Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 193

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 Gen­e­sis of the Tech Indus­try, and Vice Ver­sa (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “In the Book of Gen­e­sis, the under­ly­ing mod­el of eco­nom­ics is a pret­ty opti­mistic one, and that is anoth­er way in which West­ern his­to­ry draws upon its Judeo-Chris­t­ian roots.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
2. Marc Edwards Is a Sad Vic­tim of Our Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Era (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): “…just as he had hon­est­ly exposed Flint’s prob­lems in the first place, he also con­tin­ued to hon­est­ly report the results of the inter­ven­tion. When the water was once again safe, he said so—and that turned him from a hero into a pari­ah.” How have I not heard this? I was talk­ing with a friend last week about how shock­ing it is that the water in Flint is still unsafe.
3. Why Did Evan­gel­i­cals Flock to Trump? Exis­ten­tial Fear. (AJ Nolte, The Bul­wark): “Don­ald Trump appeared at a time dur­ing which many evan­gel­i­cals’ ris­ing expec­ta­tions had turned, rather rapid­ly, into exis­ten­tial fear. Trump was unique­ly posi­tioned to exploit that moment and win over evan­gel­i­cals. Yet while that sup­port is very real, I also think it is shal­low­er and more con­di­tion­al than it appears.” Dr. Nolte is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Regent Uni­ver­si­ty.
   • Very much relat­ed: The Inde­cent-Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Remind me again why Chris­tians vote for Trump, despite his per­son­al cor­rup­tion? You think it might have some­thing to do with the fact that we know what the Democ­rats have planned for us?”
   • Relat­ed to the above, but not so much to the ini­tial link: When being a Chris­t­ian isn’t “decent” any­more (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “…it appears as a mat­ter of course that it is open sea­son on Chris­tians who dare to affirm what the Bible teach­es about sex­u­al ethics. This is the new real­i­ty for Chris­tians who hold the line on bib­li­cal sex­u­al ethics, and I don’t see any signs of things let­ting up. On the con­trary, this kind of open ani­mus only seems to be spread­ing.”
4. “Gay” vs “Same-Sex Attrac­tion”: A Dia­logue (Greg Coles & Rachel Gilson, The Cen­ter For Faith, Sex­u­al­i­ty, and Gen­der): “Both Greg and Rachel believe in a his­tor­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian view of mar­riage and sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. Rachel does not iden­ti­fy as gay or les­bian, even though she expe­ri­ences same-sex attrac­tion. Greg does iden­ti­fy as gay, pre­fer­ring the term over ‘same-sex attract­ed.’” This is an intro­duc­to­ry arti­cle that links to a sev­en-part series. It is short­er than it sounds (the sec­ond-to-last arti­cle is fair­ly long, how­ev­er). Rec­om­mend­ed.
   • Relat­ed: The Chris­t­ian Debate Over Sex­u­al Iden­ti­ty (Sam All­ber­ry, Desir­ing God): “As a Chris­t­ian, one of the key things for me is real­iz­ing that iden­ti­ty as Chris­tians is not some­thing that we dis­cov­er in our­selves, nor is it some­thing we cre­ate. It’s some­thing we receive and are giv­en by the only per­son who can know our actu­al iden­ti­ty, which is the God who made us. So my iden­ti­ty as a Chris­t­ian comes from the fact that I’ve been cre­at­ed by God and redeemed by him through the sav­ing work of Jesus.” This is a bit old­er.
5. I’m a Jour­nal­ist. Appar­ent­ly, I’m Also One of America’s “Top Doc­tors.” (Mar­shall Allen, ProP­ub­li­ca): “I don’t have a med­ical degree, and I’m not a physi­cian. But I am an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who spe­cial­izes in health care. So I leaned for­ward in my seat with some antic­i­pa­tion when I returned the call last year. I spoke to a cheer­ful sales­woman named Anne at a com­pa­ny on New York’s Long Island that hands out the Top Doc­tor Awards. For some rea­son, she believed I was a physi­cian and, even bet­ter, wor­thy of one of their awards. Puz­zled and amused, I took notes.”
6. Trans Men Erase Women (Char­lotte Allen, First Things): “Male-to-female trans­gen­der ath­letes are van­ish­ing­ly few in num­ber (like male-to-female trans peo­ple in gen­er­al), but as the above exam­ples indi­cate, when they com­pete, they pose a crush­ing exis­ten­tial threat to women’s sports. That is because the very exis­tence of women’s sports is pred­i­cat­ed, as Mar­ti­na Navratilo­va rec­og­nized, on the now-high­ly polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect obser­va­tion that the two sex­es are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal­ly.”
   • Relat­ed: Trans ath­letes are mak­ing a trav­es­ty of women’s sports (Rich Lowry, NY Post): “In sports, the sup­posed flu­id­i­ty of gen­der runs up against the ineluctabil­i­ty of sex.”
7. The Pell Affair: Aus­tralia Is Now On Tri­al (George Weigel, First Things): “If it is not reversed on appeal, that false ver­dict will con­sti­tute a new indict­ment: the indict­ment of a legal sys­tem that could not bring itself to ren­der jus­tice in the face of pub­lic hys­te­ria, polit­i­cal vendet­ta, and media aggres­sion.”
   • Relat­ed: Car­di­nal Pell sto­ry is an extreme­ly tan­gled web, but read­ers need alter­na­tive media to know that (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “I hadn’t been fol­low­ing the child abuse charges against Aus­tralian Car­di­nal Pell all that much because I assumed, based on the evi­dence, that they were some­what flim­sy and would nev­er stick. But they did — in a series of tri­als that are as odd as they come. At the heart of the pro­ceed­ings there was a sin­gle wit­ness and what appeared to be ‘recov­ered mem­o­ries’ of abuse. The end result? A car­di­nal is now in jail and a bunch of jour­nal­ists have been hand­ed the Aussie equiv­a­lent of con­tempt-of-court charges.”
   • Relat­ed: a red­dit thread on the case.
   • Relat­ed: Is Car­di­nal Pell a per­pe­tra­tor or vic­tim? Aussie media keep waver­ing between the two (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “…Pell is the fall guy for an angry pub­lic, but he’s hard­ly a Don Quixote rid­ing to the defense of preyed-upon Catholic chil­dren.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Man Defends Own Ter­ri­ble Polit­i­cal Par­ty By Point­ing Out How Ter­ri­ble Oth­er Polit­i­cal Par­ty Is (Baby­lon Bee)
  
  
• Calvin­ist Church Hosts Bin­go Night, Just Selects Win­ners Ahead Of Time (Baby­lon Bee)
  
  
• Steve Harvey’s Smooth Pick­up In Col­lege (Steve Har­vey, YouTube): sev­en min­utes. Gen­tle­men, take notes. #nota­joke
  
  
• Shin Lim Per­forms a Series of Increas­ing­ly Shock­ing Card Tricks for Jim­my and The Roots (The Tonight Show, YouTube): four min­utes
  
  
• MUST SEE Magi­cian Taku­mi Taka­hashi’s Sleek Sleight Of Hand (Asia’s Got Tal­ent, YouTube): five min­utes
  
  
• Men­tal­ist Lior Suchard’s Trick Freaks Out The Jonas Broth­ers (The Late Late Show, YouTube): thir­teen min­utes
  
  
• Injectable NanoPar­ti­cles Let Mice See Near InfraRed! (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): we live in amaz­ing times.
  

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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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