Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 35

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

1. The Grounds Of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): Dr. Car­son is one of my favorite schol­ars. This youtube clip is def­i­nite­ly worth three min­utes of your time.
2. Hal­lelu­jah Col­lege (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times): “The thing you’ll run into with any of the cam­pus activists that I’ve encoun­tered is this idea that human nature is a col­lec­tion of iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories, that I as a human being am com­posed of a gen­der iden­ti­ty, a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, a racial iden­ti­ty and so forth,” he said. “Their per­cep­tion of Chris­tians, or of reli­gious peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly, is: ‘O.K., these are peo­ple who have this one iden­ti­ty cat­e­go­ry, reli­gion, and the reli­gion they iden­ti­fy as is over­step­ping its bounds. It’s telling my gen­der or sex­u­al iden­ti­ty how to act.’ The Chris­t­ian response has to be: There’s some­thing more to what a human being is than just these col­lec­tive attrib­ut­es.”
3. Pas­tor Of China’s Largest Church Jailed For Protest­ing Removal of 1,500 Cross­es (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). Note that he is the pas­tor of China’s largest offi­cial church — there are under­ground church­es that are much larg­er. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty must be get­ting ner­vous about the strength of Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na if they are oppress­ing the state-sanc­tioned church as well.
4. Chris­tians In Latin Amer­i­ca Are Numer­ous But Still Vul­ner­a­ble (John Allen, Crux): a very strong arti­cle about Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion in the west­ern hemi­sphere. “Chili­to was exe­cut­ed by a right-wing para­mil­i­tary and Castil­la by a left-wing guer­ril­la group, prov­ing that mar­tyr­dom in Colom­bia is an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty enter­prise. Glob­al­ly, the two women are chap­ters in one of the most wide­spread human rights scourges of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, which is lethal anti-Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion. Though esti­mates vary wide­ly, even low-end counts sug­gest that one Chris­t­ian is killed for motives relat­ed to the faith some­where in the world every hour of every day.”
5. Main­stream­ing “Ani­mal Per­son­hood” (Wes­ley J. Smith, First Things): this is some­thing you should do some think­ing about. Start by reflect­ing on Gen­e­sis 1:26–30, Gen­e­sis 9:1–6, Num­bers 22:21–34, Proverbs 12:10, Jon­ah 4:10–11, and Matthew 6:26.
6. Mey­er vs Nebras­ka: As Told By The Lawyer Who Won It (David Kopel, Wash­ing­ton Post): this sto­ry of a 1922 Supreme Court deci­sion absolute­ly sucked me in. It touch­es on issues of parental rights, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, reli­gious lib­er­ty, and nation­al­is­tic prej­u­dice.
7. 3 Ways To Work For The Glo­ry of God (Chris­tos Makridis, The Rebe­lu­tion). Yes, this is writ­ten by our very own Chris­tos. Good thoughts, Chris­tos!
8. Some comics that amused me:
   • SMBC on divine inter­ven­tion.
   • Bloom Coun­ty com­ic on dark mat­ter and God: one, two
   • Get Fuzzy on self-impor­tance: one, two, three — the buildup is slow but the pay­off is worth it.
   • Per­haps a lit­tle too close to home for our seniors and recent alum­ni: why we need room­mates.

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).

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.