Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 90

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Sto­ry of Those Lit­tle Com­mu­nion Cups, What­ev­er Those Are Tech­ni­cal­ly Called (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “If you’re won­der­ing, there’s actu­al­ly nev­er been a dis­ease out­break traced back to the com­mon com­mu­nion cup. Nor is it like­ly to occur, giv­en the par­tic­u­lars of the ceremony—silver and gold don’t con­sti­tute a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for bac­te­ria, and nei­ther does an alco­holic bev­er­age. And if you come from a tra­di­tion, as I do, that believes Jesus is actu­al­ly present in the wine (and the bread), it seems per­ti­nent to point out that that guy is in the busi­ness of heal­ing dis­ease, not spread­ing it.”
2. Chance the Rap­per, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Black­ness (Ernest Ezeu­go, New Amer­i­ca): “For dis­en­chant­ed Chris­t­ian millennials—specifically those of color—Chance’s pro­found faith is a reminder that there is a place where we belong, because it was made for us, labored over for us, bled over for us, no mat­ter what the rest of it looks like.”
3. Black Church­es Mat­ter: Research Ties Atten­dance to Pos­i­tive Out­comes (David Brig­gs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Sev­er­al new stud­ies build on past research to con­tin­ue reveal­ing how faith is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes for black Amer­i­cans amid the real­i­ties of dis­crim­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social inequal­i­ty.”
4. Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): this is a fun list includ­ing celebri­ties who speak out about pol­i­tics, peo­ple who com­pare events to Har­ry Pot­ter, and pun­dits who failed to pre­dict Trump.
5. How Pro-Life Move­ment Was Born A Lib­er­al Cause (Charles Camosy, Crux):  “The con­tro­ver­sy over abor­tion orig­i­nat­ed as a con­flict between two dif­fer­ent groups of lib­er­als.  For that rea­son, it has not fol­lowed the polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments.” The title is not a typo, by the way.
6. The true sto­ry of Army medic Desmond Doss, the soft-spo­ken Chris­t­ian super­hero (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “Work­ing alone, Doss – who refused a weapon, because of his Sev­enth-day Adven­tist con­vic­tions – low­ered at least 75 injured men over a 400-foot cliff dur­ing the World War II Bat­tle of Oki­nawa. He col­lapsed sev­er­al times dur­ing that night, but kept going with these words on his lips: ‘Please Lord, help me get one more.’ A Japan­ese sol­dier lat­er tes­ti­fied that he aimed at Doss sev­er­al times, but his rifle kept jam­ming when he tried to fire.”
7. Van Jones’ Excel­lent Metaphors About the Dan­gers of Ide­o­log­i­cal Safe­ty (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the link has a com­pelling video of Van Jones talk­ing about how to deal with offen­sive words. There is a tran­script, but the ver­bal deliv­ery is pow­er­ful. It’s under five min­utes and well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

• Relat­ing To Peo­ple With Dif­fer­ent Polit­i­cal Views (Dil­bert)
• Wes­ley So, Tal­ent Extra­or­di­naire (Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): not real­ly enter­tain­ing, but not real­ly news, either. Def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ing. A brief pro­file of a chess prodi­gy who is appar­ent­ly a Chris­t­ian.
• Gen­er­at­ing Fan­ta­sy Maps — this is cool code that gen­er­ates maps for made-up worlds in a real­is­tic way.

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.