Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 61

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Church Wor­ship Music You Need To Know About (Greg Atkin­son, personal blog): “I… prob­a­bly expe­ri­ence music and wor­ship in more church­es year­ly, than just about any­one else…”
2. Divorce Con­tin­ues To Take A Psy­cho­log­i­cal Toll on Kids (no byline, Guardian): pon­der anew Malachi 2:13–16 and Matthew 19:1–8.
3. ‘There isn’t real­ly any­thing mag­i­cal about it’: Why more mil­len­ni­als are avoid­ing sex (Tara Bahram­pour, Wash­ing­ton Post):  Your peers are less sex­u­al­ly active than you assume. They “are more than twice as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly inac­tive in their ear­ly 20s as the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was.” 
4. Are Soar­ing Lev­els of Income Inequal­i­ty Mak­ing Us A More Polar­ized Nation? (Chris­tos Makridis, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “We all real­ize that greater inequal­i­ty has tan­gi­ble impli­ca­tions for who wins and los­es in soci­ety. How­ev­er, all these pieces of evi­dence sug­gest it may also induce more extreme polit­i­cal atti­tudes and ide­olo­gies.” Note the author — one of our own Chi Alpha stu­dents! It’s also on AP’s the Big Sto­ry, so it might get syn­di­cat­ed. Get your self­ies with Chris­tos now before he becomes famous.
5. Col­lege Stu­dents Protest, Alumni’s Fond­ness Fades, and Checks Shrink (Anemona Hor­to­col­lis, NY Times): we should not be sur­prised when things that polar­ize stu­dents also polar­ize alum­ni.

Things Glen Found Diverting

• No school has more US Olympians than Stan­ford, and it’s not even close (Cork Gains, Busi­ness Insid­er): this list includes alum­ni. Sad­ly, none of them are or were involved in Chi Alpha.
• How long is your list? (Dil­bert)

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.