Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 94

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Sor­ry, but if you’re a Chris­t­ian, you need to go to church. Reg­u­lar­ly. (Paul Prather, Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader): “You might see your­self as a ter­rif­ic base­ball pitch­er. But if you only throw base­balls in your back­yard at a ply­wood cutout, you won’t progress. You’re not even real­ly play­ing base­ball. To dis­cov­er the full extent of your abil­i­ties, to under­stand the true game, you need a catch­er, a coach, infield­ers and out­field­ers — and even some­one stand­ing in the batter’s box ready to swat your best fast­ball right back at you.”
2. Review­ing Rod Dreher’s “The Bene­dict Option” (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): The Bene­dict Option is a much-dis­cussed book which lays out a strat­e­gy for Chris­tians in the mod­ern world — delib­er­ate with­draw­al from some aspects of cul­ture, delib­er­ate engage­ment with oth­ers. This is one of the most insight­ful reviews I’ve read.
3. Just Who Are These ‘Peo­ple of Faith’ Any­way? (John Stack­house, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Ther­ava­da form of Bud­dhism, still the dom­i­nant ver­sion of that reli­gion in Sri Lan­ka and South­east Asia, does not ven­er­ate a deity. The Chi­nese tra­di­tions of Con­fu­cian­ism and Dao­ism do not, either. Many forms of belief in the super­nat­ur­al do not require faith so much as knowl­edge of the divine and of the cor­rect prac­tices to align one­self with it in order to best nego­ti­ate the world.”
4. Can Reli­gious Char­i­ties Take the Place of the Wel­fare State? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Keis­ter [a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty] has argued that reli­gious engage­ment is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with finan­cial generosity—in a recent paper, for exam­ple, she found that those who attend reli­gious ser­vices every week give near­ly three times as much as those who don’t.”
5. Read the above in con­junc­tion with How Utah Keeps The Amer­i­can Dream Alive (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “The vast wel­fare infra­struc­ture from the Mor­mon Church nat­u­ral­ly makes it eas­i­er to have small­er gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that could be repli­cat­ed by oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. But the val­ues of the Mor­mon Church may cre­ate a pub­lic that sim­ply needs less help. That’s hard­er for anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty to imi­tate. I’m not sure this key ingre­di­ent is avail­able in a sec­u­lar ver­sion; I think reli­gion might only come in reli­gion fla­vor. How the heck is some state gov­ern­ment sup­posed to get peo­ple to mar­ry, and stay mar­ried?”
6. In Europe, cohab­i­ta­tion is stable…right? (Brad Wilcox and Lau­rie DeRose, Brook­ings): “It is easy to see why some con­clude that mar­riage per se does not mat­ter. But here’s the thing: mar­riage is itself strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty. U.S. chil­dren born to cohab­it­ing par­ents are twice as like­ly to see their par­ents’ rela­tion­ship end com­pared to chil­dren born to mar­ried par­ents…”
7. Does it pay to get a dou­ble major? (Chris­tos Makridis, Quartz): our very own Chris­tos ana­lyzes whether get­ting a techie plus a fuzzy major yields a high­er salary than get­ting either alone.
8. Why Amer­i­can Farm­ers Are Hack­ing Their Trac­tors With Ukrain­ian Firmware (Jason Koe­bler, Vice): “It’s quite sim­ple, real­ly. John Deere sold farm­ers their trac­tors, but has used soft­ware to main­tain con­trol of every aspect of its use after the sale.”
   

   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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.