Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

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