Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 233

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.

I had hoped to include some stuff on Iran but that did­n’t hap­pen. Too much oth­er inter­est­ing stuff came up.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The His­to­ri­an as Moral­ist (Yuval Levin, Nation­al Review): “Prop­er­ly under­stood, the moral­ist calls soci­ety to its high­est self, per­haps espe­cial­ly by help­ing a soci­ety under­stand the ways in which what it thinks are its strengths are actu­al­ly its weak­ness­es. And an effec­tive moral­ist would do this in an engag­ing and com­pelling way. The ablest moral­ist is thus almost inevitably a kind of intel­lec­tu­al.” This was much bet­ter than I expect­ed.
  2. Scam Lures Speak­ers to Fake UK Church Con­fer­ences (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “This email scheme has become the “Niger­ian prince” offer of the Chris­t­ian speak­ing cir­cuit, with hun­dreds of US Chris­t­ian lead­ers invit­ed to events at UK church­es by scam­mers who hope to col­lect hun­dreds of dol­lars in visa fees ahead of the pur­port­ed con­fer­ences.” What a niche scam! I won­der if this exists for oth­er pro­fes­sions.
  3. Chi­na: State­ment from Ear­ly Rain Covenant Church regard­ing Pas­tor Wang Yi’s severe sen­tence (Adam Ford, Dis­rn): “In Christ, we issue the fol­low­ing exhor­ta­tion and protest against Pas­tor Wang Yi’s severe sen­tence. Do you gov­ern­ment offi­cials not know that this is a sin against God? Do you not know that this is an abuse of your author­i­ty (Rom. 13:3)? Even so, we do not hate you. On the con­trary, our mer­ci­ful and right­eous God wants us to love you and to pray for you.”
  4. Hav­ing Kids (Paul Gra­ham, per­son­al blog): “I remem­ber per­fect­ly well what life was like before. Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the abil­i­ty to take off for some oth­er coun­try at a momen­t’s notice. That was so great. Why did I nev­er do that? See what I did there? The fact is, most of the free­dom I had before kids, I nev­er used. I paid for it in lone­li­ness, but I nev­er used it.” 
  5. The Big Farmer Bailout Was Nev­er Debat­ed (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “This is a telling exam­ple of how pol­i­tics works–the process rather than the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion deter­mines much of the out­come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. 
  6. Too much trans­paren­cy makes the world more opaque. (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The demand for trans­paren­cy seems so innocu­ous. Who could be against greater trans­paren­cy? But trans­paren­cy is inim­i­cal to pri­va­cy. And we care about pri­va­cy in part, because we can be more hon­est and truth­ful in pri­vate than in pub­lic.”
  7. 1776 Hon­ors America’s Diver­si­ty in a Way 1619 Does Not (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “My own judg­ment diverges some­what from the main rival fac­tions in this debate. Like many crit­ics, I hope the Times Mag­a­zine’s work suc­ceeds in caus­ing more Amer­i­cans to rec­og­nize the remark­able faith that African Amer­i­cans showed in our country’s promise even in eras when Amer­i­ca least deserved it. Yet the core refram­ing that the 1619 Project advo­cates would unwit­ting­ly set back, rather than advance, the caus­es of equi­ty and racial inclu­sion.”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

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.

Leave a Reply