Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 3

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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.

To that end, I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

1. From the everyone’s a crit­ic depart­ment: The Media Loves The Gates Foun­da­tion — These Experts Are More Skep­ti­cal (Juli­a­Bel­luz, Vox). This piece nev­er men­tions God, but I found it the­o­log­i­cal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing for three rea­sons:
   1. This arti­cle reminds me that no mat­ter how much good you do there will always be crit­ics. Jesus was per­fect and the world nailed him to a cross.
   2. This arti­cle reminds me that it is far eas­i­er to crit­i­cize than to accom­plish. The arti­cle left me far more impressed with the Gates than with their crit­ics. And I reflect­ed upon the fact that the crit­ics are unwit­ting­ly stor­ing up judg­ment for them­selves in heav­en where they will be mea­sured by the same stan­dards they apply to Bill and Melin­da Gates (Romans 2).
   3. But Bill and Melin­da do not get off scot-free. This arti­cle also reminds me of Isa­iah 64:6 — our right­eous deeds are like filthy rags before the Lord. These crit­i­cisms (at least those which are well-found­ed) are mere hints of the lim­i­ta­tions God sees in the right­eous deeds of Bill and Melin­da Gates. All of us need Jesus — even our most moral friends.
2. From the respond­ing to crit­i­cisms depart­ment: On Con­ser­v­a­tive Reli­gious Activism, The Num­bers Speak For Them­selves (orig­i­nal­ly Wash­ing­ton Post, but bet­ter-for­mat­ted at RNS)  Peo­ple some­times claim that Chris­tians spend too much of their time and mon­ey fight­ing polit­i­cal bat­tles rather serv­ing the poor. This op-ed pro­vides num­bers to rebut the claim. A relat­ed arti­cle by a non-Chris­t­ian jour­nal­ist explains why many peo­ple believe the charge despite the data:  Ver­i­ly I Say Unto You: Chris­tians Care About the Poor (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg  View).
3. From the self-decep­tion depart­ment: If You Use Face­book to Get Your News, Please — For the Love of Democ­ra­cy — Read This First (Cait­lyn Dewey, Wash­ing­ton Post): Nan­cy sent me this inter­est­ing arti­cle about how Facebook’s fil­ter­ing algo­rithms sub­tly rein­force our bias­es. In relat­ed news, Ezra Klein at Vox explains Why The Most Informed Vot­ers Are Often The Most Bad­ly Mis­led.
4. From the laugh­ter is good depart­ment: Dil­bert meets an Inter­net star. The last pan­el kills me. Yesterday’s strip about brain­storm­ing was insight­ful­ly fun­ny as well.

Sug­ges­tions for a bet­ter title/frequency/best day to send the email on/articles to consider/etc are wel­come. My cur­rent plan is to send out an email with 3–5 top­ics every Fri­day.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and 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 will 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.