Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 105

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. Alvin Plantinga’s Mas­ter­ful Achieve­ment (William Doino, First Things): “In the 1950’s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher; by the 1990’s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
2. The Man Behind Trump’s Reli­gious-Free­dom Agen­da for Health Care (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Sev­eri­no spent sev­en years in civ­il-rights enforce­ment at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice; before that, he lit­i­gat­ed reli­gious-lib­er­ty cas­es. He has expe­ri­ence. He just doesn’t share the ide­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions of many who work in his field.”
3. Iraqi Chris­tians should not be deport­ed to become vic­tims of ISIS (Bawai Soro, The Hill): “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, for the first time ever, is about to deport to a coun­try under­go­ing an active geno­cide the very peo­ple tar­get­ed in that geno­cide.” See US Pre­pares to Deport Hun­dreds of Iraqi Chris­tians (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) for more details.
4. There is no Thucy­dides Trap (Arthur Wal­dron, Supchi­na): “For the first time this year, my Chi­nese grad­u­ate stu­dents are mar­ry­ing one anoth­er and buy­ing hous­es here. This is a lead­ing indi­ca­tor. If it could be done, the com­ing tsuna­mi would bring 10 mil­lion high­ly qual­i­fied Chi­nese fam­i­lies to the U.S. in 10 years — along with flee­ing crooks, spies, and oth­er flot­sam and jet­sam. Even Xi’s first wife fled Chi­na; she lives in Eng­land.” The author is an IR pro­fes­sor at Penn.
5. Can’t Believe You Think That (Cit­i­zen Of No Mean City): “Maybe next time before dis­miss­ing some­one for their views on this sub­ject we would do well to afford them the dig­ni­ty of hav­ing thought about their posi­tion, and to dig deep­er and ask ‘what has led them to think this way?’ or ‘can I learn from lis­ten­ing to them?’”
6. Six Days and 50 Years of War (Bret Stephens, NY Times): “In June 1967 Arab lead­ers declared their inten­tion to anni­hi­late the Jew­ish state, and the Jews decid­ed they wouldn’t sit still for it. For the crime of self-preser­va­tion, Israel remains a nation unfor­giv­en.”
7. Here are sev­er­al links about a dis­turb­ing moment on Capi­tol Hill:
   • Is It Hate­ful To Believe In Hell? Bernie Sanders’ Ques­tions Prompt Back­lash (Cami­la Domonoske, NPR): “Khalil says belief in hell does not have a clear-cut impli­ca­tion for behav­ior on Earth. ‘If I believe all non-Mus­lims go to hell … it can lead me to look down upon them, see them as just fuel for hell, and not real­ly take them too seri­ous­ly. Or I could be moti­vat­ed to want to save them,” he says, “and be unusu­al­ly kind and nice to them in the hopes that they will con­vert.’”
   • Bernie Sander­s’s Reli­gious Test for Chris­tians in Pub­lic Office (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “It was a remark­able moment: a Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor lec­tur­ing a nom­i­nee for pub­lic office on the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty in a con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing puta­tive­ly about the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get.”
   • The Baby­lon Bee had my favorite take: It Is Per­fect­ly OK For Pub­lic Ser­vants To Be Chris­tians, As Long As They Do Not Believe Chris­t­ian Things.
   • Relat­ed: Tim Far­ron: Chris­t­ian Canary In The Coalmine (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive).

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Excit­ed Par­ents Throw Gen­der Reveal Par­ty For Their Teenag­er (Baby­lon Bee)
• Span­drels (SMBC)

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.