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
- The Political Case for Hell (Matthew Kaemingk & Shadi Hamid, Comment): “Hell in both Islam and Christianity is profoundly egalitarian. Simply said, anybody can go there. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, black or white—all people will receive a judgment. There is no way to buy, manipulate, or threaten your way out. All stand before the throne vulnerable. In this way, the doctrine of hell creates a level playing field based on an individual’s character rather than their wealth or power. Here on earth, the wealthy can buy their way out of consequences; the powerful can shield themselves from justice. When powerful figures escape justice—whether dictators dying peacefully in exile or corporate criminals receiving minor fines for major crimes—it corrodes public faith in democratic institutions. The apparent lack of just deserts for the powerful has political consequences. It feeds populist rage and democratic cynicism. In this context, the concept of ultimate justice, of a future hell, serves as a crucial safety valve. But hell’s democratic function goes beyond mere deterrence or consolation. Traditional religious conceptions of hell actually embody principles that modern democracies strive to implement: proportional punishment, equal treatment for equal crimes, consideration of both actions and intentions.” — Kaemingk is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Hamid is a senior fellow at Brookings.
- Bible Family Tree — (John Dyer, personal website): this is kind of cool
- Some Cornell-adjacent thoughts:
- Four Hours and Three Minutes in Ithaca (David French, New York Times): “Last week, Christine Emba wrote a beautiful and compelling guest essay in our pages about the inadequacy of consent as the primary moral basis for sexual intimacy. It’s the legal base line, not a moral threshold. But what is the moral threshold? Conservative Christians like me often respond with a pat answer: marriage. But even that’s inadequate and incomplete. Marital sex can be every bit as abusive and exploitative as an encounter in a frat house. Instead of consent, I’d suggest a different standard, one that applies not just to sex in marriage — and not just to sex alone — but to all of our human interactions. Let’s talk about care. In other words, we should constantly ask ourselves, ‘If I cared for this person, what would I do?’ Even if an obviously drunk or high person is asking you for sex (though whether that happened in this case is disputed, especially as events unfolded later in the evening) — and even if you’re powerfully attracted to that person — if you truly cared for the person would you initiate or engage in an encounter that any sentient person knows might be deeply regretted the next morning, the next day or the next week? Is an orgasm so sacred to you that you can’t wait until sobriety to have sex?”
- A Stanford Jane Doe: ‘Without a headline, survivors like me will never matter to Stanford’ (Anonymous, Stanford Daily): “For two years, I skipped classes I shared with the person who raped me, lived in fear of running into him on campus and missed out on opportunities like study abroad due to Stanford’s constant rescheduling and delaying of proceedings. The process swallowed half of my time at Stanford, only for it to culminate in a two year suspension, despite Stanford finding the other student responsible for vaginally, digitally and orally raping me. Per this sanction, the person who raped me is eligible to return to campus and graduate with his degree as of this fall.… The year I entered Stanford, incoming freshmen were assigned Chanel Miller’s memoir, Know My Name. The Santa Clara County DA’s Office is the same office that prosecuted Brock Turner. How do we reconcile the values these institutions publicly champion with the way they handled my case?”
- Recommended by a student. I would add this aligns with my observations of Stanford. On a few occasions I have ministered to a student dealing with the aftermath of being raped and what this author describes matches their experiences.
- A TikTok Tarot Card Reader Accused Me of Murder. My Life Turned Upside Down. (Rebecca Scofield, New York Times): “I was standing in a park listening to my kids play when I opened a TikTok video of a woman I had never met. She showed my faculty profile picture and contact information, and said that I had orchestrated the murders of four students at the college where I work, the University of Idaho. She claimed I was covering up an inappropriate romantic relationship with one of the victims. I didn’t know any of the students, who had been killed only 11 days before I saw the video. The accuser knew nothing about me, lived in Texas and used tarot card readings as the only basis for her claims. Over the next several weeks, while I was grieving with the rest of my community, this TikTok influencer uploaded over a hundred videos declaring that I had committed a quadruple homicide.… So, before you, too, are accused of murder on the internet, question the content you are consuming or creating.”
- The author is a history professor at the University of Idaho. An absolutely wild story.
- AI-related
- When AI Is Better Than Humans (Katherine Dee, The Dispatch): “For many tasks—tasks that should be the exclusive province of human beings, like talk therapy or romantic intimacy—an astute AI user will quickly realize that neither embodiment nor experience appear to be prerequisites for valuable responses. I have personal experience with this. Late last year, my father passed away suddenly. In my grief, I turned to Anthropic’s Claude. Claude helped me work through my grief much more effectively than the grief counselor—and eventually, grief counselors—who came highly recommended, including by people who I knew and trusted.… What do we do if Claude is a better therapist in some situations? And how do we explain to people that even if it is better, we should choose a person anyway?”
- A thoughtful essay that ventures into unexpected territory.
- Astra Held Its Ground (Truth) (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “But here is the most remarkable part from one of the authors, theoretical physicist Suvrat Raju: ‘Our initial evaluation suggested that GPT-6-Astra’s score was in the late eighties followed closely by Opus 5.5 But, as we started to investigate the mistakes that the models might have made, the models, especially Astra, insisted that they were right and that it was the expert-supplied answers that were erroneous. When we went back to the experts it turned out, in multiple instances, that the experts found some subtle errors buried deep inside their calculations. As they revised their answers, Astra’s score started to inch up and it finally ended up with 98% (49/50).’ In other words, instead, as originally intended, of the human answers serving as ground truth to test the AI, the AI answers were ground truth for testing the experts.”
- When AI Is Better Than Humans (Katherine Dee, The Dispatch): “For many tasks—tasks that should be the exclusive province of human beings, like talk therapy or romantic intimacy—an astute AI user will quickly realize that neither embodiment nor experience appear to be prerequisites for valuable responses. I have personal experience with this. Late last year, my father passed away suddenly. In my grief, I turned to Anthropic’s Claude. Claude helped me work through my grief much more effectively than the grief counselor—and eventually, grief counselors—who came highly recommended, including by people who I knew and trusted.… What do we do if Claude is a better therapist in some situations? And how do we explain to people that even if it is better, we should choose a person anyway?”
- As a Child Evangelist, He Roused the Faithful. Later He Exposed the Con. (Penelope Green, New York Times): “He was good at his job, and he enjoyed being onstage, but he never believed in God. And he certainly didn’t believe in hell. By the time he was 14, the novelty of preaching had worn off, for him and his congregants. His voice was changing, and his father had abandoned the family and absconded with Marjoe’s earnings — some $3 million, he later estimated. Marjoe decided to leave, too. He drifted a bit through his native California, living first with an older woman and then, at 16, marrying a girlfriend. He worked as a shoe salesman, as a barker on the Santa Cruz Wharf and as a doorman at a dance club in Los Angeles before starting a rock band and melting into the nascent hippie scene there. Yet by his 20s, he had returned to preaching. He needed the money, and missed the limelight. At first, he thought he might introduce his pacifist beliefs into his sermons, skipping the sin-and-hell part. That didn’t go over so well — he was not invited back to the churches where he tried it. So he returned to his revivalist techniques, adding some vocal moves he borrowed from Black preachers and some physical ones from Mick Jagger.”
- A heartbreaking obituary, and a reminder that the world still has people like those Paul warned Timothy about, preachers “who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain” (1 Tim 6:5).
- Americans who go to church and trust science are also more likely to believe in ghosts and curses, new research shows (Ruiqian Li, Science News): “Americans who trust science and reason more than their churches’ teachings, but still believe in God or attend services, are also more likely to believe in magic than those who prioritize religious teachings.… What our study adds is a clearer picture of when trust in science goes hand in hand with magic: among people who stay religious but no longer let their church decide what is true.”
Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen
- 2026 Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards — Finalists
- Tesla’s Flying Roadster Revealed: Everything That Happened in 10 Minutes (CNET, YouTube) — ten minutes. This is actually amazing.
- Studies prove that world will end if you fail your midterms — (Jenny Ballutay, Stanford Daily)
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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.