Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 41

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. Since yes­ter­day was St. Patrick’s Day, here are his Con­fes­sion (of faith) and his Let­ter To The Sol­diers of Coroti­cus. The open­ing lines of his con­fes­sion, “My name is Patrick. I am a sin­ner, a sim­ple coun­try per­son, and the least of all believ­ers. I am looked down upon by many.” Skip down to verse 16 for some of the wild stuff.
  2. The Shame Cul­ture (David Brooks, BYT): “The guilt cul­ture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sin­ner. The mod­ern shame cul­ture alleged­ly val­ues inclu­sion and tol­er­ance, but it can be strange­ly unmer­ci­ful to those who dis­agree and to those who don’t fit in.” See also Scape­goats in the Cul­ture War (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic).
  3. OKC Thun­der Coach’s Words Res­onate With Many (Jen­ni Carl­son, The Okla­homan): this is a bit late, but I final­ly watched the eulo­gy that recent­ly gripped the sports world’s inter­est. Wow. Watch the YouTube video first (7 min­utes) and then read the arti­cle.
  4. Three Num­bers That Explain The Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Ecosys­tem (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): how media and pol­i­tics inter­sect.
  5. The Glar­ing Evi­dence That Free Speech Is Threat­ened On Cam­pus (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “To sum up: free speech on cam­pus is threat­ened from a dozen direc­tions. It is threat­ened by police spies, overzeal­ous admin­is­tra­tors, and stu­dents who are intol­er­ant of dis­sent.”
  6. Now that you’re on break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. If you are reg­is­ter­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
  7. Quick Reads:

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.

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