Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 48

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. The dis­claimers are espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for many of today’s links.

1. This first sec­tion is a lot — buck­le up if you’re inter­est­ed. Two pas­tors recent­ly debat­ed guns — both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.
   • Q Den­ver (Doug Wil­son)
   • The Bible On Self-Defense: A Response To Doug Wil­son (Pre­ston Sprin­kle)
   • The Apos­tle Peter and Open Car­ry (Doug)
   • The Only Way To Stop A Bad Guy With A Gun Is A Good Guy With A Gun (Pre­ston)
   • Who You Gonna Call? (Doug)
   • The Only Way To Stop A Bad Guy With A Sta­tis­tic Is a Good Guy With A Sta­tis­tic (Pre­ston)
   • Ring Up The Dev­il? (Doug)
   • The Killer At The Door (Pre­ston)
   • Guns and Covenants (Doug)
   • Non­vi­o­lence: In Brief (Pre­ston)
   • Your 2am NPR Voice (Doug)
2. The Mer­cy Girls (Jen­nifer Miller, Slate): a very inter­est­ing piece about a Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing min­istry. One sig­nif­i­cant bit buried with­in it: “Nine­ty-four per­cent of respon­dents on 2013 sur­veys (com­mis­sioned by Mer­cy and con­duct­ed by inde­pen­dent firms) answered ‘yes’ to the ques­tion, ‘Did Mer­cy Min­istries help you trans­form your life and restore your hope?’ Eighty-two per­cent said they were ‘well adjust­ed to life’ after leav­ing the pro­gram. And 85 per­cent said they had spent time at oth­er treat­ment cen­ters before Mer­cy, with­out long-term results.” Those sta­tis­tics should have been even more cen­tral to the sto­ry.
3. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty May Help HIV Patients Sur­vive Longer (Emma Green, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing. The last para­graph is a reminder that one’s assump­tions great­ly influ­ence one’s inter­pre­ta­tions.
4. Why Has There Been An Exo­dus Of Black Res­i­dents From West Coast Lib­er­al Hubs? (Aaron Ren, LA Times): “Though results vary to some extent, the broad trend is clear: West Coast pro­gres­sive enclaves are either see­ing an exo­dus of blacks or are fail­ing to attract them. Mid­west­ern and North­east­ern urban areas are attract­ing blacks to the extent that they are afford­able or pro­vid­ing mid­dle class eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. And South­ern cities are now expe­ri­enc­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant gains.” I expect wild­ly diver­gent reac­tions to this. I found it very inter­est­ing. A relat­ed line of think­ing: why col­leges are the way they are.
5. Amus­ing:
   • Col­lege Kids Say The Darn­d­est Things: On Iden­ti­ty (Joseph Back­holm, YouTube): “It shouldn’t be hard to tell a 5’9” white guy that he’s not a 6’5” Chi­nese woman, but clear­ly it is. Why? What does that say about our cul­ture? And what does that say about our abil­i­ty to answer ques­tions that actu­al­ly are dif­fi­cult?”
   • I have been addict­ed to the Baby­lon Bee late­ly. They’re killing it. Here are a few faves:
     • King Of Sau­di Ara­bia Real­ly Get­ting a Kick Out of Apple Lec­tur­ing North Car­oli­na
     • Man Feeds The Hun­gry At All Times, Uses Food When Nec­es­sary,
     • Jesus Was A Social Decon­struc­tion­ist Fem­i­nist, Claims Social Decon­struc­tion­ist Fem­i­nist Schol­ar
     • Pow­er­ful Time of Wor­ship Draws Woman Clos­er To Her Emo­tions Than She’s Been In A Long Time

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.

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe)