Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 124

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. Nepal Crim­i­nal­izes Chris­t­ian Con­ver­sion and Evan­ge­lism (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last week, Nepal enact­ed a law to curb evan­ge­lism by crim­i­nal­iz­ing reli­gious con­ver­sion, join­ing neigh­bor­ing coun­tries like India and Pak­istan, where the region’s small-but-grow­ing Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty faces gov­ern­ment threats to their faith.”
  2. Police Cam­eras Had No Effect. Why? (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “That data is now in, and it shows that [police body cam­eras] did… basi­cal­ly noth­ing.… This is flab­ber­gast­ing.”
  3. Who Wrote Eccle­si­astes and What Does It Mean? (John Wal­ton, Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic): A good essay over­all, but one of his argu­ments real­ly annoyed me, “The claim in 1:16 and 2:9 that he sur­passed all who were before him in Jerusalem would mean lit­tle if his father were his only pre­de­ces­sor.” Umm… no. There were pre-Israelite kings who reigned in Jerusalem (see Joshua 10, for exam­ple) and the author of Eccle­si­astes is com­par­ing him­self to them as well. 
  4. The Age of Con­sent And Its Dis­con­tents (Ross Douthat, New York Times): Con­sent is an inad­e­quate foun­da­tion for sex­u­al ethics. “…the most self-con­scious­ly pro­gres­sive schools — [tell] us more about the inher­ent prob­lems with ‘con­sent alone’ than does the mess in Hol­ly­wood, because it’s a case where there’s more social equal­i­ty, less boss-on-min­ion pres­sure, and a gen­er­al­ly sex-pos­i­tive cul­ture of exper­i­men­ta­tion … and yet young peo­ple still clear­ly desire and need a sys­tem of rules stronger than con­sent alone to pro­tect them from feel­ing unex­pect­ed rage or shame over how a par­tic­u­lar encounter hap­pened.”
  5. Shrews Shrink Their Heads to Sur­vive Win­ter (Jake Buehler, Giz­mo­do): I some­times for­get how amaz­ing the world is. “The shrews expe­ri­enced some rather incred­i­ble changes, los­ing as much as 20 per­cent of their skulls in the win­ter months, and regain­ing 15 per­cent lat­er in the year…. Along­side the shrink­ing skulls, shrew brains lose a hefty por­tion of their mass, and there is also win­ter reduc­tion in organ size and spine length. In this study, the shrews man­aged to lose about a fifth of their body mass over­all.”
  6.  Pence: US Will Bypass UN and Aid Per­se­cut­ed Iraqi Chris­tians Direct­ly (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is encour­ag­ing. Chris­tians in the Mid­dle East are suf­fer­ing great­ly.
  7. Is the Mod­ern Mass Extinc­tion Over­rat­ed? (Kevin Berg­er, Nau­tilus): Appar­ent­ly new species are form­ing faster than old species are becom­ing extinct. “Yes, we’ve wiped out wool­ly mam­moths and ground sloths, and are fin­ish­ing off black rhi­nos and Siber­ian tigers, but the doom is not all gloom. Myr­i­ad species, thanks in large part to humans who inad­ver­tent­ly trans­port them around the world, have blos­somed in new regions, mat­ed with like species and formed new hybrids that have them­selves gone forth and pros­pered. We’re talk­ing mam­mals, birds, trees, insects, microbes—all your flo­ra and fau­na.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. (first shared in vol­ume 69)

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.

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