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Leonardo diCaprio & Kirk Cameron: BFFs (Laugh of the Day) [casual fri]

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

The other day, I wrote a pretty serious and in-depth post on the place of the darker things of this world in art, especially profanities. in the middle of the post, I put two rather intense videos as demonstrations of my point. They were both videos from films depicting serious husband/wife fighting. One was from Kirk Cameron’s “Christian” movie Fireproof, and the other was from the film Revolutionary Road, in which Leonardo diCaprio plays the husband. Adding to the irony, both of these movies came out in the same year.

It wasn’t until later that I was reminded by a friend that these two actually worked together early in their careers, on the TV Show Growing Pains. If you want some weird contrasts that can’t help but make you laugh pretty hard, feel free to re-watch the two clips below, as well as this clip of the two of these guys doing a scene from Growing Pains. In hindsight, it’s pretty hilarious.
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My annual beach business trip is here. So what’s changed?

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how my job was paying me to accompany some clients to the beach at Ocean City, Maryland for the week to help them grow in socialization and relaxation skills. If you remember, I wrote about sex and insanity that week (and that post caused some interesting problems for me later). On the beach reading front, at the time, I posted this picture:

Well, we’re back there again right now, and just yesterday, I found myself taking this picture without much thought:

Haha. I’m ridiculous. But at least I have good taste in over-sized classic books, right?

Here I am leading a Port Wine tasting with Fluffer-Nutter Sandwiches [VIDEO]

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Last night, some of my best friends threw a wine-tasting and food pairing party. Some of the people closest to me presented wine and food pairings that blew my mind. I had no idea that wine could do all of that. It was the perfect way to end a very busy summer.

Above, you will find a video of me presenting my wine and pairing. I led a tasting of a Tawny Port wine and paired it with Fluffer-Nutter sandwiches (my new obsession). I hope you enjoy it and learn some things.

You can see the videos of the other wine-presenters, as well as other highlights of our evening here.

Thanks go to Paul and Natanya Ma for hosting us, and specifically to Paul for taking and posting these videos.
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The Best Bible Resource I’ve Ever Read [casual fri]

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

To do this Bible Class that has consumed the past few months of my life (and this blog–I swear I’ll stop talking about it soon), I had to read a lot of stuff, including these (as well as their New testament counterparts). I checked out stuff from the Philadelphia library, and watched a bunch of lectures from iTunesU (especially these). I looked through commentaries and websites and articles and handbooks and sermons.

In other words, I at least glanced over a lot.

But there was one resource that I found more helpful, clear, and amazing than any other Bible resource I’ve ever found. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. I’m serious.

It’s a pair of textbooks (one on the Old Testament, one on the New, one combined with both) written by a theologian I had never heard of before. his name is John Drane (here’s his painfully poor-designed website as well). Yes, textbooks. And I read most of the Old Testament one and all of the New Testament one.

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Using the Bible to Meet with God

/ Paul Burkhart / 6 Comments

Last week, I asked a bunch of you how you go about using the Bible and the study of its contents to actually nourish your soul and meet with God. I got some great responses both here and on Facebook. This week, I wanted to put up how I ended up approaching this during the class I taught at my church. It’s super short, not very deep, and much more can/should/will be said. For what it is, I hope it’s genuinely helpful and speaks to how we might meet God through the Scriptures.

How do we move from the Facts of the Bible to the God of the Bible? From knowing the Bible, to knowing the Person? From Scripture being informational to formational?

The Meeting Place of God

As I said in the first class I taught, the Bible is not the passive “Revelation of God”. It is the place through which the Holy Spirit actively “reveals God” to us. When it comes to the Bible, we should start thinking more in verbs, not nouns. The Bible is “simply” a meeting place for God and his people, where he might meet them as he desires, by His Spirit.

When we meet God in Scripture, its the convergence of four things: Us and our faith, God and His Spirit.
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Join Us for a Tour of Biblical History at the Penn Museum this Saturday!

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

As a fitting conclusion to the six-week Bible Survey Class I’ve been teaching at my church, I’ll be leading a tour of The University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology of Anthropology, focusing on much of the Biblical History we covered in the class. The museum has a very rich collection of items from the regions and eras in which most all of Biblical History unfolds. We will be following the unfolding storyline of the Bible as we travel to each section, learning the context and the history that set the stage for the faith many of us now call our own.

If you’re interested, meet us at 10am this Saturday, August 25th in the courtyard in front of the main entrance (pictured above). Note: There’s a smaller entrance at street level some may confuse as the main entrance. We will be up the steps where the main fountain is.

The cost is $12 for adults and $8 for students (and well worth the price). The museum is located at 33rd and Spruce (map), right across the South St bridge. (Parking advice: park on the east side of the South St bridge in the Graduate Hospital area and then walk over the bridge). See you there!

according to Klout, everyone’s mom needs to look out for me [casual fri]

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As you can see in the screenshot below, according to my profile on Klout, the website that monitors your “influence” online, I am by far more influential about moms than I am any other topic. A while ago, when “crazy home sex” was the main search term leading people to this site, I had a theory. This time, I’m absolutely stumped. Anyone else have any ideas?

my coffee brewing is about to get real… [casual fri]

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

Friends know that I’m a coffee snob. Real coffee snobs know I’m only a wanna-be coffee snob. I myself know that the latter group is probably more right, but nevertheless, this doesn’t prevent from trying to edge ever closer to my dream of being a real coffee connoisseur.

To that end, I recently invested in the above materials, and I wanted to share them with you on this Casual Friday.

I love hand grinding the coffee beans each morning, and this particular cold brew method creates some of my favorite iced coffee around. Being able to weigh the beans has made a big difference as well. The only things missing? Well, a proper kettle like this one. Currently, I’m using our regular ol’ tea pot, which isn’t able to offer as much control as I’d like.

But maybe, someday, I can earn my coffee snob badge.

How do you use the Bible and Bible knowledge in your spiritual life? [OPEN MIC]

/ Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

This weekend, I will be teaching the last class in my six-week Bible Survey class at my church. I want to end the class talking about how to use the Bible (and especially the knowledge gleaned from the class) in one’s personal (and corporate) spiritual life. How does the Bible actually function in a believer’s life to cultivate a dynamic, deep, and intimate relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit? I have my own thoughts on this, but I want to hear from all of you. So here are some questions:

  • Do more Bible “facts” actually have a direct impact on your spiritual engagement with God? In other words, has studying the backgrounds of the Bible ever led to meeting God? How or why not?
  • What practical methods of immersing oneself in Scripture have been most fruitful to you spiritually?
  • How might people use the tools of Biblical Studies (commentaries, etc.) to treat the Bible formationally, rather than merely informationally?
  • For those that are oriented in such a way that they constantly want to know the context, background, history, date, etc. of Scripture, how have you been able to quiet all these questions in order to meet God?
  • Similarly, for those more “intellectually”-oriented, how have you been able to move beyond the intellect to engage other parts of yourself with Scripture?
  • How do we move beyond facts of Scripture to the Person of Scripture?
  • If (as I said in the first class, and other theologians have said) the Bible only “becomes” the Word of God as the Holy Spirit meets us during our engagement with it, what have been the most effective practical ways that you have invited the Holy Spirit into your Bible Study time?
  • In your experience, what have been some of the pitfalls in other approaches that are commonly endorsed by the contemporary church, or what are some of the realities that aren’t talked about often?
  • What would you say if you were me (haha)?

Feel free to respond below, in a Facebook comment, email, text, or phone call. Thanks.

Visions of Arcadia: the most terrifying art exhibit I’ve ever seen

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

This weekend I had the privilege of seeing the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new exhibit Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia. The exhibit showcases works exploring the idea of “Arcadia“: an idyll pastoral world envisaged in Virgil’s first major poetic work Eclogues where nymphs and fauns dwell alongside Bacchus and Pan; where human dwellers exist in peace, rest, and joy in the natural world.

(To put it simply: you can usually recognize Arcadian themes at work in a piece of art when it has naked people hanging out in nature–usually around rivers.)

This image of Arcadia, having been explored in art epochs in the past, overtook art once more right as modern art was being born, right around the turn of the 20th century. In fact, the exhibit subtly makes the argument that this image of a rural, paradisal ideal is an essential element in modern art’s development. The modernists’ dilemma–the tensions between longing and reality, finding and losing, permanence and transience, human and mythic–all find their embodiment in this Arcadian world.

The exhibit begins with excerpts from Virgil’s poetic treatment of this theme, set beside works that visualized his words. These run along one wall. On the opposing wall of this introductory hallway, there are excerpts from Stéphane Mallarmé’s modernist treatment of Arcadia, L’Apres-midi d’un Faune, accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings from Matisse that visualize his words.

The exhibit is great, but very theoretical. It works subtly and on nuance. It’s not just a bunch of pretty things thrown into a room. Instead it is a thesis–an argument–in visual form. It watches a theme develop from myth to poetry to visual art (and then from Renaissance to modern) and explores how they are all connected and converse with one another. It’s really like no other exhibit to which I’ve ever been. If you get the chance, see it.

But that’s not why I’m writing today.
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notes from last week’s class are finally done!

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Earlier this week, I posted the audio and incomplete manuscript for Class 3 for the Bible Survey class I’m doing. Last night, I finally finished polishing up the notes with all the extra information I wasn’t able to say in the class. I hope it’s helpful. This final manuscript comes in at 36 pages long (admittedly, that’s with size 14 font to make it easier to read online, but still), so there is lots of stuff there that wasn’t talked about (especially with Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Esther).

So, check it out below, download it, share it, critique it, and let me know what you think! I’d love to get some feedback on these to know if they’re actually helpful. Enjoy, and thanks for your patience! (and P.S. don’t forget about the Dead Sea Scrolls trip tomorrow.)

What do we make of the atrocities of the Old Testament?

/ Paul Burkhart / 11 Comments

This is a slightly edited version of an excursus I wrote in this week’s notes for the Bible Survey Class I’ve been teaching at my church. Follow that link for more information on the class. Also, I’m well-aware that the second half of this is exactly the “angle” talked about in the venerable Pete Enns’ recent blog post. I wrote this before he posted that, but still, I wanted to put it up on the off-chance this articulation might be helpful to others.

In the books of Numbers and Joshua, God commands the Israelites to commit genocide on many different people, including their women and children. He also commands them to forcibly enslave others. And in still another story, he commands Moses to take the remaining virgins of this particular people of which they disobediently did not kill all, and divide them evenly among the soldiers and the “rest of the Israelites”. We can only imagine what for.

A few quick thoughts:

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Join us this Saturday to see the Dead Sea Scrolls!

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

As part of the Bible Survey Class I’ve been teaching at my church, I’ll be leading a tour of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at The Franklin Institute here in Philadelphia (map).  We will be meeting at 4:30pm this Saturday, July 28th in the main hall just inside the main entrance (you can get into that hall without buying a ticket). I’ll have some introductory words to set up our time, and then we’ll go to the exhibit where we’ll stop a few more times for some added information.

Also, Living Social is selling discounted tickets to the exhibit all this week (the usual evening price is $19.50). So even if you can’t go this week, still buy the tickets and go another time. It’s an amazing exhibit and will be here until mid-October. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at burkhartpm [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

P.S. the trip to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology has been moved to a week later than originally scheduled, to the 25th of August.

Well, Willard, that appeal to Ron Paul fans backfired…[Casual Fri]

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Yesterday, I ran across this tweet from Willard “Mitt” Romney, as he was shamefully trying to woo and court supporters of Ron Paul, after Paul himself retweeted it:

______________________

These are all the replies that tweet has received. I couldn’t help but laugh and share (forgive the language):

https://twitter.com/mrboetel/status/225744624772329472
https://twitter.com/popfreeradio/status/225742673892503553 https://twitter.com/martinthegrate/status/225742379066470400