Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 144

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. Exten­sive Data Shows Pun­ish­ing Reach of Racism for Black Boys (Emi­ly Bad­ger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce And Kevin Quealy, NY Times): “The authors, includ­ing the Stan­ford econ­o­mist Raj Chet­ty and two cen­sus researchers, Mag­gie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to iden­ti­fy neigh­bor­hoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites. ‘The problem,’ Mr. Chet­ty said, ‘is that there are essen­tial­ly no such neigh­bor­hoods in America.’ And, intrigu­ing­ly, these pock­ets — includ­ing parts of the Mary­land sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, and cor­ners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many low­er-income black chil­dren had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not.”
    • The main take­away from this research is that Amer­i­can soci­ety is fail­ing black men. The sole ray of hope I saw in the arti­cle was in the para­graph above: poor black boys appar­ent­ly do as well as sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed poor white boys if there are black fathers near­by. It’s stun­ning: a dense gath­er­ing of fathers can bring health even into father­less sit­u­a­tions. The fam­i­ly is a basic build­ing block of soci­ety and we weak­en it at great risk. I’m shocked this result from the study hasn’t received more cov­er­age.
  2. Mar­riage Has Become a Tro­phy (Andrew Cher­lin, The Atlantic): “For many peo­ple, regard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, a wed­ding is no longer the first step into adult­hood that it once was, but, often, the last. It is a cel­e­bra­tion of all that two peo­ple have already done, unlike a tra­di­tion­al wed­ding, which was a cel­e­bra­tion of what a cou­ple would do in the future.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Johns Hop­kins.
  3. This Preach­er Would Be Hap­py to Share Your Bowl of Açaí (Lau­ra Wil­son, New York Times): “Pastors today who want to start a min­istry for those 40 and under fol­low a well-trav­eled path. First, they lease an old the­ater or club. Next, they find great singers and back­up musi­cians. A fog machine on stage is nice. A church should also have a catchy logo or catch­phrase that can be stamped onto mer­chan­dise and brand­ed — socks, knit hats, shoes and sweat­shirts. (An online pop-up shop on Memo­r­i­al Day sold $10,000 in mer­chan­dise its first hour, Mr. Veach said.) And last­ly, church­es need a mon­ey app — Zoe uses Push­pay — to make it easy for church­go­ers to tithe with a swipe on their smartphones.”
    • I thought this was an odd para­graph: “‘Instagram built our church,’ he said one after­noon at his office here a block from the El Rey The­ater. ‘Isn’t that fascinating?’ Mr. Veach believes he can save souls by being the hip and hap­py-go-lucky preach­er, the one you want to share a bowl of açaí with at Back­yard Bowls on Bev­er­ly Boule­vard, who declines to pub­licly dis­cuss pol­i­tics in the Trump era because it’s hard to min­is­ter if no one wants to come to church. Jesus is sup­posed to be fun, right? ‘I want to be loud and dumb,’ Mr. Veach said with a wide, toothy grin. ‘That’s my goal. If we aren’t mak­ing peo­ple laugh, what are we doing? What is the point?’”
  4. Why Cloud­flare Let An Extrem­ist Strong­hold Burn (Steven John­son, Wired): “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decid­ed some­one shouldn’t be allowed on the inter­net. No one should have that power.” I shared one of the relat­ed arti­cles back in issue 136, but didn’t real­ize it was the theme of the whole issue: The (Divi­sive, Cor­ro­sive, Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech. The oth­er arti­cles are worth check­ing out as well. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend.
  5. Ter­ry Crews: How to Have, Do and Be All You Want (Tim Fer­riss Pod­cast): this is a mov­ing inter­view. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Worth men­tion­ing: Ter­ry Crews is pub­lic about his Chris­t­ian faith on social media, although it does not come through in this inter­view. I men­tion that because he says some things about guilt and shame towards the end that are not quite right the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but are still worth think­ing about.  
  6. God Made Me Black On Pur­pose (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “A pil­lar of the area’s African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, the shop fea­tures aging walls cov­ered in pho­tos, news clip­pings and oth­er para­pher­na­lia. Two indi­vid­u­als in par­tic­u­lar are lion­ized: Barack Oba­ma, the country’s first black pres­i­dent; and Scott, the first black sen­a­tor from the South since Reconstruction—and the only African-Amer­i­can ever to serve in both cham­bers of Con­gress. Both are chil­dren of sin­gle moth­ers, but polit­i­cal­ly, the pair have lit­tle in com­mon: Oba­ma, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat raised pri­mar­i­ly by well-off whites in Hawaii before adopt­ing Chicago’s impov­er­ished South Side as his polit­i­cal base; Scott, a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who grew up poor in North Charleston, and whose ini­tial tick­et to D.C. was punched by afflu­ent vot­ers in the state’s three-quar­ters-white 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Still, they are mem­bers of a small fraternity—two of just 10 African-Amer­i­cans ever to serve in the Senate—and both are an immea­sur­able source of pride for the bar­ber shop and its customers.”
    • One detail from lat­er in the arti­cle that stood out to me: Scott got saved in col­lege at a Bible study. Col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Also, the way he became a Repub­li­can is actu­al­ly real­ly fun­ny. Search the arti­cle for the phrase, “Scott knew imme­di­ate­ly he would run; what he didn’t know was for which party.”
  7. How many hours does it take to make a friend? (Jef­frey Hall, Jour­nal of Social and Per­son­al Rela­tion­ships):  “Tak­en togeth­er, results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from casu­al friend to friend is greater than 50% after around 80–100 hr togeth­er. Results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from friends to good/best friends is greater than 50% after 119 hr over 3 weeks and 219 hr over 3 months.” The author is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give criticism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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.

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