Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 22

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.

To that end, on week­ends (usu­al­ly Fri­days but last night we had alum­ni over for home­com­ing and it turned into a five hour par­ty, so this time Sat­ur­day) I’ve been shar­ing 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. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

1. Mus­lim Migrants, Meet Chris­t­ian Gyp­sies (Jil­lian Mel­chior, Wall Street Jour­nal): this is pret­ty beau­ti­ful.
2. Moral Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Emo­tion­al Rejec­tion of God (William Lane Craig): Craig, who we host­ed on cam­pus years ago, answers a tough ques­tion. I think it’s amus­ing how often he directs the read­er to anoth­er one of his books, but I don’t guess he had an alter­na­tive if he want­ed to keep his answer short enough to be read­able.
3. Hook­ing Up Is Easy To Do (Katie Van Syck­le, NY Mag):  “I’ve come back to my alma mater because it sits at the cross­roads of two major themes of mod­ern-day col­lege sex: hookup cul­ture, which seems as ram­pant as I remem­ber it, and sex­u­al assault… Late­ly, researchers have been mak­ing an obvi­ous but con­tro­ver­sial point: that these two trend lines are in fact relat­ed — that hook­ing up puts stu­dents at high­er risk of hav­ing non­con­sen­su­al sex, and that there are ele­ments of this cul­ture… that are more com­pli­cat­ed than ‘yes means yes.’”
   • See also The Game Is Rigged: Why Con­sen­su­al Sex Can Still Be Bad (Rebec­ca Trais­ter, NY Mag). This one has pret­ty earthy lan­guage.
4. How Friend­ships Change In Adult­hood (Julie Beck, The Atlantic): there’s a lot in this arti­cle. I was struck by the idea that friend­ships are either active, dor­mant, or com­mem­o­ra­tive.
5. Joel Osteen: Would Jesus Christ Be A Good Pres­i­dent? (David Wal­lis, New York Observ­er): the title is super-click-bait. It’s a short, inter­est­ing inter­view with Joel Osteen, pas­tor of the largest church in Amer­i­ca.
6. Trea­sures On Earth: How Reli­gion Is Redis­trib­ut­ing The World’s Wealth (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): mis­lead­ing title, inter­est­ing data.
7. Quick Links:
   • An ocean full of nope. New life prin­ci­ple: nev­er go to sea in an inflat­able raft.
   • Eco­nom­ics Has A Repli­ca­tion Prob­lem (Real Clear Sci­ence)
   • Reli­gious Free­dom Retreats In Many Coun­tries, But Not All (Econ­o­mist).
   • A Pro­gres­sive Defense of Tax-Exempt Sta­tus For Church­es (Approach­ing Jus­tice)
   • Why Is The Amer­i­can Prison Pop­u­la­tion Going Up So Much? Sur­pris­ing (to me) answer: it has lit­tle to do with drug pol­i­cy.
   • How To Explain the KGB’s Amaz­ing Suc­cess In Iden­ti­fy­ing CIA Agents In The Field? (Salon)
   • Killing As A Moral Good: about just war the­o­ry

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.