment alive. The church ceases to exist when she loses this astonishment. Theology, the precise understanding of the gospel, must be seized by this astonishment more than anyone else. It is said that philosophy begins with wonder; so theology begins with wonder. The wonder of philosophy pales before the wonder of theology. The person astonished by the tidings “God has died” can no longer be astonished at anything else.”

Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God

What Draws Out Jesus’ Compassion? | Matthew 15.32

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.”

—Matthew 15.32

What evokes Jesus’ compassionate response and provision? Faithfulness, neediness, and weakness. That’s it. Not performance, not even belief. Just walking with him while being needy.

Further, we can be confident that he knows our need and knows we will “faint on the way” without him responding. And respond he will.

See other Marginalia here. Read more about the series here.