Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 169

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

This one is com­ing to you from Seoul. I’ve been super busy on this mis­sion trip, so these are select­ed from a less wide range than nor­mal.

  1. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Blind­ness at the Heart of Media Bias (David French, Nation­al Review): “It is con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing to me that main­stream media out­lets have some­how con­vinced them­selves of two con­tra­dic­to­ry things at once: 1) They can­not fair­ly cov­er Amer­i­ca with­out a news­room that more or less looks like Amer­i­ca, but 2) they can cov­er Amer­i­can with­out a news­room that thinks like Amer­i­ca.”
  2. God Doesn’t Turn A Blind Eye To Abuse, Nei­ther Should The Church (Rus­sell Moore, Gospel Coali­tion): “Many through­out the cen­turies have sought to pro­tect the rep­u­ta­tion of God by down­play­ing his wrath. To some degree, the impulse here is good, because many have a false view of God as an angry, sullen, puni­tive deity, not as the God of over­flow­ing love Jesus revealed to us. God’s wrath isn’t a tem­per tantrum. On the oth­er hand, those who point us away from the wrath of God do so at the per­il of eclips­ing God’s own rev­e­la­tion of him­self as holy and just, the One who ‘does not leave the guilty unpun­ished’ (Ex. 34:7). At the cross, the apos­tle Paul wrote, God ‘con­demned sin in the flesh’ (Rom. 8:3). This is impor­tant for us to know, espe­cial­ly those who have sur­vived awful things…. At the cross, God’s wrath and God’s love come togeth­er. They don’t can­cel one anoth­er out.”
  3. Remem­ber those arti­cles I shared about the hor­rif­ic Chi­na crack­down on Mus­lims? Now they are turn­ing their atten­tion to Chris­tians (although much less intense­ly — the sit­u­a­tion with the Mus­lims has echoes of con­cen­tra­tion camps).
    • Chi­na Bans Zion, Beijing’s Biggest House Church (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Bei­jing author­i­ties threat­ened to close Zion Church last month after the 1,500-member con­gre­ga­tion, one of the Chi­nese capital’s largest house church­es, refused to install sur­veil­lance cam­eras in its sanc­tu­ary. After ser­vices on Sun­day, offi­cials deliv­ered on their threat to the unof­fi­cial Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tion, which meets in a ren­o­vat­ed hall in north­ern Bei­jing. Zion is now banned and its mate­ri­als con­fis­cat­ed.…”
    • Group: Offi­cials destroy­ing cross­es, burn­ing bibles in Chi­na (AP News): “China’s gov­ern­ment is ratch­et­ing up a crack­down on Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions in Bei­jing and sev­er­al provinces, destroy­ing cross­es, burn­ing bibles, shut­ting church­es and order­ing fol­low­ers to sign papers renounc­ing their faith, accord­ing to pas­tors and a group that mon­i­tors reli­gion in Chi­na.”
    • Church raid­ed amid esca­lat­ing crack­down (Chi­naAid): “All across Chi­na, church­es are fac­ing pres­sures unprece­dent­ed since the reign of dic­ta­tor Mao Zedong. In Henan, where a con­cen­trat­ed crack­down is occur­ring, sev­en min­is­ters were arrest­ed and then lat­er released that evening…. Addi­tion­al­ly, local offi­cials in Wen­zhou, Zhe­jiang dis­trib­uted a form col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on the reli­gious beliefs of mid­dle school stu­dents and their par­ents. This could have dan­ger­ous reper­cus­sions, as Chi­nese reg­u­la­tions for­bid par­ents from teach­ing reli­gion to their chil­dren.”
    • Chi­na Mulls Major Restric­tions on Online Min­istries (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Chi­nese Chris­tians have one month to tell their gov­ern­ment what they think of pro­posed new rules that ban the shar­ing of prayer, Bible read­ing, bap­tism, com­mu­nion, and oth­er forms of reli­gious activ­i­ty online.“
  4. Vice And Fire (Peter Hitchens, First Things): “As far as I can find out, ­Mar­tin is a lapsed Roman Catholic and has quite banal views about how reli­gion caus­es wars and God is a ‘giant invis­i­ble guy in the sky.’ I do not think he has set out to make an attack on Chris­tian­i­ty. I do not think he espe­cial­ly likes it, but I sus­pect he has dis­card­ed it, and so he has writ­ten an account of a world in which it sim­ply does not exist. His fan­ta­sy great­ly dis­turbs me, because it helps to nor­mal­ize the indif­fer­ence to Chris­tian­i­ty which is a far greater threat to it than active athe­ism.” This is an excel­lent cri­tique of the huge­ly over­rat­ed Game Of Thrones.
  5. After Both­am Jean’s shoot­ing death, his Dal­las church intent on seek­ing jus­tice (Bob­by Ross, Jr., The Chris­t­ian Chron­i­cle): “By all accounts, Both­am Jean was a devot­ed man of faith with a ‘beau­ti­ful’ and ‘pow­er­ful’ singing voice. He was bap­tized at age 10 in his native St. Lucia and moved to the U.S. at age 19 to attend Hard­ing Uni­ver­si­ty in Searcy, Ark., where he often led wor­ship in chapel and served as a min­istry intern with the Col­lege Church of Christ.”
    • Relat­ed: The Worst Police Shoot­ing Yet (David French, Nation­al Review): “We ask police offi­cers to be brave. We ask offi­cers to face a much high­er degree of dan­ger than civil­ians. We ask them to show restraint even in the face of provo­ca­tions and tense con­fronta­tions. There are count­less among them who do all we ask, and more. But we also ask some­thing else: that police offi­cers be sub­ject to the very laws they’re sworn to enforce.”
    • Relat­ed: End Qual­i­fied Immu­ni­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “A police offi­cer killed a com­plete­ly inno­cent man because of the officer’s inex­cus­able mis­take. He escaped crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. And then he even escaped civ­il lia­bil­i­ty — because of a lit­tle-known, judge-made legal doc­trine called qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.” Note that French is writ­ing about a dif­fer­ent case in this arti­cle.
    • Relat­ed: Should Cops Be Immune From Law­suits? (Matt Ford, The New Repub­lic): “The prob­lems with qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty mir­ror a deep­er and more dis­turb­ing trend in the law. Courts, which are sup­posed to be the great vin­di­ca­tors of Amer­i­cans’ rights and lib­er­ties, are increas­ing­ly closed off to them.”
  6. Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­tor shelves bill to ban paid ‘gay con­ver­sion ther­a­py’ for adults (Melanie Mason, LA TImes): “The news of Low’s deci­sion was laud­ed by oppo­nents to the mea­sure. Jonathan Keller, pres­i­dent of the social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion Cal­i­for­nia Fam­i­ly Coun­cil, said his group was ‘inex­press­ibly grate­ful’ to Low for lis­ten­ing to reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties.”
  7. Does Our Cul­tur­al Obses­sion With Safe­ty Spell the Down­fall of Democ­ra­cy? (Thomas Chat­ter­ton Williams, New York Times): These are “‘the three Great Untruths’ of the cur­rent moment: ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you weak­er’; ‘always trust your feel­ings’; ‘life is a bat­tle between good peo­ple and evil peo­ple.’” This is a review of two books and is quite insight­ful.

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 some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

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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