Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 183

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. You Are Doing It Wrong: Read­ing Entire Books Of The Bible (Tim Miller, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “Imag­ine being in Rome when the book of Romans was first deliv­ered. Now imag­ine the read­er only read­ing for three min­utes (cor­re­spond­ing to the end of chap­ter one) and say­ing, ‘well, that is enough for today, we will read some more tomor­row.’ The crowd would be out­raged and would demand the man con­tin­ue read­ing.”
  2. Shame Storm (Helen Andrews, First Things): “The more online shame cycles you observe, the more obvi­ous the pat­tern becomes: Every­one comes up with a prin­ci­pled-sound­ing pre­text that serves as a bar­ri­er against admit­ting to them­selves that, in fact, all they have real­ly done is joined a mob. Once that bar­ri­er is erect­ed, all rules of decen­cy go out the win­dow, but the pre­text is almost always a lie.” I found this essay engross­ing.
  3. China’s Deten­tion Camps for Mus­lims Turn to Forced Labor (Chris Buck­ley and Austin Ramzy, New York Times): “The evo­lu­tion of the Xin­jiang camps echoes China’s ‘re-edu­ca­tion through labor’ sys­tem, where cit­i­zens once were sent with­out tri­al to toil for years. Chi­na abol­ished ‘re-edu­ca­tion through labor’ five years ago, but Xin­jiang appears to be cre­at­ing a new ver­sion.”
  4. Inter­net Church Isn’t Real­ly Church (Lau­ra Turn­er, New York Times): “The inten­tion behind live-stream­ing ser­vices — to make church, and its atten­dant ben­e­fits of com­mu­ni­ty, prayer and wor­ship, avail­able to every­one with a smart­phone — is a good one. But it pre­sumes that God is pri­mar­i­ly present to us one on one, as indi­vid­u­als, rather than as a com­mu­ni­ty of believ­ers.” Kind of a fol­low-up to last week’s John Crist video.
  5. A mother’s leap of faith at an African air­port, and a 15-year mys­tery (Petu­la Dvo­rak, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The sto­ry of Tom and Maya and Zainab is about trust, about lis­ten­ing to your heart over your mind, and about that gut feel­ing you have when you meet a good per­son. And it’s a sto­ry that could’ve gone hor­ri­bly wrong.” Heart­warm­ing.
  6. Is There Such a Thing as an Author­i­tar­i­an Vot­er? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “In one of the ironies of his­to­ry, as the social sci­en­tif­ic por­trait of human­i­ty grows more psy­cho­log­i­cal and irra­tional, it comes clos­er and clos­er to approx­i­mat­ing the old Adam of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty: a fall­en, depraved crea­ture, unable to see him­self clear­ly except with the aid of a high­er pow­er.”
  7. Men and Mar­riage: Debunk­ing The Ball and Chain Myth (Brad Wilcox & Nicholas Wolfin­ger, Nation­al Mar­riage Project): “…the ben­e­fits of mar­riage for men are sub­stan­tial by every con­ceiv­able mea­sure, includ­ing more mon­ey, a bet­ter sex life, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter phys­i­cal and men­tal health. Yet many men remain igno­rant of these ben­e­fits, a view seem­ing­ly pro­mot­ed by pop­u­lar cul­ture.” This is a PDF of a brochure from the Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies. The two authors are soci­ol­o­gists whom I have linked to in pre­vi­ous issues.

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 Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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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