Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 71

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Set Our Hearts On Fire Again (Zac Hicks, Desir­ing God) : “Christ-cen­tered wor­ship [is] a cycli­cal process of two actions. Let’s call those actions dis­place­ment and replace­ment.” This one was rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The real meat is the last half.
2. The Shift from Author­i­ty to Preference—And Its Con­se­quences for the Church (Os Guin­ness, 9 Marks): This is long but worth­while. “in today’s world, free­dom of con­science is con­fused with free­dom of choice and there­fore ren­dered duti­less and shorn of its rights.”
3. A Fight In The Lep­er Colony (Doug Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “what we [have] is a vile woman run­ning against a vile man, and we must choose between them, God says, because we are a vile peo­ple. We get a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign between a cor­rup­to­crat and a clown, and this is because God has now nar­rowed our choice down to what would best rep­re­sent this stiff-necked gen­er­a­tion.” For a more gen­tle approach, see Joe Carter’s insight­ful Why Evan­gel­i­cals Are Divid­ed Over Trump and the inter­view with Rus­sell Moore titled The Evan­gel­i­cal Civ­il War.
4. The New Cul­ture Of Life (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “In con­ver­sa­tions over the past sev­er­al weeks with activists and oth­er young peo­ple who care deeply about end­ing abor­tion, I found many who are skep­ti­cal of the movement’s long-held ties to the GOP and the Chris­t­ian right. Instead, they are using the lan­guage of fem­i­nism, human rights, and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment to make their case for a new cul­ture of life.”
5. Chi­na tar­gets par­ents with reli­gion rules in Xin­jiang (Al Jazeera): a take on China’s reli­gious crack­down from a Mus­lim per­spec­tive. “While Chi­na offi­cial­ly guar­an­tees free­dom of reli­gion, minors are not sup­posed to par­tic­i­pate in reli­gious activ­i­ty.” 
6. Real Insights About Pornog­ra­phy and Mar­riage (Nick Wolfin­ger, blog): “Even more curi­ous is the role of reli­gion. Porn only seems to threat­en mar­i­tal sta­bil­i­ty for cou­ples who don’t attend church reg­u­lar­ly” (empha­sis added). The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy.
7. Human Rights Cam­paign threat­ens Johns Hop­kins over New Atlantis “Sex­u­al­i­ty and Gen­der” report (Al Mohler, The Brief­ing): “One of the things Chris­tians must keep in mind is that sci­ence is a human endeav­or. Sci­ence sim­ply doesn’t exist inde­pen­dent of, well, sci­en­tists, that is human beings. It isn’t some kind of inde­pen­dent author­i­ty…. That is to say, there is no such thing as a sci­ence that is free of ide­ol­o­gy when it comes to human beings, after all, study­ing them­selves.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Bible Study Starts On Time (Baby­lon Bee): “At pub­lish­ing time, church lead­ers had declared the start of a new sea­son of God’s bless­ing after learn­ing that the Bible study had mirac­u­lous­ly end­ed prompt­ly at 8:00 p.m.”
• Fresh­man “Not Actu­al­ly All That Spe­cial” Says Grand­moth­er After Cam­pus Vis­it  (Stan­ford Flip­side): you always sus­pect­ed…
• There he goes again: The medi­a’s ongo­ing strug­gle to cov­er Tim Tebow’s faith (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “the sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that some of the wit­ness­es to the scene imme­di­ate­ly began describ­ing (yes, think Twit­ter) what hap­pened in reli­gious lan­guage, includ­ing use of the word ‘mir­a­cle.’” I strug­gled whether to put this under inter­est­ing or amus­ing, because I find it both.

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.