Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 192

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. The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Oth­er Proof Exists? (Christo­pher Klein, History.com): “With­in a few decades of his life­time, Jesus was men­tioned by Jew­ish and Roman his­to­ri­ans in pas­sages that cor­rob­o­rate por­tions of the New Tes­ta­ment that describe the life and death of Jesus.”
  2. Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas (Jonathan Parks-Ram­age, Medi­um): “How, in famous­ly lib­er­al Hol­ly­wood and among sta­tis­ti­cal­ly pro­gres­sive mil­len­ni­als, had good old-fash­ioned evan­ge­lism [sic] gained pop­u­lar­i­ty? In this con­text, a church like Real­i­ty L.A. seemed like some­thing that could nev­er work. But that evening, as I reflect­ed on the trou­bled actress and the psy­chic bru­tal­i­ties inflict­ed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try, it occurred to me that I had under­es­ti­mat­ed Hollywood’s biggest prod­uct: lost souls.”
    • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Sto­ries like this are cat­nip for me. The author is gay, a fact which weighs heav­i­ly in his report­ing. A friend passed this my way, and I remind you that I always wel­come such sug­ges­tions.
  3. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians Just Retook the Unit­ed Methodist Church (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “In the final hours of the con­fer­ence on Tues­day, the debate turned acri­mo­nious: One del­e­gate alleged, with­out clear evi­dence, that peo­ple at the con­fer­ence were brib­ing oth­ers for votes. Anoth­er speaker’s mic was silenced when he threat­ened to fil­i­buster any vote before the end of the day. And the debate came to an abrupt halt: Del­e­gates had to clear out of the con­fer­ence hall so that it could be turned over for a mon­ster-truck ral­ly.”
    • That final sen­tence, while fac­tu­al, feels like a metaphor for some­thing.
    • I pre­dict the vic­to­ri­ous tra­di­tion­al­ists in the UMC will be far more mag­nan­i­mous toward church­es that wish to leave than the revi­sion­ists in oth­er denom­i­na­tions have been to their van­quished (I’m look­ing at you, Epis­co­pal Church).
  4. The Trau­ma Floor (Casey New­ton, The Verge): “One [Face­book con­tent mod­er­a­tor] walks the floor pro­mot­ing the idea that the Earth is flat. A for­mer employ­ee told me he has begun to ques­tion cer­tain aspects of the Holo­caust. Anoth­er for­mer employ­ee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: ‘I no longer believe 9/11 was a ter­ror­ist attack.’”
  5. Black men are less reli­gious than black women, but more reli­gious than white women and men (Kiana Cox and Jeff Dia­mant, Pew Research Cen­ter): “About sev­en-in-ten (69%) black men say reli­gion is very impor­tant to them, com­pared with 80% of black women. But black men place more impor­tance on reli­gion than white women (55%) and His­pan­ic women (65%), accord­ing to the 2014 Reli­gious Land­scape Study.”
    • I doubt many antire­li­gious peo­ple think of them­selves as racist, so they should real­ize that their attempts to erase reli­gion from the pub­lic square dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harm black peo­ple.
  6. ‘Every day was about sur­vival’ : Inside the grad­u­ate stu­dent afford­abil­i­ty cri­sis (Char­lie Curnin, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “…when Shalev Marom wakes up with only $18 in her bank account, she finds it hard to be excit­ed about her finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. Shalev Marom, who relies on pick­ing pro­duce from cam­pus trees to sus­tain her­self, eats just one full meal a day…. At Stan­ford, Shalev Marom lives in the cheap­est hous­ing option open to her — and as an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent on a J‑1 visa, she is sub­ject to strict fed­er­al laws that reg­u­late any addi­tion­al income she could receive from fur­ther employ­ment. In each pay peri­od — rough­ly two-weeks long — she says she cur­rent­ly receives around $200 to $300 from her research assist­ant­ship, after the deduc­tion of hous­ing costs and Uni­ver­si­ty fees.”
    • This is heart­break­ing. If you know a Stan­ford stu­dent who can’t afford to eat, let me know. We can help.
  7. Main­stream Media Blacks Out The Democ­rats’ Infan­ti­cide Vote (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “So I was going to have a lit­tle fun at the expense of CNN this morn­ing, con­trast­ing the news site’s head­line for the Democ­rats’ gun restric­tion bill—’House to vote on guns back­ground check bill with bipar­ti­san support’—which has gar­nered exact­ly four Repub­li­can co-spon­sors, with its head­line for the Sen. Ben Sasse’s anti-infan­ti­cide bill, which I was cer­tain would be sole­ly about the “GOP” despite hav­ing four Demo­c­rat sen­a­tors vot­ing to move the bill for­ward. Turns out, it was even bet­ter. There was noth­ing to con­trast because, as far as I can tell, CNN doesn’t fea­ture a sin­gle sto­ry on their web­site regard­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty block­ing of Sasse’s Born-Alive Abor­tion Sur­vivors Pro­tec­tion Act, which would have saved new­born babies who sur­vive abor­tion attempts from neg­li­gent homi­cide.”
    • A sur­vey of the results of a Google News search con­firms that this bill received almost no report­ing cov­er­age — almost all of the hits are opin­ion pieces.
    • Relat­ed: Ben Sasse Height­ens the Con­tra­dic­tions (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The days in which “safe, legal, and rare,” could appeal to a wide swathe of Amer­i­cans are over. For pro-lif­ers, abor­tion is the tak­ing of inno­cent life, a thing which sim­ply should not be legal or should only be legal in the most extreme cas­es. For ‘repro­duc­tive jus­tice’ advo­cates, the right to legal abor­tion is about pro­tect­ing the auton­o­my of human per­sons, of pre­serv­ing the unen­cum­bered choice of women whose choice would oth­er­wise be nat­u­ral­ly encum­bered in ways that a man’s is not sim­ply because of their abil­i­ty to bear chil­dren.”
    • Relat­ed: The Abor­tion Debate Needs Moral Lament (Michael Wear, The Atlantic): “After decades of earnest attempts to find some com­mon ground on this most ten­der and per­son­al issue—think of Sen­a­tors Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback’s work on a Down Syn­drome reg­istry, bipar­ti­san sup­port for the Hyde Amend­ment, and Pres­i­dent Obama’s first-term appeal for efforts to reduce the num­ber of women seek­ing abortions—that impulse has been vir­tu­al­ly erad­i­cat­ed among elect­ed offi­cials.”

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). 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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