if you’re a church-going, coffee shop-visiting Philadelphian, watch your phone [casual friday]

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Lookout Mobile Security recently released a study in which it analyzed where people most often lost their cell phones. Lookout has a suite of resources that you can activate if you think you’ve lost your phone. They took this data and analyzed it to see where people most often activate this feature.

  • The number one American city where people lost their phones? Philadelphia
  • The number one place people lose them? Coffee shops
  • The third most likely place Philadelphians lose them? Church

In other words, I’m screwed.

P.S. I’m fully aware that it is Saturday. Shut it.

[Story found via Mashable]

a word on the effect of Corbett’s budget on Philly social services…

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

The Philadelphia Inquirer had this front page article today on Governor Tom Corbett’s drastic proposed Pennsylvania budget cuts and their particular effect on social services.

I work for one of the main social service agencies in Philadelphia. I can tell you that these effects will be real, not exaggerated, and felt by everyone (and perhaps even illegal). Is there really no more balanced, thoughtful, or nuanced approach to this?

In a notable quote from the article, executive director of NHS Human Services, Paul Sachs, told the Council committee about how the changes would eventually cost us more, not less:

 

We will see an increase in medical hospitalizations for the types of problems that frequently coexist with behavioral-health problems, such as diabetes, pulmonary, and cardiac conditions, not to mention sensitivity to extremes of cold or hot weather. And, I am sorry to say, we will see more people die whose deaths could have been avoided…. The governor’s budget cuts will not save money. Rather, it is an elaborate cost shift to emergency medical care and criminal justice systems, neither of which is designed to address the core problems facing these vulnerable individuals.

Please contact your local representative and let them know that you want this Commonwealth known for fighting for the vulnerable, and to at least show a little restraint, creativity, and nuance in how it maintains fiscal responsibility.

Posted from WordPress for Android on my Droid X

Catholics Aren’t Crazy: Paul Ryan & the 2013 House Budget

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

Yesterday, House Republicans unveiled their own 2013 budget to counter President Obama’s proposed budget.

Now, neither of these have (or will) become law. These annual budgets are merely proposals and are often political statements of priority. Both the President and the House write their budgets, not realistically, but extremely, hoping that once negotiation begins, they’ll walk away with more of what they want.

But still, like I said, these proposals are expressions of priority and direction to which a party will try and “bend” the nation’s spending. The House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, said as much when he unveiled the plan (upon which he bears the final word), calling it “a choice between two futures” (others called it “careless”).

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Christ’s Heart Breaking in Us | Lent {5}

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

Lent is a season in which God’s people meditate on the slaying of Jesus on the Cross and all that is within them (and outside of them) that made that Cross necessary. So to that end, we’ve been doing a series meditating on the fact that Christ is the Lamb who was “slain before the foundations of the world”. We’ve been thinking through what it might mean that Jesus, in some sense, has been suffering for all time.

[suffering]

We’ve said that the Cross was an in-breaking of the suffering essence of God into our world. Think of it as a volcano that emerges after a millennia of quiet tectonic plate shifts. Eternity and infinity–past, present and future–break into the world at the Cross; eternity is the backdrop against which the death of Christ occurs.

We’ve also said that the world has a certain “slain-ness” to it as well, due to being created “through” a slain and suffering Christ.

Today I want to ask: What might that mean for our own suffering and death?
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prayer & reflections for Lent, wk4 (3.18-24.2012)

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

prayer for the day.

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
(from the liberti Lent & Easter 2012 prayerbook & the Book of Common Prayer)

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“What if George W. Bush had done that?” (Opposites Coming Together) [Casual Friday]

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Firstly, let me formally introduce “Casual Friday” posts. After all the seriousness in my posts on theology, politics, and such through the week, one could get the impression I can’t have any fun. Well, not so. Whenever I’m able, I hope to take Fridays to write up shorter, casual, and generally more light-hearted posts to talk about news, technology, entertainment, food, or whatever. Probably, it’ll mostly be me sharing some of my favorite things with all of you. Enjoy.

I subscribe to a great service called Summify. It analyzes my social feeds and gives me a reading list each day of the articles that my social graph has most-shared (don’t get too excited. It just got bought by Twitter and they will be shutting down the service shortly).

Anyway, in my email a couple of days ago, there was a link to this great article by Josh Gerstein showing both the (negative) similarities between Bush and Obama, and the blatant and (at times) comical hypocrisy of those that have hated/loved those respective men.

And what do you know? According to the screenshot above, this article was recommended by both Uber-Progressive Glenn Greenwald and Uber-NeoConservative Karl Rove (this was confirmed by each of their tweets). There could not be two more different men coming together to promote the same political article.

But anyway, the article is great, and if it was good enough for both of these guys to recommend it, then it should be worth all of our time and consideration. And as you do, remember all the things I’ve been saying. Like I said then: I promise, I’m not crazy. Other people are saying these things too.

Too Big Not To Fail [2]: the limits of Big-Gov

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

A couple of days ago, I started this little “mini-series” on some of the more structural problems that seem to be messing the country up. I used the Obama Health Care law as an example of the limits of “Big-Corp”, and today I turn to the other behemoth in the room, Big Government.

The Shortfalls of Big-Government

Is the answer, then, in light of the breakdown of free market forces at the huge “macro” level, to bring in more Government?  I don’t really know, but I don’t think so.

Big-Gov, it seems, suffers from the same shortfalls as Big-Corp.  Our government, in a way, is structured to work on the same principles that are supposed to make Capitalism work well, and, in the end, suffers the same disadvantages as it increases in size.
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Creation: a suffering world through a suffering Lord | Lent {4}

/ Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

Lent is a season in which God’s people meditate on the slaying of Jesus on the Cross and all that is within them (and the world) that made that Cross necessary. To that end, we’ve been meditating on the fact that Christ is the Lamb who was “slain before the foundations of the world”. We’ve been thinking through what it might mean that Jesus, in some sense, has been suffering for all time (and some theological issues along the way).

So far, we’ve talked about how this is a reflection of an eternal attribute of Jesus. There has been an aspect of suffering and death woven into the depths of his nature and character since before time began.

But at some point, time began.
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Too Big Not To Fail [1]: the limits of Big-Corp

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

[A little while ago, I wrote a little essay I never put out there on the virtues and troubles of sheer “size” when it comes to the entities that seem to govern most of our lives. I’ve decided to split it up into a couple of posts to get everyone else’s thoughts. Our nation was meant to be a nation of discourse and was built on the idea that with friction between ideas, something beautiful might happen. Let the friction begin…]

The Shortfalls of Big-Corporate

To begin, let’s use Obama’s health care law as a little case-study. A while ago, I was sent an 8-part series by Ann Coulter entitled “Liberal Lies About Health Care”.  The first article opened with these lines:

“[Liberal Lie #](1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.  You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.  As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, “the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” That’s why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.”

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Lent-erpretative Musings {a theological interlude} {3b}

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

This is the second part of a post in which I’m talking about some of my guttural objections to some of the ways I’m treating the Bible for my ongoing Lent series, and then my responses to my own doubts. [Part 1]

_____________

This would not at all have been in the minds of the original writers. The original writers, at most, it seems, would have seen themselves talking about how God simply “ordained” Jesus’ death since eternity past. They probably were not thinking about making a statement about a “slain” and suffering aspect to the nature of God.

My responses: There is no mainstream view of the Bible that I know of that holds that each of the biblical writers had the fullness of theological knowledge at their disposal. They were still human (and poor, uneducated humans at that!).
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Lent-erpretative Musings {a theological interlude} {3a}

/ Paul Burkhart / 4 Comments

WARNING: this post gets into some theological discussion that, for most everyone out there, will be neither helpful nor interesting. And it’s way too long (which is why I’ve broken it up into two separate posts). Forgive me and please be gracious.

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Anyone that follows the blog knows that I’m currently thinking through and writing a Lent series on the theological idea that Jesus was slain “before the foundations of the world” (Part 1, Part 2). Even though no one has said anything to this effect, I have felt like somewhat of a hypocrite. As I’ve been doing this, I’ve been haunted by a little voice reminding me that it seems like I’m employing many of the same techniques of interpretation and viewing the Bible that I’ve criticized in others before. This post is my attempt at reconciling this in my own head (in front of all of you).

As J.R.D. Kirk (and others) has often talked about, many of our theological disagreements in the church boil down to a simple question “what is the Bible?”. At the end of the day, we can argue about any number of things appealing to the Bible, but if we believe fundamentally different things about what the Bible is–and how it is that–we will never get anywhere.

And here’s where I’m getting into problems with this series: there are ways of viewing the Bible that, in others, I have criticized as reductionistic, simplistic, and frankly, abusive to the text itself, and I fear that I’m employing many of those same techniques in my thinking through this series. Here are two of those ways (two more later):
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prayer & reflections for Lent, wk3 (3.11-17.2012)

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

prayer for the day.

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(from the liberti Lent & Easter 2012 prayerbook & the Book of Common Prayer)

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The Cross: eternal Beauty made present | Lent {2}

/ Paul Burkhart / 12 Comments

Earlier this week, I kicked off this year’s Lent series with a question.

This season, we’ll be meditating on the biblical idea that Jesus, in some mysterious way, was slain in eternity past. And so, I asked what this means for the Cross of Jesus:

Was it an eternal truth breaking into the temporal realm, or was it itself such a powerful event that it echoed backwards and forwards through the past and future?

My vote? Jesus’ suffering and “slain-ness” is an eternal attribute of who he is, and the Cross was this aspect of the nature of God breaking into our reality. The Crucifixion was, in effect, God drawing the curtain back on a heavenly reality that had, until that point, only been hinted at.

I side with this for two main reasons: the essence of God, and the election of God.

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Weekly Must-Reads {3.7.12} | abortion & Obama’s abuses

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

In light of the recent birth control controversy, there’s been a revived discussion about abortion and the “personhood” of babies, especially after a paper justifying the aborting of newborns was published in a major journal. Also, in response to rising criticisms for how the Obama administration has abused their seizure of Executive power to pretty scary levels, Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, gave a speech [transcript] at Northwestern University on Monday defending the administration’s actions. Today’s articles deal with these issues.

Grab some coffee, and let’s go.

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HIGHLIGHTS

The New Scar on My Soul | American Thinker

If you read nothing else from this post, please let it be this. I found myself crying in the middle of the coffee-shop I was in as I read this. Please, anyone, help give me a reasonable framework from which to respond to this. I need something beyond empty rhetoric, powerless outrage and sadness, and unrealistic policy aspirations. And also, please, if you find yourself on the pro-choice side of this, I would love your thoughts on this topic after reading this post. I’m really struggling here.

The Obama Administration and Targeted Killings: “Trust Us” | Council on Foreign Relations

Such a good article giving a brief–yet substantive–analysis of Holder’s speech and how it holds up to legal, moral, and common-sensical scrutiny. Please read this. Also, for a very comprehensive (yet fairly brief and easy-to-read) summary of the history and background of this all-important topic and its relevance today, CFR put together this Backgrounder.

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more free music for Lent from New York Hymns

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

For anyone that keeps any sort of track of the Church music scene, they will know that it is sort of a fad nowadays to update older hymns with modern music, instrumentation, and melodies. Some of my favorite groups that do this are Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, Sojourn Music, and Redemption Hill (my old church in Richmond). I love all these acts, but even they are hit-and-miss in some of their executions.

A newer group (I think) on this scene is New York Hymns.
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