Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 123

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. Meet The “Young Saints” Of Bethel Who Go To Col­lege To Per­form Mir­a­cles (Mol­ly Hens­ley-Clan­cy, Buz­zfeed): “Behind Bethel’s rise is the enor­mous tal­ent and ambi­tion of the church’s mag­ne­tiz­ing lead­ers, Bill John­son and Kris Val­lot­ton, who cofound­ed BSSM in 1998. Depend­ing on who you ask, Val­lot­ton and John­son are genius­es, false prophets, or both. What’s unde­ni­able is that with Val­lot­ton at his side, John­son, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion pas­tor, has trans­formed a small, unre­mark­able local church into what Chris­tian­i­ty Today called ‘a hub of a glob­al revival movement.’” Fair and inter­est­ing — much bet­ter than oth­er sto­ries I have seen. I know a lot about Bethel and I learned sev­er­al things from this piece.
2. A Let­ter to Jamie Dimon (and any­one else still strug­gling to under­stand cryp­tocur­ren­cies) (Adam Lud­win, com­pa­ny blog): this is a gen­uine­ly help­ful expla­na­tion of what Bit­coin and oth­er cryp­tocur­ren­cies are good for. “They’re a new mod­el for cre­at­ing, financ­ing, and oper­at­ing soft­ware ser­vices in a way that is decen­tral­ized top-to-bot­tom. That doesn’t make them bet­ter or worse than exist­ing soft­ware mod­els or the cor­po­rate enti­ties that cre­ate them. As we’ll see lat­er, there are major trade-offs. What we can say is sim­ply that they are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from soft­ware as we know it today and rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the forms of orga­ni­za­tion we are used to.”
3. Meet­ing Mid­dle East Chris­tians is where West­ern stereo­types go to die (John Allen, Crux): “Spending time among the Chris­tians of the Mid­dle East is always an edi­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, but for West­ern­ers it packs a spe­cial punch. That’s because the Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion of this peren­ni­al­ly trou­bled region often is where West­ern stereo­types about the Mid­dle East go to die.” The more you fol­low glob­al news the more sur­pris­ing you will con­sid­er the author’s claims to be.
4. Chi­nese House Church Lead­ers and Tod­dler Arrest­ed After Singing in Pub­lic Park (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Other provinces have been com­ing down espe­cial­ly hard on reli­gious edu­ca­tion for chil­dren. In Zhe­jiang province—where hun­dreds of cross­es were torn off church­es over the past sev­er­al years—elementary and mid­dle school chil­dren weren’t allowed to attend church or Sun­day school this summer.”
5. 4 Spe­cif­ic Things You Lose When You Leave Chris­tian­i­ty (Kristi Har­ri­son, Cracked) — this is well-writ­ten and heart­break­ing. “I have no idea why any­one thinks church is bor­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, church was not a slog through old songs, tired rit­u­als, or heavy-hand­ed ser­mons; it was an addic­tive, engag­ing expe­ri­ence where I felt like I had a seat at the table with the cre­ator of the Universe.”
6. Sci­ence v. Sci­ence+ (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “So sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, at least, sci­ence and faith are not incompatible–unless you devise a way to measure/detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty. I have pro­posed two exper­i­ments: 1. I’ll give you ten papers from tier‑1 peer-reviewed jour­nals. Five from athe­ists, five from the­ists, with the names redact­ed. Detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty and accu­rate­ly sep­a­rate the papers into the two groups. 2. Design an exper­i­ment that can be done by an athe­is­tic sci­en­tist and not a the­is­tic scientist.” The author is a physics pro­fes­sor at Christo­pher New­port Uni­ver­si­ty.
7. Free­dom not to choose is a faith worth believ­ing in (David Mitchell, The Guardian):  “I always say I’m agnos­tic because I’d like there to be a God – a nice lib­er­al one – but I can’t be sure there is and the idea of reg­u­lar reli­gious obser­vance unnerves me because it would be unusu­al in my peer group. Not a very well thought-through phi­los­o­phy, I know. But in the absence of fam­i­ly or soci­etal pres­sures, in a con­text of almost com­plete reli­gious free­dom, many of us rely on sim­i­lar back-of-an-enve­lope answers to eter­nal ques­tions, because adopt­ing the answers thou­sands of full-time pon­der­ers have come up with over thou­sands of years feels like squan­der­ing that freedom.” David Mitchell is a British comedian/public intel­lec­tu­al (sort of) — if you’re unfa­mil­iar with him, watch some clips from the British game show Would I Lie To You? A good first clip is David Mitchell’s Code For Note­wor­thi­ness.

Things Glen Found Entertaining/Amusing

• The art & eti­quette of bail­ing (Lau­ren Tay­lor, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Now go forth and bail. Or don’t. Maybe just don’t take on more than you can han­dle. HA just kid­ding, acquir­ing that kind of skill man­dates a book and a series of 4‑unit classes.”
• Moral­ly Bank­rupt Enter­tain­ment Indus­try Total­ly Baf­fled As To How Cul­ture Became Moral­ly Bank­rupt (Baby­lon Bee)
• This is wild: Syn­chro­nized Col­or Lines (red­dit): watch it for at least 15 sec­onds.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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.