Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 47

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. Chi­na Reveals What It Wants To Do With Chris­tian­i­ty (Brent Ful­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “how China’s athe­is­tic regime plans to deal with the country’s grow­ing Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion, pro­ject­ed to become the world’s largest with­in the next cou­ple decades.”
2. After Pas­tor’s Wife Buried Alive, Chi­nese Church Wins Land Bat­tle (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): use­ful to read in con­junc­tion with the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
3. Radi­ant Zinc Fire­works Reveal Qual­i­ty of Human Egg (Mar­la Paul, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty News): you were formed in a burst of light. For real. “I praise you because I am fear­ful­ly and won­der­ful­ly made” (Psalm 139:14)
4. You’re More Like­ly To Die In A Human Extinc­tion Event Than A Car Crash (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): but did they fac­tor in the return of Christ?
5. Relat­ing To The Skep­tics (Robert Mims, PE News): short and encour­ag­ing.
6. Are History’s “Great­est Philoso­phers” All That Great? (Gre­go­ry Lewis, Dai­ly Nous): inter­est­ing but miss­es a huge point. Socrates is not famous mere­ly for the words he used — he is famous for the life he lived. Great­ness is not a mat­ter of clev­er­ness alone. 
7. Things that tick­led me:
   • Man of God Per­fects The Side Hug (The Baby­lon Bee)
   • Will This Be On The Test? (PHD): your TAs read this com­ic, I guar­an­tee it. You have been warned.
   • Scot­tish Par­ent­ing Win (John Tierny, Twit­ter)
   • Drought Ends Just In Time For Admit Week­end (The Flip­side)
   • PC(USA) Dis­cern­ment Group Sens­es Holy Spir­it Lead­ing The Denom­i­na­tion to Lose More Mem­bers (The Baby­lon Bee): I found this hilar­i­ous. Your mileage may vary.

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.