Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 171

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. So much ink about the Ford-Kavanaugh hear­ings! I’m going to avoid post­ing any arti­cles about it until a lit­tle more time has passed and more devel­op­ments have occurred, except for this insight­ful bit from the humor site The Baby­lon Bee: Suc­cess: After A Full Day Of Hear­ings, Every­one Believes Exact­ly What They Already Believed About Kavanaugh.
    • A verse that keeps com­ing to mind is Leviti­cus 19:15 — “Do not per­vert jus­tice; do not show par­tial­i­ty to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neigh­bor fair­ly.” In oth­er words, God’s stan­dard of jus­tice is straight­for­ward and with­out par­tial­i­ty. Rich peo­ple can sin against poor peo­ple, and poor peo­ple can sin against rich peo­ple. Men can sin against women, and women can sin against men. White peo­ple can sin against black peo­ple, and black peo­ple can sin against white peo­ple. True jus­tice comes from judg­ment that tran­scends our sym­pa­thies and prej­u­dices (a type of unjust pre­judg­ment). Per­haps Judge Kavanaugh sinned against Dr. Ford. Per­haps Dr. Ford is sin­ning against Judge Kavanaugh. Per­haps her mem­o­ry is faulty. Per­haps his mem­o­ry is faulty. We must not show par­tial­i­ty to her or favoritism to him. To do oth­er­wise is to per­vert jus­tice.
    • An alum­nus sent me this hymn which he found time­ly (and I con­cur): A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar (G.K. Chester­ton): “O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earth­ly rulers fal­ter, Our peo­ple drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thun­der from us, But take away our pride.”
  2. Why Athe­ists Are Not As Ratio­nal As Some Like To Think (Lois Lee, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “Impor­tant­ly, the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence does not tend to sup­port the view that athe­ism is about ratio­nal thought and the­ism is about exis­ten­tial ful­fil­ments.” The author’s Ph.D. is in soci­ol­o­gy from Cam­bridge and she is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent.
  3. Ter­mi­nal Lucid­i­ty: The Researchers Attempt­ing to Prove Your Mind Lives On Even After You Die (Zaron Bur­nett III, Mel): “In essence, ter­mi­nal lucid­i­ty is a mys­te­ri­ous flash of life and vital­i­ty that occurs in peo­ple just before they die. It’s most remark­able in peo­ple who have demen­tia, Alzheimer’s, menin­gi­tis, brain dam­age, strokes or were in a coma. There’s no known med­ical expla­na­tion for where this sud­den surge of vital­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty comes from. In large part because as sud­den­ly as it comes, with­in a few hours or even a day or two, it fades and the per­son dies, tak­ing any answers with them.” The open­ing anec­dote is wild.
  4. A Chris­t­ian Singer Is Big­ger Than Drake and Ari­ana Grande This Week (Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone): “[Lau­ren Daigle’s] suc­cess high­lights some­thing broad­er, how­ev­er: the deep per­sis­tence of Chris­t­ian music in the U.S. audi­ence — an aspect of music con­sump­tion that has been large­ly skipped over by head­lines pro­claim­ing rap as the sole dri­ver of mod­ern music in Amer­i­ca. While rap and R&B have indeed risen to become the lead­ing genre of music con­sump­tion, Chris­t­ian music remains a siz­able minor­i­ty mass. Sol­id num­bers are hard to come by, but at its annu­al con­fer­ence in 2015, the Gospel Music Asso­ci­a­tion report­ed that 68 per­cent of Amer­i­cans had lis­tened to Chris­t­ian or gospel music with­in the last 30 days.”
  5. It’s time to rethink how much booze may be too much (Julia Bel­luz, Vox): “… the sto­ry about the health effects of mod­er­ate drink­ing is shift­ing pret­ty dra­mat­i­cal­ly. New research on alco­hol and mor­tal­i­ty, and a grow­ing aware­ness about the rise in alco­hol-relat­ed deaths in the US, is caus­ing a reck­on­ing among researchers about even mod­er­ate lev­els of alco­hol con­sump­tion.”
  6. Reflect­ing on “Racism Lives Here, Too”, Part One, see also Part Two, and Part Three (James Banker, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As we’ve ral­lied around our dif­fer­ences, we’ve neglect­ed our com­mon­al­i­ties. We ascribe the max­i­mal­ly offen­sive and hos­tile inter­pre­ta­tions to the words and behav­ior of oth­ers. For fear of giv­ing offense or being offend­ed, we choose silence over dia­logue, as we retreat into ever more con­cen­trat­ed fac­tions of like-mind­ed peo­ple who think and speak like us. Lines have been drawn. Defens­es for­ti­fied. But along the way, we lost a com­mon lan­guage. With only the brute sig­nals for friend and foe, we com­mu­ni­cate across our divides like ships pass­ing in the night: only signs and silence.” The author is a recent Stan­ford law school grad and writes with unusu­al skill. Read­ing this felt more like read­ing an essay in the Atlantic or the New York­er than read­ing a typ­i­cal op-ed in the Dai­ly. Be sure to read all three parts.
  7. Were Evan­gel­i­cals Real­ly Silent about Roe v. Wade? (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “It has become com­mon­place for his­to­ri­ans to say that evan­gel­i­cals had a mut­ed response to the Roe v. Wade deci­sion, which struck down state laws against abor­tion in 1973.… evan­gel­i­cals, both white and black, reg­is­tered grave con­cern about Roe and abor­tion-on-demand, how­ev­er. Evi­dence of this fact is not hard to find. Flag­ship evan­gel­i­cal mag­a­zine Chris­tian­i­ty Today wrote that ‘the deci­sion runs counter not mere­ly to the moral teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty through the ages but also to the moral sense of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.’ Like­wise, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals said, ‘We deplore, in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, the deci­sion of the U.S. Supreme Court which has made it legal to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy for no bet­ter rea­son than per­son­al con­ve­nience or soci­o­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.’” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty. I find this arti­cle fas­ci­nat­ing because I have heard the oppo­site pro­claimed con­fi­dent­ly so many times, but Chris­tian­i­ty Today and the NAE def­i­nite­ly rep­re­sent the main­stream of evan­gel­i­cal thought.

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 Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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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