Biblical Breakdown #1: Beginning

No better place to start than the beginning.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to start writing a newsletter in the first place is because writing helps me think like nothing else. I certainly enjoy writing and would like to think that I am at least decent at it, but the enjoyment I get out of it pales in comparison to the sheer benefit of taking the time to organize my thoughts. My wife frequently tells me “there’s a lot going on in that head of yours” and she’s certainly right. Unfortunately, my thoughts are more often than not too chaotic and unorganized to do anything but keep me up at night and cause headaches.

Over the last two years, this newsletter has allowed me to systematically think about my own political views and help me think through the various political happenings of the day. That has been of infinite value to me personally and hopefully many of you have benefitted from it as well. While this newsletter has enabled me to organize my thoughts about politics, it has not necessarily provided the same avenue for me to think through the Bible, theology, and faith and how to apply that in our world today.

One of my goals in 2023 is for that to change. The goal (and this is just a goal so we will see if it is feasible time-wise) is to continue writing the normal Burnett Breakdown that will be published at the end of each week focusing more on politics and to publish another newsletter at the beginning of each week that is more theologically-focused. This beginning-of-the-week newsletter, which I am going to label Biblical Breakdown, is probably going to consist of me thinking through a verse or passage from my previous week’s scripture readings.

I am not going to start another newsletter email chain so nothing will change on your end except for receiving one more newsletter a week. With that said, there may be some of you that want no part of a theologically-focused newsletter at the beginning of each week. All I can say is sorry about it, but it’s my newsletter. I would encourage you to give it a chance, but if you still aren’t interested in it, then just stick around for the end-of-week Burnett Breakdown.

On other hand, there are probably some of you that will enjoy the Biblical Breakdown better than the normal Burnett Breakdown. If that’s you, then I would encourage you to become a paid subscriber. There aren’t any extra perks for paid subscribers yet, but it does help motivate me to write knowing that people are paying for it.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get to the Biblical Breakdown.

Genesis 1:1

For five years or so I have done a reading plan of the entire Bible in a year starting in January. I have gone through different versions of this plan but by far my favorite is this one here from the Navigators. I like that it provides extra days at the end of each month that I use as “catch-up” days for any days that I may have missed throughout the month.

Like most other plans, the Navigators plan lays out four passages every day from different parts of the Bible and starts the Old Testament portion with Genesis. I am thankful for this because I’m not sure that there is a better verse to start the year off with than the first verse of the bible: Genesis 1:1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

While often overlooked, this verse is profound and forms the foundation of everything else.

To begin, it establishes the origin of the created order. Before there was anything, there was God. He has always been and will always be exactly the same. The Alpha and Omega. The first and the last. He is not reliant on anything for his existence as he defines existence itself. Stretching into eternity past and into eternity future, God has been, is, and will always be. Words don’t do this reality justice, but they are all we have to attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Even more remarkable, God was not lonely and did not lack anything. God was perfect, complete, and holy before he created anything and would have remained that way even if he never created. In other words, creation did not add anything to God to make him better or more complete. He was, is, and will always be perfectly sufficient in and of himself. This is referred to as the aseity of God, coming from the Latin phrase a se, meaning “from or by himself.”

The aseity of God illuminates a crucial distinction between God and the created order: God is not reliant on or the same thing as his creation. The Bible makes clear that God is set apart from creation, unlike pantheistic gods that are one and the same as their creation or a force that is interwoven in creation (think of the force from Star Wars or the movie Avatar). While creation is reliant on God for its existence, God is not reliant on creation for his existence.

Because God is the creator of everything, he is supreme over everything. He is the point, center, origin, epicenter, etc. Everything really does revolve around him, as apart from him nothing would exist. Furthermore, he gets to determine the purpose of all that he created.

Romans 11:36 says, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Here, Paul makes clear that the purpose of everything belongs to God and that purpose is to bring God glory.

As humans, we are a part of the created order which means that we are included in this. We owe our existence to God and our purpose is to bring him glory. On top of that, everything that we have, such as money, family, marriage, work, possessions, affections, passions, intellect, etc, is meant to be used by us to glorify God. This relieves us from the pressure of finding our purpose or meaning within ourselves or in the world and frees us to wholeheartedly pursue that purpose.

God not only instilled everything with purpose, but he intelligently designed everything to achieve that purpose in unique ways. It’s like an orchestra. In a symphony orchestra, there can be up to a hundred individual and uniquely designed instruments all being played exactly as they were designed to be played. At the same time, the musicians are being guided by a composer and the sheet music in order to achieve the ultimate purpose of the symphonic orchestra: to play beautiful music.

In theory, a clarinet player could get up in the middle of the performance and start using his clarinet to beat his chair. This would even create sound. However, this would obviously be against the design of the clarinet and be detrimental to the overall performance.

God has designed creation like a symphonic orchestra; each unique part, when fulfilling its individual purpose, contributes to the overall purpose of glorifying him. This means that God not only gets to define the purpose of our money, family, marriage, work, possessions, affections, passions, and intellect (to glorify him), but he also gets to define the unique ways each of those is meant to do so.

Marriages are designed to be between one man and one woman with the husband as head and the wife submitting (Ephesians 5). Work is designed to be done (Genesis 2), done heartily (Colossians 3:23), committed to the Lord (Proverbs 16:3), and done honestly (Ephesians 4:28). Our money is designed to be subservient to God (Matthew 6:24), not lead to greed (Luke 12:15), repaid when borrowed (Psalm 37:21), and ready to be shared (1 Timothy 6:18). The list is endless.

Same-sex relationships, open marriages, dishonest/illegal work, and endless debt with no intention of repaying are all examples of using creation in ways that it wasn’t designed; thus, creation isn’t being used for its ultimate purpose. It’s like banging a clarinet against the chair in the middle of a performance.

I could go on but I will end with this: Genesis 1:1 is a foundational truth that roots Christian theology, so let us start this year in the beginning.

God Bless,

Hunter Burnett