Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 121

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 Exchanged Life (J. Hus­don Tay­lor, a let­ter to his sis­ter): “It lit­tle mat­ters to my ser­vant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expen­sive arti­cles. In either case he looks to me for the mon­ey, and brings me his pur­chas­es. So, if God place me in great per­plex­i­ty, must He not give me much guid­ance; in posi­tions of great dif­fi­cul­ty, much grace; in cir­cum­stances of great pres­sure and tri­al, much strength? No fear that His resources will be unequal to the emer­gency!” (brought to my atten­tion by a stu­dent, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed)
2. The news from Las Vegas is so heart­break­ing. Here are a few pieces about it and also about the issue of guns more gen­er­al­ly.
   • After Mass Shoot­ings, Amer­i­cans Turn to Four Bible Vers­es Most (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): John 16:33, Psalm 34:18, Romans 12:19, and Psalm 11:5.
   • What Is God Say­ing About Las Vegas? (Jared Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion)
   • 3 Ways To Pray For Las Vegas: It’s a Pow­er­ful (Not Polit­i­cal) Act For Chris­tians (Ed Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today)
   • After Sandy Hook we said nev­er again. And then we let 1,518 mass shoot­ings hap­pen. (Ger­man Lopez, Ryan Mark & Soo Oh, Vox). The title is very Vox, but the sta­tis­tics inside are quite inter­est­ing.
   • I used to think gun con­trol was the answer. My research told me oth­er­wise. (Leah Libresco, Wash­ing­ton Post): “By the time we pub­lished our project, I didn’t believe in many of the inter­ven­tions I’d heard politi­cians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun own­ers, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk out­weighs the ben­e­fits. But I can’t endorse poli­cies whose only sell­ing point is that gun own­ers hate them.”
   • From way back in vol­ume 48 I post­ed a thought­ful debate between two pas­tors on guns — it’s worth re-read­ing.
3. A Brief His­to­ry of Ces­sa­tion­ism (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “In the 1700s and 1800s, sus­pi­cion of claimed mir­a­cles was con­nect­ed to anti-Catholi­cism. Protes­tant crit­ics saw the Catholic tra­di­tion as rid­dled with fake claims of mir­a­cles. Ridi­cul­ing the fake mir­a­cle claims of Catholics (such as icons bleed­ing a liq­uid that turned out to be cher­ry juice) became a sta­ple of Reformed polemics against the Catholic Church. So when seem­ing­ly mirac­u­lous events hap­pened in Protes­tant church­es, even sym­pa­thet­ic observers warned against the threat of bogus mir­a­cles.”
4. The Lim­its of “Diver­si­ty” (Kele­fa San­neh, The New York­er): “It is pos­si­ble that ‘diver­si­ty’ will ulti­mate­ly prove too weak a term to do all that is asked of it. Con­tem­po­rary advo­cates some­times empha­size, instead, “inclu­sion,” a less neu­tral con­cept, and one that ges­tures at the polit­i­cal agen­das that inevitably shape these debates.”
5. ‘Pan­icked’ Lon­don train com­muters force open doors, flee onto tracks when man reads the Bible aloud (Dou­glas Per­ry, Ore­gon Live). I’ve said it before — our cul­ture has replaced the fear of God with the fear of reli­gion. It’s a poor trade.
6. Why the rule of law suf­fers when we have too many laws (Ilya Somin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Because of the vast scope of cur­rent law, in mod­ern Amer­i­ca the author­i­ties can pin a crime on the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple, if they real­ly want to. Whether you get hauled into court or not depends more on the dis­cre­tionary deci­sions of  law enforce­ment offi­cials than on any legal rule…. the rule of law has large­ly been sup­plant­ed by the rule of chance and the rule of exec­u­tive dis­cre­tion. Inevitably, polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and par­ti­san­ship have a major impact on the lat­ter. For exam­ple, fed­er­al law enforce­ment pri­or­i­ties are very dif­fer­ent under Trump than they were under Oba­ma.”
7. Roy Moore is a fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure with a com­pelling sto­ry. He’s the guy you might know as “that Ten Com­mand­ments judge from the South.” He is run­ning for a seat in the US Sen­ate and he just won the pri­ma­ry elec­tion and seems on track to win the gen­er­al elec­tion. There are inter­est­ing times ahead as a result.
   • The Res­ur­rec­tion of Roy Moore (Eric Velas­co, Politi­co): “That peri­od about sums up Moore’s long career in Alaba­ma: He throws jabs at the sys­tem; then, when the sys­tem coun­ter­punch­es, he some­how springs back up—stronger.”
   • Cov­er­ing Roy Moore: Is it impos­si­ble for many reporters to write fair­ly about him? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “I inter­viewed Moore years ago in Gads­den, Ala., and was struck by this man’s adher­ence not so much to the Bible (which he def­i­nite­ly holds dear) but to the Con­sti­tu­tion. That’s what many reporters seem to not under­stand about this man. He is man­ic on obey­ing the let­ter of the law…”
   • Roy Moore dis­rupts U.S. Sen­ate race in Alaba­ma — and pre­pares for new lev­el of defi­ance in Wash­ing­ton (Michael Sher­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): I was very impressed with this piece.

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Ryan Hamil­ton, Hap­py Face (Net­flix): he’s a clean, fun­ny standup come­di­an. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
• Signs You’re Ready to Grad­u­ate (Ph.D. Comics)
• Local Chris­t­ian Proud Of Him­self For Lov­ing Peo­ple Who Are Exact­ly Like Him (Baby­lon Bee)
• The Per­ils of Dat­ing Apps (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.

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