TGFI, Volume 538: missionary spies and Minneapolis reflections

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. God’s Spooks: Religion, Spying, and the Cold War (Matthew Avery Sutton, Church Life Journal): “Since its inception, the CIA has used missionaries and other religious activists for intelligence and espionage work; it has used religion as an effective propaganda tool, and its agents have even posed as clergy. CIA agents and religious activists managed to keep their partnerships mostly hidden until the 1970s. But in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, numerous journalists and then Congress began scrutinizing the agency more closely. They revealed to the world that the CIA had been employing missionaries to further its agenda and that some religious activists were receiving substantial rewards for their work on the government’s behalf. In fact, the CIA and religious activists have long collaborated to achieve numerous policy goals.” 
    • Super fascinating. My denomination receives specific mention: “The Assemblies of God, which had a large and active missionary outreach, quietly instructed workers to avoid CIA collaboration. However, church leaders did not want to go on record publicly against the CIA.”
  2. Report: More than 388 million Christians worldwide face ‘high levels’ of persecution (Gina Christian, OSV News): “More than 388 million Christians — or 1 in 7 believers worldwide — face ‘high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith,’ according to a new report.… Specifically, Open Doors focuses on collecting data on Christian persecution in six key areas: restrictions or dangers on practicing faith in private, family, community, national and church life, as well as the levels of violence — mental, physical and sexual — Christians face in the 150 nations Open Doors monitors. Each area is scored, with each country then receiving an overall score out of 100 for the severity of Christian persecution, with scores of 81–100 designated as ‘extreme,’ 61–80 ‘very high’ and 41–60 ‘high.’”
  3. Not So Secular Sweden (Joel Halldorf, Comment): “In highly secular societies, zoomers tend to be more religious than their boomer parents. Nowhere, the study concluded, was that pattern clearer than in Sweden, once the poster child of secularism.… Sweden once set the global benchmark for secular rationality, and everybody expected the world to follow our path. Now the quiet stirrings of faith here in the north—more confirmations, new memberships, conversations once unthinkable—show that history has a way of humbling even the most confident narratives. Ironclad sociological theories often insist that the current moment is our inevitable future. But history seldom follows straight lines.”
  4. Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13 (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “Moreover, the use of Romans 13 as a refusal to question the morality of a use of force is, ironically enough, a violation of the passage. We might well ask, what would Paul have written if Romans 13 were addressed to the authorities rather than to those under their rule? Well, we actually know the answer, because the same Spirit who breathed out Romans 13 also breathed out John the Baptist’s instructions to tax collectors and soldiers. John told them not to extort money from anyone, implying that they would be held responsible for the misuse of their power (Luke 3:12–14). The same Spirit also favorably portrayed Paul’s interaction with the police who told him and Silas, on behalf of the magistrates, to leave quietly, to which Paul replied, ‘They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out’ (Acts 16:37).”
  5. Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip (Mark Arsenault, New York Times): “The issue at top American universities is not falling production. Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000s — the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University — are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies. But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.… [However,] a study has suggested that Chinese researchers have been boosting their citation rankings by citing one another more often than western researchers tend to cite other westerners.”
  6. How to stop the chaos of college sports (John Calipari, Washington Post): “There is no sustainable path in college athletics that doesn’t address these three things: First, student-athletes should have their opportunities for scholarships protected and get to compete against players who are their age. Second, transfer rules, which now allow players to leave one school for another as often as they’d like, need stability. This will help education remain the heart of colleges and universities. Third, protect the free market and rights of young people to fairly earn what their local markets can offer, which will require more revenue from teams.”
  7. Some reflections on ICE in Minnesota. There are many more floating around the web, and if you find one with good insights or a provocative perspective please let me know about it. 
    • I Joined Ice Watch (Olivia Reingold, The Free Press): “In the last six weeks, Minneapolis has become the site of the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history. Thousands of city residents have responded by joining various Signal groups whose main purpose is to find and disrupt ICE.… These individuals came from all walks of life. I counted at least five public school teachers, a divorce lawyer, two medical professionals, a former ballerina, and even one Minneapolis City Council member: Aurin Chowdhury⁩, a progressive who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023. One local nonprofit leader whose organization resettles refugees told me that the average participants in these Signal groups are church members, retirees, and parents.”
    • Minneapolis Isn’t a Movie (Kat Rosenfield, The Free Press): “Around the same time that Renee Good was shot, a video circulated on TikTok of another confrontation between a group of agents who appear to be U.S. Marshals and an activist with a camera. The activist is a young- to middle-aged woman, as is one of the agents—and when the first woman mentions that her 6‑year-old child is in her car, the agent looks like she’s been electrocuted. ‘You have a child in your car?’ she says, her voice pitching sharply upward, her eyes wide with horror. ‘Get your child off the scene! This is an active police scene!’ It could not be clearer, in this moment, that these women inhabit two different realities. One understands herself to be in a dangerous, high-stakes situation; the other thinks it’s all a sort of game.”
    • The Goon Squad (Nick Cattogio, The Dispatch): “Why on earth is the administration announcing its operations before they happen?… It makes no sense as a strategy for effective law enforcement—but lots of sense as a pageant of domineering law-and-order assertiveness. The Trump administration wants confrontation. Its top priority isn’t to unobtrusively detain and remove the most dangerous immigrants, as the deportation numbers prove. Its priority is to intimidate its cultural enemies with heavy-handed displays of authority and promises of official impunity for those who carry them out. That’s why ICE wears masks, a privilege even U.S. combat troops don’t enjoy, and why some agents are kitted out in camouflage despite the fact that they’re not trying to ‘blend in’ to their urban surroundings. (There’s nothing stealthy about ICE.) They’re not enforcing the law, they’re going into battle. And their anonymity signals, to you and to them, that no one will hold them accountable for what happens during that battle if you make trouble.”
    • One State, Two Very Different Views of Minneapolis (Sheila M. Eldred, Elizabeth A. Stawicki, Ann Hinga Klein and Kurt Streeter, New York Times): “Ms. Good’s death was tragic, they said. Horrific. But they also said that she had asked for trouble. ‘You obey the law officer,’ a man in a veteran’s ball cap said, ‘and question it later.’ This is the divide, in a single sentence. In Minneapolis, protesters saw an innocent woman killed by a federal agent and took to the streets. At ‘the Pickle,’ the regulars saw a woman who should have complied.”

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 537: Hippo Poop & Manic Complainers

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Nothing here about Minnesota or Iran. They’re both in the news, but I haven’t yet read anything about them that I’ve found stimulating.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Tyranny of the Complainers (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “In 2023, for example, 5059 sexual discrimination complaints came from a single individual–from a total of 8151 complaints. Thus, one individual accounted for 68.5% of all sexual discrimination complaints in that year.… These complaints have to be investigated so this single individual may be costing taxpayers millions. It’s as if a single individual were pulling a fire alarm thousands of times a year, mobilizing emergency services on demand, and never facing repercussions.”
  2. What I’ve Learned from Watching People Wait to Have Children (Sarah Poggi, The Free Press): “I’ve known all of this for as long as I’ve been a doctor. So have my colleagues. That’s why ob-gyn residents, despite working 80-hour weeks, are more likely to get pregnant during their training than any other medical specialists.” 
    • The author is a med school prof at Johns Hopkins.
  3. Why Suffering for Christ Is More Than Just a “Necessary Evil” (Matt Rhodes, Crossway): “You won’t go far in evangelistic conversations in the West today before someone asks you to explain the problem of theodicy: how it is that a good God could allow suffering in the world.… But we mustn’t forget that questions can be loaded. Ask a defendant in court, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?’ and his lawyer is sure to object, ‘Your honor, the question presupposes my client has beaten his wife.’ The question needs to be reframed, not responded to.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  4. Why Christians Ignore What the Bible Says About Immigrants (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “The Bible does not give a comprehensive public policy for migration or asylum. Christians of good faith can disagree on those things. But the Bible does give a comprehensive view on what we are to think of human beings, including migrants. The church has a mission to shape consciences around how we minister to scared and vulnerable people, regardless of whether we think they should have stayed somewhere else. And Jesus has already taken the question of ‘Who is my neighbor?’ off the table…”
  5. Some Venezuela perspectives: 
    • Was Trump’s Venezuela Attack Legal? (Jeb Rubenfeld, The Free Press): “Under current U.S. doctrine and precedent, what President Donald Trump just did in Venezuela is almost certainly legal; in fact, the U.S. did the very same thing in Panama four decades ago, and the courts upheld it after years of litigation and careful consideration. But Trump’s plan to ‘run’ Venezuela for the foreseeable future, declared at a press conference earlier today, is much murkier.” 
      • The author is a professor at Yale Law School.
    • Why the Venezuela Operation Won’t Embolden America’s Enemies (Eli Lake, The Free Press): “If anything, a precise military operation to seize a rogue tyrant in a predawn raid with no U.S. casualties will cause China and Russia to think twice about testing American power. Venezuela counted on a Russian-made air defense system that failed to stop the U.S. Air Force from dominating its airspace. That sends a chilling message to Russia and anyone who has purchased its military hardware. China had invested billions in Venezuela’s oil sector only to see the man who cut those deals arraigned this week before a U.S. federal court in Manhattan.”
    • Why I Cold-Called President Trump at 4:30 in the Morning (Tyler Pager, New York Times): “I just called him directly and he picked up. I wasn’t that surprised because the president’s phone habits are pretty well-documented — he regularly picks up calls from reporters.… This is the first time I have ever called the president on his cellphone.” 
      • That’s a wild detail in a wild news cycle. How many reporters have Trump’s number and are just waiting for the right moment to call? 
  6. So What If the Bible Doesn’t Mention Embryo Screening? (Brad East, Christianity Today): “Open up the glossary in the back of your Bible, and you won’t find ChatGPT, CRISPR, or IVF. There are no chapter-and-verse citations for lip fillers, egg freezing, or practical questions like the ‘right’ age to get married or the ‘ideal’ number of children.… Mature Christians, and especially pastors and whole churches, must therefore be able to give confident scriptural answers to new questions even when overt biblical teaching is lacking.” 
    • I hope these Friday emails are of some small service in this regard.
  7. The Case for Prohibiting Vice (Charles Fain Lehmann, National Affairs): “This framing of the vice issue — as a matter of permitting behavior that may be immoral but is more importantly ‘harmless’ — is so central to our public debate that both proponents and opponents articulate their criticisms in its language. They haggle about which is more harmful, vice or its prohibition.… the fact that both proponents and opponents of vice have resorted to appeals to harm actually greatly undermines the harm principle’s utility. Part of the purpose of the principle is to separate the truly damaging from the merely unliked. But the distinction, it turns out, is far less coherent than proponents once claimed.… [Vice] is intrinsically a problem, because human well-being — the good life — is always threatened by it.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 536: Christian nationalism and Jesus in Home Alone

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

As the year comes to a close, remember that this post is the overflow of a nonprofit ministry. Compiling these links is something I do for the students I minister to at Stanford University, sharing it here is just me making it available more broadly. You can donate to support the ministry if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock). Don’t give to pay for the content — it only takes me five minutes a week to take the email I send to the Chi Alpha students and reformat it for this platform. If you choose to give, give because you believe in the mission of reaching Stanford students with a thoughtful gospel message.

And that’s the last time I’ll share about that here until next December.

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email blesses you and helps you think about God and our world more clearly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Gift link: What We Get Wrong About Christian Nationalism (Molly Worthen, New York Times): “I got a taste of this variety and disagreement when I visited King’s Park International Church in Durham, N.C. Christians there look for God to heal the sick, reveal prophetic messages and perform other signs and wonders. The stranger thing, perhaps, is that both Republicans and Democrats attend. The church’s 120 elders, deacons and employees are split ‘about half and half, Republican and Democrat,’ Reggie Roberson, the pastor, told me. The several hundred people who worship at King’s Park on an average Sunday are a mix of races, national backgrounds, ages and income levels.” 
    • Worth a read. Dr. Worthen is, of course, a well-known adult convert to Christianity. While she writes positively about charismatic Christians here, she herself is more of a Southern Baptist. She’s a professor of history at UNC.
  2. Gift link: Christianity Is a Dangerous Faith (David French, New York Times): “There is an unspoken implication that people would actually like Christians if we behaved more like Christ. But no. That’s demonstrably wrong. It’s true that people want to receive love and compassion, and that when they encounter Christians who love them and serve them, they tend to like them. Many people do not, however, appreciate it when a Christian loves and serves their enemies. They absolutely do not like it when a Christian refuses to join their political crusade.”
  3. Some international Christmas stories: 
    • This Christmas will be even harder for China’s Christians (Christian Shepherd and Huiyee Chiew, Washington Post): “While Zion has faced the most pressure, about half a dozen other unregistered churches have been subject to police raids as well. Last week, hundreds of police officers in riot gear descended on a small town in Zhejiang province and arrested two local pastors and dozens of Christians, according to videos and accounts of the incident shared with The Washington Post.… ‘The government is inherently suspicious of religious communities, especially Christian groups,’ said Karrie Koesel, an associate professor specializing in Chinese politics and religion at the University of Notre Dame. Beijing views organized religion that promotes an alternative worldview and ‘answers to a higher power’ as potentially an existential threat to its grip on power, Koesel said. Churches, mosques and other places of worship have faced intense pressure to accept strict government oversight. State-approved religious leaders must submit their sermons and publications for approval to ensure that they teach the ‘correct understanding’ of theology.”
    • Gaza’s tiny Christian community tries to capture the holiday spirit during the ceasefire (Mariam Fam, Associated Press): “Tarazi and much of the rest of Gaza’s tiny Palestinian Christian community are trying to capture some of the season’s spirit despite the destruction and uncertainty that surround them. He clings to hope and the faith that he said has seen him through the war. ‘I feel like our joy over Christ’s birth must surpass all the bitterness that we’ve been through,’ he said. He’s been sheltering for more than two years at the Holy Family Church compound in Gaza.… He prays for peace and freedom for the Palestinian people. ‘Our faith and our joy over Christ’s birth are stronger than all circumstances,’ he said.”
  4. How the Bible Helped Smash the Crown (Meir Soloveichik, The Free Press): “Our politics is consumed by culture wars linked to religion—religious freedom is a subject dominating debates in the Supreme Court. But the fact remains that shorn of biblical faith, no cogent explanation can be given for the doctrine of equality that lies at the heart of the American creed. Indeed, the other sources of antiquity to which the Founders turned for inspiration—the philosophers of Greece and the statesmen of Rome—denied human equality and held a worldview that there were those destined to rule and others born to serve.”
  5. Discovering God in Hamas tunnels, hostages led a national trend (Dina Kraft, Christian Science Monitor): “Several recent studies in Israel back up anecdotal evidence of an uptick in religious connection in response to Oct. 7 and the war that followed. In a poll by Hiddush, an organization that advocates for the separation of religion and state, 25% of respondents said those seminal events strengthened their faith in God. Fifty-five percent said they had not impacted their faith, and 7% said they had weakened it. Researchers at The Hebrew University found in a survey of students that one-third experienced an increase in spirituality, while 9% said it decreased.”
  6. The diversity overcorrection in the workplace (Megan McArdle, Washington Post): “For some mysterious reason, people consistently overestimate the minority share of the population, which made the Whiteness of newsrooms, Hollywood studios and academic departments look more unfair than it was.… even if [there had not been past discrimination], newsrooms, writer’s rooms and classrooms would have been very White because most Americans born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were White. I suspect people forgot about these cohort effects because so much of the DEI discourse came up around college admissions, where diversity can be achieved relatively speedily: admit a racially balanced class four years in a row, and voilà, you ‘look like America.’ But a large corporate employer often has a workforce spanning 40 years, not four. Rebalancing that through representative hiring would take decades. The DEI champions didn’t want to wait that long.” 
    • McArdle’s point about the difference between corporations and universities is an important one. It also explains why undergraduate populations are far more diverse than university faculty and administrations.
  7. Gift link: The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore (Adam Frank, The Atlantic): “To truly understand living systems as self-organized, autonomous agents, physicists need to abandon their ‘just the particles, ma’am’ mentality. One of physicists’ great talents—starting with the laws of simple parts (such as atoms) and working up to a complex whole—cannot fully account for cells, animals, or people.” 
    • The author is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 535: marrying young and the depths of Tolkien

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Brother I Lost (Megan McArdle, The Dispatch): “For as long as I can remember, I have believed that a woman should be able to decide whether to become a mother, and also believed that the life growing inside her should get the same shot as the rest of us at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Since these two beliefs are fundamentally incompatible, I usually managed the contradiction by avoiding the subject.”
  2. Tough Love: I Don’t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Married (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): “In case you don’t know how most young women your daughter’s age are spending their twenties, allow me to fill you in: surfing dating apps, growing more cynical and jaded by the year, maintaining ‘situationships’ with hot guys who sleep with them whenever it suits them and vanish when it doesn’t. An entire generation of young women are letting their most formative, eligible decade slip through their fingers like olive oil. A hundred first dates. Dozens of booty calls. Learning little—because you cannot learn much from a non-relationship—calling it ‘self-knowledge’ while gaining nothing but UTIs and a drawerful of Plan B.… the truth is: No one’s ever mature enough for marriage. No one’s ever entirely ready. Nor for the labors and joys of motherhood. We splash through these stages a little batty and half-blind. If we meet the demands, they change us. That much is inevitable. But until we start to swim, we never really know we can.” 
    • Magnificent, recommended to me by an alumnus.
  3. The Lost Generation (Jacob Savage, Compact Magazine): “Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.… Most of the men I interviewed started out as liberals. Some still are. But to feel the weight of society’s disfavor can be disorienting. We millennials were true believers in race and gender-blind meritocracy, which for all its faults—its naïveté about human nature, its optimism in the American Dream—was far superior to what replaced it. And to see that vision so spectacularly betrayed has engendered a skepticism toward the entire liberal project that won’t soon disappear.” 
    • The virality of this article (and the host of responses it has engendered) suggests that it has hit a nerve.
  4. AI romance blooms as Japanese woman weds virtual partner of her dreams (Kim Kyung-Hoon & Satoshi Sugiyama, Reuters): “A year ago, Noguchi took ChatGPT’s advice about what she said was a fraught relationship with her human fiance and resolved to break off their engagement.… Yasuyuki Sakurai, a wedding planner for more than 20 years, said he now almost exclusively handles marriages of clients with virtual characters, averaging about one a month.” 
    • Shared with me by a horrified student.
  5. What Courage Does for Us (David French, New York Times): “An emphasis on accomplishment can actually breed cowardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bullets (real or figurative) start to fly. Sure, the hero can rise to the top, but he or she can also end up dead, and you can’t be a president or a chief executive or a member of Congress from the grave.” 
    • Unlocked.
    • Related, also unlocked: The Secret Trial of the General Who Refused to Attack Tiananmen Square (Chris Buckley, New York Times): “ ‘I said to them that my superiors can appoint me, and they can also dismiss me,’ he recounted in court, seeming to indicate that he was willing to lose his job over his decision. One of the generals at the meeting, Dai Jingsheng, told investigators that he and his colleagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed General Xu’s defiance. ‘Nobody expected words like this from Xu,”‘said General Dai, according to the testimony. Under questioning, General Xu acknowledged that the military answered to China’s Communist Party leaders. But he suggested that it should also be subject to a broader authority.”
    • Also related: Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the United States (Atlas Luk, Substack): “His asylum application, which had an interview pending, his valid work permit, his New York State driver’s license… in the eyes of ICE, all of these were worthless because he had ‘entered without inspection’ by customs. With the Trump administration cracking down on illegal immigration, Broome County Jail was overcrowded. Months passed, and Guan Heng waited anxiously and dejectedly for the outcome of his case. No one knew what this young man from China had gone through in the past few years; nor did anyone know that the images he had filmed of the Xinjiang detention camps, at great personal risk, provided crucial evidence of the Chinese authorities’ actions against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. Or that if he were to be deported, he would be facing immense danger.”
  6. Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth (Michael D.C. Drout, New York Times): “Subtle variations in Tolkien’s writing style across its 62 chapters generate the impression that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a compilation of other texts. This pattern is largely invisible even to careful readers, but new methods of computer-assisted analysis throw it into sharp relief. An algorithm can compare the vocabularies of the chapters and cluster those that are similar.… Its chapters group in a complex hierarchy with three large groupings and several outliers, a pattern of clustering not typical for a modern novel. It is closer in form to multiauthor composite texts from the Middle Ages. Not only do the clusters not match the point-of-view characters; they don’t seem to be related to volume, book, setting, type of action or pacing.… This stylistic variation was, at least initially, completely unintentional, a byproduct of Tolkien’s laborious and agonizing 17-year effort to complete the book. Tolkien had aimed to make ‘The Lord of the Rings’ feel as if it had been discovered and assembled; the frame narrative of the book is that it’s a translation of a diary that was expanded into a history and augmented by later scholars. His struggles, providentially, helped him achieve that effect.” 
    • Fascinating stuff. The whole essay is deeply personal and quite moving. The author is an English professor at Wheaton. Unlocked.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Last-Minute Gift Ideas For Middle-Aged Dudes

This is my third year of posting gift ideas for hard-to-shop for guys the week before Christmas. The 2024 and 2023 lists are still full of good ideas (they’re both embedded below), so check those out if none of these items catch your fancy.

I’m not recycling some random lists I saw online. Everything below is stuff I got myself since I posted the last list, so I am giving firsthand testimony that I as a middle-aged dude (a) own and (b) am pleased as punch with all of these items. Btw, none of these are affiliate links. This isn’t a side hustle, just an act of helpfulness.

  1. Collar Extenders are really great if you have a dress shirt that feels tight when you button the top button. They’re kinda magical. About $8.
  2. An Anker Extension Cord/Power Cube — this thing is great when you’re traveling. My hotel rooms never have enough outlets (or they’re in a weird place). I love this thing for how compact and useful it us. Has both regular outlets as well as USB ports for charging devices. Around $20.
  3. Ear Wax Removal Camera — I love this device so much. It would be handy for any task that requires seeing into a weird space (like trying to find a screw that fell into some machinery), but I use it for ear wax and it delivers. About $10.
  4. Silicone Body Scrubber — I have long been annoyed with so-called “shower-flowers” and I stumbled upon this device. Works perfectly and is way more durable than other solutions I have tried. This is the one I bought, but scrolling down to “products related to this item” I see lots of interesting alternative designs. Probably a weird standalone gift, but it could be nice as a stocking stuffer. This one is about $6.
  5. Business For The Common Good — I do a fair amount of reading in the faith & work space, and I don’t love most of what I read. It’s often superficial on either the business side or the spiritual side. This is one of the books I had to read for my doctoral program and it is solid on both fronts. I liked it more than anything else I’ve read on this topic. Around $12.
  6. A Rug With A Custom Logo — you could put your family initials or even a family or pet photo on here. I made the round one with the Chi Alpha circular logo and it sparks joy. The rug itself is not super high-quality, but the vibe it creates makes me happy. $17 and won’t arrive in time for Christmas, but file it away for an upcoming birthday or something.

I hope at least one of these helps you out with any last-minute shopping (or inspires you to buy a lil’ something for yourself). Again, the last two years’ lists are still helpful. See below. Also — Merry Christmas!

Glen’s 2024 list:

More Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

Glen’s 2023 list:

Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

TGFI, volume 534: unfulfilled hopes and why the ESV is overrated

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

This week was especially difficult to narrow down to just 7 top-level groupings.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Hoping for Rightly Ordered Desires (O. Alan Noble, Substack): “One of the most difficult truths to internalize in this life is that you are not promised all that you desire, even when your desires are rightly ordered. For example, you may desire friendship or a spouse or children or a job, and none of them are given to you. Or at least, not on the timeline you expect. Each of these are good desires, and when you desire them rightly (not excessively, not before God, not as idols, not selfishly), they are good things to desire and work towards. But God, in his perfect will, does not promise to give us all our earthly desires.”
  2. Bureaucratizing Faith (Stephen Eide, Library of Law & Liberty): “Those concerned about anti-Christian bias often frame the FBO [faith-based organizations] question as a religious liberty matter. That framing only clarifies whether religious groups can contract with government. It’s less helpful in determining whether they should. In general, an organization spiritually motivated to serve the poor may take public money to do so, as long as it doesn’t discriminate based on sect and doesn’t use taxpayer dollars to evangelize. But evangelism is precisely how FBOs reach some people failed by secular programs.” 
    • I really liked this essay. Lots of great insights.
  3. To Be Honest.. I’m Struggling with the ESV (Lorenzo Figueroa Cusick, Substack): “The ESV has been revised the following times: 2001, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2016, 2025.  And when it is revised, it always claims to be simply modest changes to better improve ‘accuracy and clarity’ (according to Crossway). We can applaud when a Bible publisher wants to make the Bible even better for its users. Where it gets weird is the fact that they don’t identify (like the NASB, for example) when they do revise it. They don’t label it the ESV2001, ESV2002, ESV2007, etc. This leads to situations where the Bible in your library or church bag is different from the one used by the church.” 
    • The ESV is a perfectly adequate translation — but some of the people who love it love it way too much. I prefer the NIV and the NET (which each have their own drawbacks, because no translation is perfect).
  4. Sorry, Liz Gilbert, Married Women Are (Increasingly) Happiest of All (Sophie Anderson and Brad Wilcox, Institute for Family Studies): “There’s only one problem with the progressive case against marriage and family for women: It’s completely wrong. Today, married women live longer, earn more, and report more meaning in their lives, compared to single women. They are also markedly happier than their single peers, according to recent research by psychologist Jean Twenge and colleagues.… liberal married moms are dramatically more likely to say they are happy with their lives, compared to their single and childless peers.” 
    • Related (at least in my mind): How monogamous are humans? A study ranks us between meerkats and beavers. (Victoria Craw, Washington Post): “Previous work on the role of monogamy in human societyhas relied on fossil records or comparison of marriage norms across cultures, Dyble said. His research studied the data from human populations and nonhuman mammal species to find rates of full siblings, meaning those born to the same mother and father.… Analysis of nearly 2 million human sibling relationships and more than 60,000 mammal relationships showed that the proportion of full siblings in the human groups ‘clusters closely’ with rates seen in socially monogamous animals and ‘consistently exceeds rates seen in non-monogamous mammals,’ Dyble wrote. He said the data showed there was a stark difference between groups that were considered socially monogamous and nonmonogamous, based on definitions from a 2013 study by Cambridge researchers.”
  5. Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “What Meta shows me is what Meta most want me to see, which is whatever their prediction models believe will get me to spend as much time on their apps as possible. The algorithms serve the company’s ends, not my ends. If Meta wanted to know what I want to see, it could ask me. The technology has long existed for users to shape their own recommendations. These companies do not offer us control over what we see because they do not want us to have it. They do not want to be bound by who we seek to be tomorrow.” 
    • A good essay with a poor title. Recommended.
  6. No, You Are Not on Indigenous Land (Noah Smith, Substack): “Once the logic of land acknowledgments and ‘decolonization’ is followed, it leads very quickly to some very dark futures.… The general principle here is that instead of a dark world of ethnic cleansing in the name of ‘decolonization,’ we should try to build a bright future where Native Americans and the United States of America exist in harmony and cooperation rather than in conflict.” 
    • Recommended even if you think you know what it will say based on the title and the excerpt. The article has some surprises.
  7. The Making of a Techno-Nationalist Elite (Tanner Greer, American Affairs): “The economic, social, and political activities of the Eastern Establishment were mutually reinforcing pillars of a larger program. Members of the Establishment used the wealth generated by new technologies to secure political influence, used that influence to sustain a national market and legal framework geared for yet more technological expansion, and then presided over a conscious effort to preserve and transmit the values of their class to future generations, ensuring that the unity and discipline they gained in shared struggle would not dissipate amid power and prosperity. Through these means, a techno-nationalist elite guided America’s development for more than seventy years. Under its stewardship, the United States became the world’s wealthiest, most industrially advanced, and most powerful nation: a true technological republic.… Behind the Eastern Establishment stood a dense web of personal ties that bound its families together. Many of these ties were consummated, quite literally, on the marriage bed. Karp and Zamiska are loathe to think in these terms. They write a great deal about the engineering elite’s waning commitment to Western civilization, but they have little to say about its waning commitment to raising the next generation of that civilization. The Eastern Establishment was self-consciously reproductive: it built schools, endowed universities, and founded literal dynasties. Part of building ‘a shared culture … that will make possible our continued survival’ is creating the children who will survive us.” 
    • Excellent. Long but recommended. Also, OUCH. The closing four paragraphs of this book review are absolutely brutal.

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 533: college disability, European dysfunction, and cloning

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Misunderstanding Porn (Matthew Loftus, Mere Orthodoxy): “There are many ways in which people misunderstand porn, but perhaps the best way to summarize the corrections necessary is to say that porn is not the same as physical sex and porn addiction is not merely a matter of sexual temptation.… Why can’t a porn addict’s habit be broken by sex with his wife? The simplest answer is to ask another question: could a Christian husband’s temptation to idolatry be broken by sex with his wife? Of course not. Neither would his anger or pride. It is like asking if a person addicted to cocaine could have their desire satisfied by eating a delicious steak.”
  2. Accommodation Nation (Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic): “Over the past decade and a half, however, the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations—often, extra time on tests—has grown at a breathtaking pace. At the University of Chicago, the number has more than tripled over the past eight years; at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15 years.… Paul Graham Fisher, a Stanford professor who served as co-chair of the university’s disability task force, told me, ‘I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?’ This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.”
  3. I Set A Trap To Catch Students Cheating With AI. The Result Was Deflating (Will Teague, Huffington Post): “I received 122 paper submissions. Of those, the Trojan horse easily identified 33 AI-generated papers. I sent these stats to all the students and gave them the opportunity to admit to using AI before they were locked into failing the class. Another 14 outed themselves. In other words, nearly 39% of the submissions were at least partially written by AI.… Let me tell you why the Trojan horse worked. It is because students do not know what they do not know.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  4. The Bible Is on Trial in Europe (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “Räsänen has been a member of parliament in Finland since 1995. She’s also a member of the nation’s Evangelical Lutheran Church—which in 2019 announced its official sponsorship of an LGBT Pride event. In response, she wrote: ‘How can the Church’s doctrinal foundation, the #Bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of pride?’ She posted this comment alongside a picture of the Bible verse Romans 1:27, which describes homosexuality as shameful: ‘Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.’ The next day, she opened her morning newspaper to find out that she was being investigated by police for hate speech.… During her time as minister of the Interior of Finland, between 2011 and 2015, she’d overseen the police. Now, they were interrogating her as an official part of an investigation—one that has dragged on ever since, finally reaching the Supreme Court of Finland last month.”
  5. 4 Ways to Avoid Sexual Sin (Sam Allberry, Crossway): “Life has a grain to it. Like paper and wood, it has its own inbuilt directionality. The universe is fashioned in such a way that it has an underlying structure. It follows a certain pattern with certain contours. In order to live well we need to live in a way that runs with this grain and not against it. This is where the book of Proverbs comes in.” 
    • Recommended by a student. 
  6. The Tragic Hysteria of Abortion (Bryan Caplan, Substack): “Yes, the vast majority of women who get abortions are glad they got them. But once they meet their babies, the vast majority of women denied abortions discover that they totally want their babies. This massive status quo bias makes it hard to simply ‘trust women.’ Which women should we trust — the ones who aborted, or the ones who couldn’t? But in the end, it is the women who were denied abortion who are more reliable. If shy people who don’t go to a party are glad they stayed home, and equally shy people who were pressured to go to a party are equally glad they went, the most natural interpretation is that the party-goers learned a valuable life lesson — and the home-stayers should have gone to the party.… Hysterically aborting your baby because you falsely believe the baby will ruin your life isn’t merely morally wrong; it is tragic. Why? Because before long, you almost surely would have loved that baby.” 
    • An interesting approach to the abortion debate, especially since the author emphasizes that he is “an atheist of the highest order.”
  7. As a Twin, I’m Offended by Cloning (Leonora Barclay, Persuasion): “Who wouldn’t want their precious companion back, especially in cute puppy form? Yet I’m cynical of the promise of pet cloning. It’s simply not true that clones are, in any meaningful sense, the same as the original. I’m an identical twin—a natural clone. Identical twins are even more similar to each other than a clone is to its DNA donor, because they often share the same upbringing and environment. Yet, as I know first-hand, that doesn’t mean our personalities are the same.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner Interviews Santa Claus (Mike Drucker, McSweeeney’s Internet Tendency): “I recently spoke with Santa Claus, who is currently coordinating his staff of immortal blue-collar elves, about the morality of children and his friendship with a creature whom many carolers consider a war criminal: Krampus.”
  • In 1982, a physics joke gone wrong sparked the invention of the emoticon (Benji Edwards, Ars Technica): “On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer science research assistant professor Scott Fahlman posted a message to the university’s bulletin board software that would later come to shape how people communicate online. His proposal: use 🙂 and 🙁 as markers to distinguish jokes from serious comments. While Fahlman describes himself as ‘the inventor… or at least one of the inventors’ of what would later be called the smiley face emoticon, the full story reveals something more interesting than a lone genius moment.”
  • I was stabbed in the back with a real knife while performing Julius Caesar (Olly Hawes, The Guardian): “Dressed in our togas, with the stage dark and moody, we began the fight as usual. Then something went wrong. There was a sharp piercing feeling. The knife was supposed to have been quietly slipped to me – instead, it had gone into my back. I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.”
  • Art Of The Deal: Man Negotiates Mechanic Down From $75 Oil Change To $2,000 Full Brakes And Rotors Replacement (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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 532: Thanksgiving plus the intersection of astrophysics and Christmas

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The 19th-Century Influencer Who Invented Thanksgiving (LuElla D’Amico, The Dispatch): “Hale wanted something different—not in opposition to the Fourth of July, but in addition to it. She believed the nation needed a day centered not on military victory, but on home, gratitude, and shared belonging. Again, this is why she doesn’t fit neatly into our ideological bins. She championed national unity, yet she believed that domestic life—largely women’s work in the 19th century—could mold a republic just as importantly as more public-facing work. If the Fourth of July taught independence, Hale believed Thanksgiving could teach interdependence: that a nation is sustained not only by the freedoms we fight for, but by the commitments we keep to one another around a shared table.” 
    • Super interesting. Even more interesting: she wrote “Mary Had A Little Lamb” — WOW. Established Thanksgiving and wrote a beloved childhood rhyme — what an absolute legend!
  2. How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails (Anand Giridharadas, New York Times): “People are right to sense that, as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good.… Generally, you can’t read other people’s emails. Powerful people have private servers, I.T. staffs, lawyers. When you get a rare glimpse into how they actually think and view the world, what they actually are after, heed Maya Angelou: Believe them.”
  3. A monument to answered prayer begins to rise in a secularizing England (Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service): “Last week, Gamble, 56, broke ground on that vision — a 168-foot-tall architectural landmark that is expected to be one of the largest Christian monuments in England, if not the world. (Christ the Redeemer, the iconic statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, is 98 feet.) It is planned to open to the public in 2028. The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, with a price tag of 45 million pounds (or $59 million), will not, however, feature any familiar Christian icons such a cross, a fish, a lamb or a representation of Jesus. Instead it will consist of a giant white Möbius strip stretching nearly the size of a football field, upon which a million small rectangular bricks will be overlaid, each with a digitally linked story of answered prayer accessible on a mobile app.” 
  4. What Thanksgiving Means to Me (Garry Kasparov, Persuasion): “The notion of a free society is abstract. Thanksgiving celebrates abundance, and abundance is tangible. You can taste it. Smell it. Hear it. The turkey and mashed potatoes on your plate, the chatter with loved ones, whom you’re free to visit—these are the fruits of a free society.”
  5. The Nones Project: Well Being (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The most apparent result from this graph is that Christians do express a demonstrably higher level of life satisfaction compared to the non-religious in the sample. On the scale from 1–7, both Catholics and Protestants scored an average of 5.2. That’s just slightly above ‘somewhat satisfied.’ Among the nones, the group that was clearly the most satisfied were the Nones in Name Only (NiNos) at 5.0. Slightly below that were the Dones at 4.85, then the SBNRs [Spiritual But Not Religious] at 4.75. The group that easily scored the lowest of all four types were the Zealous Atheists at 4.57.”
    • Emphasis removed for readability. Reading the article and looking at the data, I think the Dones do come off a little worse than Burge concludes. He doesn’t explain it in this article, but the Nones in Name Only are people who check “nothing in particular” on surveys but who nonetheless regularly do religious things — envision someone who comes consistently to church but isn’t actually sure if they consider themselves Christian.
  6. The Incarnation Sheds Light on Astrophysics (Deborah Haarsma, Christianity Today): “When Jesus was conceived in Mary, he took on atoms from her—as we all do from our mothers—and those atoms had histories stretching far beyond our solar system. Those atoms assembled into genes to give shape to his bones and blood and into organic chemicals shared with all life on earth. Each cell of Jesus’ body embodies his love for his creation—not only humans but also the animals, plants, mountains, and rivers often mentioned in Scripture. His very atoms once glowed in beautiful nebulae and powerful supernovae in the far reaches of space. Indeed, when God took on human form, he took on all of creation.”
  7. Why Euthanasia Feels Intuitive (Tim Challies, blog): “Because aging and death are the ultimate means through which we prove we have no true autonomy and through which we lose our independence, euthanasia is a means of avoiding what is difficult, humiliating, or seemingly intolerable. In this way, euthanasia is a natural or perhaps inevitable result of Western culture.… Though this is already plenty troubling, here is something that troubles me even more: Having been raised in this society, my instincts intuitively accept euthanasia. I do not want others to make my decisions for me and I do not wish to become dependent upon them. In fact, I would feel a significant degree of guilt were I to need others to care for me, to be inconvenienced on my behalf, or to have them put their own dreams on hold in order to ensure my provision. There is an abhorrent way in which it all just makes sense, in which my instincts accept it as good, or as acceptable, at least.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Mom Continues Longstanding Tradition Of Making Cranberry Sauce For No One (Babylon Bee)
  • Jesus Bot Is Always on Demand (for a Small Monthly Fee) (Jessica Grose, New York Times): “This version of Jesus looks like he stepped off the cover of a romance novel and sounds like a management consultant. He offers the same kind of canned guidance that I could get from a LinkedIn hustle bro, with a dash of Scripture and an upsell (a home screen widget with personalized verses for just $39.99 a year!) attached.” 
    • This probably should go in the section above, but I only like to have seven links up there.
  • Bedtime Prayers (Pearls Before Swine):  Nov 18, 2025
  • Soul Mate (Pearls Before Swine): Nov 21, 2025
  • Thai woman found alive in coffin after being brought in for cremation (Associated Press): “Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager, told The Associated Press on Monday that the 65-year-old woman’s brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated. He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin. ‘I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,’ he said. ‘I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.’”

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Giving Thanks is Christlike

I hope you’re on track for a wonderful Thanksgiving! Paula and I are prepping to host a bunch of Stanford students who couldn’t get home for the holidays.

Thanksgiving is not a Christian holiday in the same way that Christmas is, but it is a holiday that I am always delighted to celebrate because gratitude is one of the most important Christian virtues. The phrases “give/given/giving/gave thanks” occur 28 times in the NIV translation of the New Testament. Half of those times it is Jesus Himself giving thanks, so to give thanks is Christlike.1

So be grateful this week and always! This Thanksgiving, I pray you feast upon delightful food while surrounded by people you love and that the delectableness of the desserts is only exceeded by the quantity of the laughter. May gratitude fill your heart and animate your mouth.

  1. Here are the fourteen times (scattered across ten passages) the phrases “given/gave thanks” are used in reference to Jesus. Interestingly, they are all related to food.
    * Matthew 14:19 — And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.
    * Matthew 15:36 — Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people.
    * Matthew 26:26–27 — While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.”
    * Mark 6:41 — Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all.
    * Mark 8:6–7 — He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them.
    * Mark 14:22–23 — While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
    * Luke 9:16 — Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people.
    * Luke 22:17, 19 — After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you.… And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
    * Luke 24:30 — When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
    * John 6:23 — Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. ↩︎

TGFI Volume 531: Christianity improves longevity, plus some smart people who believe

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. More Than a Magic Pill (Kathryn Butler, Christianity Today): “Church attendance reduces all-cause mortality by nearly 30 percent over a 15-year period and protects woman against suicide by 400 percent. Weekly churchgoing in women over 40 is as protective against death as annual mammograms, McLaughlin writes. Those attending services more than weekly at age 20 have ‘a roughly seven-year greater life expectancy than their nonchurchgoing peers.’ Churchgoing protects against alcohol, smoking, and drug abuse and decreases the odds of depression by one-third.” 
    • I been sayin’ it. Preach!
  2. Alvin Plantinga, God’s Philosopher (Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today): “In the 1950s there was not a single published defense of religious belief by a prominent philosopher,” said philosopher Kelly James Clark, one of Plantinga’s students. “By the 1990s 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.”
  3. The Making of an Elite: Japanese Christians (Cremieux, Substack): “It’s probably surprising to hear that 20% of the post-World War II Prime Ministers of Japan before the newly-elected Sanae Takaichi have been Christian. Out of those 35 Prime Ministers since 1945, Shigeru Yoshida and Tarō Asō were Catholic, and Tetsu Katayama, Ichirō Hatoyama, Masayoshi Ōhira, Shigeru Ishiba, and Yukio Hatoyama were various flavors of Protestant. How this happens in a country that’s less than 1% Christian and in which there’s significant anti-Christian discrimination is perplexing, but I think it makes sense given how today’s Japanese Christians came to be.” 
    • Fascinating reading. The role of the samurai was very unexpected to me!
  4. How Two Times Reporters Cover Christianity in a Polarized America (Patrick Healy, Elizabeth Dias & Ruth Graham, New York Times): “I think a lot about which details to include in a story, and how I’m describing people and scenes. Part of fairness is not taking cheap shots by subtly depicting one side as backward or unsophisticated, for example. I also try to bring people into as many houses of worship as possible. And I would define that expansively, from traditional church services to prayer meetings to worship services in the Trump White House.” 
    • Unlocked. A really well-done interview. I have generally found Graham and Dias to be fair and insightful. Most of the stories involving the NYT being tone-deaf to religion have come about when journalists who don’t cover the religion beat try to drag religion into their story without fully understanding what they’re trying to describe.
  5. It Used to Be ‘Get Married.’ Now It’s ‘Stay Single.’ (Freya India, The Free Press): “I keep hearing about how there’s too much pressure to settle down. Apparently everyone wants to know when you’re getting married, when you’re having kids.… My whole life I’ve only ever felt the opposite, an overwhelming pressure to be single. In the secular liberal world I used to think there were no expectations, no pressure. There is, though: The pressure today is to avoid anything that might stick, to run through life without getting snagged on any responsibilities, without getting tethered to someone else too early.… We don’t scrutinize the 25-year-old who is still single but the one who settles down. In fact, this feels like the only life decision left to disapprove of, the only one acceptable to judge. Wanting to commit is the one desire that is discouraged, treated with suspicion, the only thing in the modern world we are ever told to delay.” 
    • Related: Senior Scaries: Treating dating like the job market (Erin Ye, Stanford Daily): “The last time I was on the phone with my mom, she told me that it was my own fault I didn’t have a boyfriend. ‘You need to start treating dating like it’s the job market: you’re not applying to positions, you’re not interviewing, you’re not even doing things that you can add to your résumé,’ she said. ‘You just need to get out there. Think of it like getting an internship. Don’t worry about the return offer just yet!’ ”
  6. They Led at Saddleback Church. ICE Said They Were Safe. (Andy Olsen, Christianity Today): “The growing abolition of discretion, perhaps more than any other aspect of the administration’s immigration suppression, will cause the deepest pain for many families that previously had little to fear. Individuals within the US immigration edifice have long had some authority to exercise compassion in situations where, in their judgment, the cost to society of a person’s removal might be higher than the cost of nonremoval. One could view such discretion, as the Trump administration does, as a weakness. Or one could see discretion as the cardinal quality that separates a human justice system from a cold enforcement machine with all the sensibility of a red-light camera.” 
    • A moving story, told with all the messy details.
  7. Trump says Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. The reality is more complicated (Chinedu Asadu, AP News): “Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost evenly between Christians, who live predominantly in the south, and Muslims, mostly in the north — where attacks have long been concentrated and where levels of illiteracy, poverty and hunger are among the country’s highest. Nationwide, Muslims constitute a slight majority. Experts and data from two nonpartisan sources — the U.S.-basedt and Council on Foreign Relations — show Christians are often targets in a small percentage of overall attacks that appear to be motivated by religion, in some northern states. But the numbers and analysts also indicate that across the north, most victims of overall violence are Muslims.” 
    • I was skeptical of the headline, but the article makes a good case for it. Having said that, the author hasn’t shown that there isn’t a problem of religious persecution in Nigeria; the author has only shown that there is also a problem of rampant lawlessness.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • 6–7 in the Bible (Kristy Etheridge, Christianity Today): “News outlets from The New York Times to The Indian Express have covered the global phenomenon that delights children, puzzles grownups, and leaves school teachers 67 percent sure they should retire early.… a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, created an entire outreach event around the infamous numbers. Jonathan White is a pastor and director of children’s programming at Mecklenburg Community Church. When he determined that the 6–7 trend wasn’t harmful and wasn’t going away, he wrote it into the church’s November family night.”
  • Scholars Now Believe Number Of The Beast Is Actually 67 (Babylon Bee)
  • The Batman effect: The mere sight of the ‘superhero’ can make us more altruistic (Gaby Clark, Phys.org): “In the experimental condition, another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the scene from another door of the train. Faced with this unexpected encounter, passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seats: 67.21% of passengers offered their seats in the presence of Batman, or more than two out of three, compared to 37.66% in the control experiment, or just over one out of three.” 
    • Recommended by an alumnus.
  • Millions Convert To Christianity After Theologians Confirm There Is No Microsoft Teams In Heaven (Babylon Bee)

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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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.