My name is Glen Davis, a Nationally Appointed US Missionary with the Assemblies of God. I lead Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship at Stanford University. This is my blog, where I talk about things that interest me. I also maintain a database of quotes that I've found stimulating.
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Becoming Wise In College
I just ran across a very interesting article, How To Become Educated Despite Going to College (yet another entry from the engaging J. Budziszewski
).
In this dialog, the fictional Professor Theophilus recommends the very real Student Self-Reliance Project from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (read a somewhat hostile evaluation of ISI’s aims).
They have some absolutely extraordinary guides to books and scholars that you should acquaint yourself with–and these are books and scholars who don’t often make it onto your classroom reading lists.
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Judge With Right Judgment
J. Budziszewski has a fascinating article over at Boundless about what it means to “not judge.”
“Zack, where Jesus instructs his disciples ‘Judge not,’ what do you think He means?”
“What is there not to get?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t write dictionaries. ‘Judging’ means several different things. Wouldn’t it be good to know which one Jesus was talking about?”
“He didn’t say, so He must have meant all of them.”
“In that case, you’re guilty.”
“But I told my friends not to judge. I condemned their judgmentalism.”
“Didn’t you judge that Anton didn’t mean what he advertised? Didn’t you judge that Cleo wasn’t trying to be sleazy?”
“But I wasn’t, like, sitting in judgment.”
“Sure you were. You judged them ‘innocent.’ “
doesn’t that just make you want to read it all?
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Stanford Is The Fourth-Coolest University In America
According to Seventeen magazine, Stanford is the fourth-coolest campus in America. What I want to know is–how in the world did we fail to attain the number one spot?
In any event, the Stanford Daily has a somewhat tounge-in-cheek (yet appreciative) response.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original article online. Here’s the Stanford Daily’s summary:
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One Hectic Week: 1700 Miles in 7 Days
On a personal note, last week was one of the most hectic I’ve had in a while. In the last seven days I’ve put 1700 miles on my car!
It started off with a trip up to Dunsmuir, CA to meet with a pastors’ gathering, and it was constant motion from then on.
The weekend didn’t provide a single bit of respite–if anything, the pace picked up! Saturday morning I taught a workshop in Davis, and then I preached in Burlingame Saturday night, in San Bruno Sunday morning, and attended a missions banquet in San Jose Sunday evening.
Yikes!
By the way, the top picture is of me conducting the workshop at Rock Your Campus which I titled “Reasonable Answers to Honest Questions” and I helped students process topics ranging from capital punishment and just-war theory to the levitical code and the existence of suffering. It was fun!
The bottom picture is Paula and I with some of the Stanford students we brought to this ministry training event.
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USC Prof Dallas Willard On Christianity
University of Southern California philosophy prof Dallas Willard was just interviewed by Relevant Magazine.
He had some interesting things to say: I encourage you to read the article. One excerpt which I thought was particularly relevant to us at Stanford: (read the whole thing)
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It’s Not Lycanthropy That Threatens Stanford
Well, tonight will see the annual practice of a particularly devilish Stanford tradition: Full Moon on the Quad.
In most of our minds, the only cultural reference we have to full moons involves lycanthropy (that’s a 50 cent word referring to werewolves).
At Stanford, Full Moon means something completely different (and I’m not sure the metaphor of man turning into beast is entirely inappropriate).
For Stanford students, Full Moon on the Quad is a major cultural initiation: freshmen head to the quad and get royally smooched (kissed within an inch of their lives) by seniors. As you might imagine, the evening has more than a hint of debauchery about it.
Here’s an excerpt from the Stanford Daily: (full article)
FMOTQ is a true Stanford tradition… and one more evidence that Stanford needs Jesus!
There are lots of web links related to this festival, including a poem, tame photo galleries (here’s one and here’s another), and a mildly humorous essay entitled Got Mono?.
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Cool Archaelogical Discovery Corroborates the New Testament
In yet another case of archaelogy confirming the biblical record, scholars recently announced the discovery of an ancient ossuary bearing the inscription James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.
The relic has been dated to just before 70 A.D., which jives with the biblical dating of the death of James.
You can read the details at Christianity Today (very pro), National Geographic (pretty neutral), and the New York Times (slightly skeptical).
Incidentally, you might be intrigued to note that the inscription pronounced phonetically sounds like “Yacob son of Yussef brother of Yeshua.”
Yacob? Who’s Yacob?
James and Jacob are both legitimate English equivalents of the Hebrew Yacob.
Betcha didn’t learn that in Sunday School…I’ve heard that this dates back to translation of the King James Bible. As you probably know, names are often radically changed when Anglicized, and often for nonphonetic reasons. The story I heard claimed that the translators of the King James Bible decided to dub the brother of Jesus James as a thank-you to their sponsor. It sounds like an urban legend to me, but stranger things have happened.
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Who Are The Best and Worst People Of All Time?
I just ran across a very interesting website by Clifford Pickover which purports to rank the best and worst people in all of history.
Here are his picks:
Evil People
1. Tomas de Torquemada
2. Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler)
3. Adolph Hitler
4. Ivan the Terrible
5. Adolph Eichmann
6. Pol Pot
7. Mao Tse-tung
8. Idi Amin
9. Joseph Stalin
10. Genghis Khan
11. H. H. Holmes
12. Gilles de RaisGood People
1. Buddha
2. Baha’u’llah
3. Dalai Lama
4. Jesus Christ
5. Moses
6. Mother Theresa
7. Abraham Lincoln
8. Martin Luther King
9. Mohandas GandhiObviously, we as Christians would radically differ in his assessment of Jesus, and I personally have questions about the relative ranking of many individuals on his list. Still, the exercise is an intriguing one: who would you rank as the most righteous and most vile people of all time?
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A Stanford Homecoming
This weekend was Stanford’s homecoming celebration, highlighted by a victory over the Arizona Wildcats!
Reading the Stanford Daily news article about this homecoming, I was once again struck by how influential this school is. I already knew that four of our nine Supreme court justices are Stanford alumni, but I didn’t know that Stanford could also boast of Robert Mueller (the F.B.I. director) and former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
What a mission field–today they learn, tomorrow they lead!
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Ehud Barak Spoke at Stanford last night
Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and Stanford grad, spoke in Memorial Auditorium last night.
Read the school paper’s write-up, which contains several interesting anecdotes, such as this one about how
of course, such an event could not pass without protest (albeit peaceful)
and in an interview beforehand he made an observation that I found particularly relevant to my calling as a campus missionary: Though Barak ultimately left his mark on the world not through academia but rather through the military and politics, he said that he considers universities to be at the forefront of international leadership.
(source universal remote divx )
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