Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 214

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 Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” This is a very good piece.
  2. Skillet’s John Coop­er on Apos­ta­sy Among Young Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (George Brahm, Cogent Chris­tian­i­ty: “I’ve been say­ing for 20 years (and seemed prob­a­bly quite judg­men­tal to some of my peers) that we are in a dan­ger­ous place when the church is look­ing to 20 year old wor­ship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church cul­ture that learns who God is from singing mod­ern praise songs rather than from the teach­ings of the Word.”
  3. Jef­frey Epstein and When to Take Con­spir­a­cies Seri­ous­ly (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Most con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are false. But often some of the things they’re try­ing to explain are real.” Refresh­ing san­i­ty.
  4. Depor­ta­tion of a Chaldean Chris­t­ian to Iraq, and where he died, gets some decent cov­er­age (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “The more you look into this sto­ry, the more dis­turb­ing it gets. Mindy Belz, report­ing for World, wrote that a third coun­try had offered to take Aldaoud but that U.S. immi­gra­tion author­i­ties refused. Putting him on a plane to Najaf was an inten­tion­al twist of cru­el­ty. Appar­ent­ly, it was not an acci­dent that he was sent there instead of Baghdad.”
  5. The Last Days of John Allen Chau (Alex Per­ry, Out­side Mag­a­zine): “.…to those who know the tribes best, John’s mis­sion did not spell the end of the Sen­tine­lese. To them, he rep­re­sent­ed a pos­si­ble means of survival.“ Chi Alpha makes an appear­ance in this arti­cle. Relat­ed links back in vol­umes 179 and 180.
  6. Jeff Bezos is qui­et­ly let­ting his char­i­ties do some­thing rad­i­cal — what­ev­er they want (Theodore Schleifer, Vox Recode): “Giving $100 mil­lion to non­prof­its based on lit­tle pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion and then let­ting them run with it sounds, on its face, like a recipe for dis­as­ter. It con­jures the image of fat-and-hap­py char­i­ty lead­ers milk­ing extrav­a­gant salaries from oth­er­s’ gen­eros­i­ty, or prof­li­gate spend­ing on extra­ne­ous over­head — or even out­right fraud…. Well, here’s the sur­prise: Mul­ti­ple experts told Recode this strat­e­gy actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense. They think phil­an­thropies should give non­prof­its sub­stan­tial­ly more leeway.”
    1. Related(ish): Mis­sion­al Mis­con­cep­tion #1 (Sup­port Fig­ures) (Seth Calla­han, per­son­al blog): “If the [Post Office] were a non-prof­it, faith-based orga­ni­za­tion, with all of their employ­ees being respon­si­ble to cov­er their own oper­at­ing costs… then each employ­ee would need to have a month­ly sup­port lev­el of $11,837.69. That fig­ure does not rep­re­sent what your mail­man gets PAID, mind you. It is how much it COSTS for your mail­man to per­form the ser­vices that are required of him: trans­porta­tion and stor­age of goods, pack­ing sup­plies, vehi­cle main­te­nance, health­care, retire­ment, social security…etc. His take-home pay (what he lives off of) is a small per­cent­age of those oper­at­ing costs.”
  7. The Reli­gious Hunger of the Rad­i­cal Right (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, New York Times): “Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online com­mu­ni­ties of incels, white suprema­cists and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists make no meta­phys­i­cal truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an after­life or reward. But they ful­fill the func­tions that soci­ol­o­gists gen­er­al­ly attribute to a reli­gion: They give their mem­bers a mean­ing­ful account of why the world is the way it is.” 

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 Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court system.” First shared in vol­ume 161.

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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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