Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 49

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

1. The Exper­i­ment Exper­i­ment (Plan­et Mon­ey): a con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent pod­cast. This episode is the best expla­na­tion I’ve heard about the repli­ca­tion cri­sis that plagues many dis­ci­plines.
2. The Faith­ful: René and Juan Car­los set out to con­vert their Colom­bian megachurch to Ortho­dox Judaism. This is what hap­pened. (Gra­ciela Mochkof­sky, The Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day Mag­a­zine): this is a very sad sto­ry. The temp­ta­tions Paul warned the Gala­tians about are real.
3. A Con­fes­sion of Lib­er­al Intol­er­ance (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): “This bias on cam­pus­es cre­ates lib­er­al priv­i­lege. A friend is study­ing for the Law School Admis­sion Test, and the test prepa­ra­tion com­pa­ny she is using offers test-tak­ers a tip: Read­ing com­pre­hen­sion ques­tions will typ­i­cal­ly have a lib­er­al slant and a lib­er­al answr.”
4. Face­book is going to get more polit­i­cal­ly biased, not less (Ezra Klein, Vox): “The bad press Face­book has received for polit­i­cal bias in recent days is like­ly to push it away from human cura­tion and toward yet more algo­rith­mic cura­tion. The irony is that will make Face­book more of an echo cham­ber, not less of one. Face­book’s human cura­tors are under pres­sure to present both sides, but its algo­rith­mic cura­tors are not.” The arti­cle Klein is respond­ing to is For­mer Face­book Work­ers: We Rou­tine­ly Sup­pressed Con­ser­v­a­tive News (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do).
5. World Hunger Is At Its Low­est Point In 25 Years. Thank Democ­ra­cy. (Lib­by Nel­son, Vox): and as I nev­er tire of point­ing out, for wide­spread democ­ra­cy thank Bible-believ­ing Chris­tians. You’re wel­come.
6. Ravi Zacharias On The Chris­t­ian View Of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (YouTube): the clip is 11 min­utes long.
7. Where John Piper and Oth­er Evan­gel­i­cals Stand on Black Lives Mat­ter (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Piper also encour­aged white evan­gel­i­cals to ‘pause’ before say­ing any­thing like, ‘All lives mat­ter.’ ‘Because if you quick­ly add that, it sounds like a rebuke,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a min­i­miz­ing of what was just said. It sounds like the point that was try­ing to be made isn’t worth being made,’ he said. ‘… Of course that is true, all lives mat­ter, but oh how tim­ing mat­ters and how con­text mat­ters.’”
8. How Bath­rooms Became the New Legal Bat­tle­ground of the Reli­gious Right (Michelle Gold­berg, Slate): Very slant­ed but inter­est­ing piece. “Polls sug­gest that a slight plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe peo­ple should have to use the bath­rooms that match the sex on their birth cer­tifi­cate. To a lib­er­al, this is evi­dence that more edu­ca­tion is need­ed. To a con­ser­v­a­tive, it’s proof that aver­age people’s pref­er­ences are being tram­pled on.”
9. Amus­ing:
   • What Bias Looks Like (SMBC)
   • Red­di­tor Takes Ten-Minute Break From Brows­ing Porn to Lec­ture Chris­tians On Moral­i­ty (The Baby­lon Bee)
   • Every­thing Local Man Feels Led To Do He Coin­ci­den­tal­ly Real­ly Likes (The Baby­lon Bee)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.