Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 28

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 Fri­days 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. Pay­ing, Pray­ing It For­ward (Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, Mag­gie Gor­don): an inspir­ing sto­ry — also not very long. If you just want a boost as finals draw near, read this one and skip down to the quick links.
2. San Bernadi­no Vic­tim Was Upfront About Pol­i­tics and Reli­gion — With Farook Too (LA Times, Veron­i­ca Rocha): one of the shoot­ing vic­tims had been wit­ness­ing to one of the shoot­ers in the days before the car­nage. See some reflec­tion on this issue at Anoth­er First Amend­ment Ghost: Did Debate With Evan­gel­i­cal Trig­ger Farook? (GetRe­li­gion, Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly).
3. Why The Pro-Life Move­ment Oppos­es Vio­lence (NY Times, Ross Douthat). “Giv­en anti-abor­tion premis­es, why is it not obvi­ous­ly rea­son­able to take up arms against abor­tion providers? Why isn’t the pro-lif­er who shoots an abor­tion­ist just like a man or woman who uses dead­ly force against a would-be child mur­der­er — a vig­i­lante, yes, but also a hero­ic one?” See also Rus­sell Moore for a more the­o­log­i­cal approach in Is Pro-Life Rhetoric Dead­ly?
4. Relat­ed to the sto­ries that inspired the pieces in the two pre­vi­ous bul­let points: How Many Mass Shoot­ings Are There, Real­ly? (NY Times, Mark Foll­man). It turns out that there’s not a com­mon­ly accept­ed way to quan­ti­fy the data. I found this piece fas­ci­nat­ing. Foll­man is the nation­al affairs edi­tor of Moth­er Jones.
5. Who Influ­ences Whom? Reflec­tions on U.S. Gov­ern­ment Out­reach to Think Tanks (Brook­ings Insti­tute, Jere­my Shapiro): this is an engag­ing peek behind the cur­tains at a world some of you will wind up enter­ing.
6. Why The Pub­lic Can’t Read The Press (The Atlantic, John Helt­man): this piece is a bit long for my taste, but the sub­ject is impor­tant. There’s a lot of good jour­nal­ism you will nev­er be giv­en the chance to see.
7. Quick Links:
   • Dat­ing Is Bru­tal. Ouch.
   • Lion vs Giraffe. Don’t mess with giraffes.
   • This soc­cer shot.  I reject your physics and sub­sti­tute my own.
   • How polit­i­cal talk shows work.
   • Pics from our Christ­mas par­ty — fol­low us on Insta­gram @xastanford

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.

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.