Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 235

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. Weath­er­ing the Storm: How Faith Affects Well-Being (Byron John­son & Chris­tos Makridis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “First, and con­sis­tent with pri­or stud­ies, active Chris­tians exhib­it 6 per­cent greater cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and are 6 per­cent­age points more like­ly to report that they are thriving—a mea­sure from Gallup that com­bines respon­dent infor­ma­tion on both cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and expect­ed future life sat­is­fac­tion over the next five years. Sec­ond, and at least as impor­tant, we found that SWB is either acycli­cal or slight­ly coun­ter­cycli­cal for active Chris­tians, where­as it is strong­ly pro­cycli­cal for (inac­tive) Chris­tians and the­ists.”
  2. More Non-Evan­gel­i­cals Are Call­ing Them­selves Born Again (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Just over 36 per­cent of the entire sam­ple said that they were born again in 1988, the first year the ques­tion was asked. The ques­tion appeared spo­rad­i­cal­ly on the GSS until 2004, when it became a part of every bi-annu­al sur­vey as the num­ber of affir­ma­tive respons­es began to rise. In the last 14 years, the share of born-again Amer­i­cans has risen to 41 per­cent, and much high­er (54%) among peo­ple of col­or. Since 2010, at least half of peo­ple of col­or say that they have had a ‘turn­ing point in their life’ when they com­mit­ted them­selves to Christ.”
  3. Sex dif­fer­ences in chim­panzees’ use of sticks as play objects resem­ble those of chil­dren (Sonya M. Kahlen­berg & Richard W. Wrang­ham, Cur­rent Biol­o­gy): “…when pre­sent­ed with sex-stereo­typed human toys, cap­tive female mon­keys play more with typ­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine toys, where­as male mon­keys play more with mas­cu­line toys. In human and non­hu­man pri­mates, juve­nile females demon­strate a greater inter­est in infants, and males in rough-and-tum­ble play. This sex dif­fer­ence in activ­i­ty pref­er­ences par­al­lels adult behav­ior and may con­tribute to dif­fer­ences in toy play. Here, we present the first evi­dence of sex dif­fer­ences in use of play objects in a wild pri­mate, in chim­panzees (Pan troglodytes). We find that juve­niles tend to car­ry sticks in a man­ner sug­ges­tive of rudi­men­ta­ry doll play and, as in chil­dren and cap­tive mon­keys, this behav­ior is more com­mon in females than in males.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.024
  4. When a sex offend­er calls, she’s there to lis­ten (Ser­e­na Solomon, Vox): “On the desk in her liv­ing room, a [Women Against Reg­istry] sign sum­ma­rizes her pitch: ‘Destroy­ing Fam­i­lies Does Not Pro­tect Chil­dren.’ It’s a mes­sage geared toward women. WAR argues that the reg­istry can pre­vent reg­is­trants from liv­ing with sup­port­ing rel­a­tives; it can bank­rupt fam­i­lies and invites vig­i­lante attacks.” A fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed by a Chi Alphan.
  5. Detroit man set­tles race dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suit, then bank won’t cash his check (Tre­sa Bal­das, Detroit Free Press): “Thomas closed his [exist­ing bank] account that day and left the premis­es. With­in an hour, he deposit­ed the checks into a new account at a Chase bank in Detroit. They cleared with­in 12 hours. Thomas, who had no car and walked to work, used the mon­ey to buy a 2004 Dodge Duran­go.” This sto­ry bog­gles the mind.
  6. Adven­tures in the Old Athe­ism, Part IV: Marx (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Indeed, oppo­si­tion to Marx­ism is in my view a pre­req­ui­site to being a seri­ous crit­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, for Marx­ism con­tains none of the good that is in cap­i­tal­ism, much of the bad that is in it, and adds grave evils of its own to boot.” That’s not the main thrust of this essay, but I loved that quote. The whole thing is worth read­ing.
  7. Peo­ple crit­i­cize pro-lif­ers for focus­ing so much on abor­tion. But there’s a rea­son we do. (Matthew Lee Ander­son, Vox): “But for the pro-lif­er, that ‘clump of cells’ is as won­drous, as potent, as mys­te­ri­ous as, well, the cos­mos. The recog­ni­tion of the ‘baby’ induces a hushed rev­er­ence. The uni­verse once appeared out of noth­ing, a fact that rea­son­ably seems to induce the strange ver­ti­go of awe, but the for­ma­tion of a new human being is not so dif­fer­ent from this. The embryo con­tains a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties and adven­tures.”
    • Relat­ed: Abor­tion Regret Isn’t a Myth, Despite New Study (Maria Baer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…researcher Michael J. New not­ed that women who vol­un­teer to respond to ques­tions fol­low­ing an abor­tion are more like­ly to be the ones who feel pos­i­tive­ly about it, and there­fore the find­ings do not rep­re­sent the full spec­trum of women who have had abor­tions. New—a pro­fes­sor at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca and a schol­ar with the pro-life Char­lotte Lozi­er Institute—noted that of all the women asked to par­tic­i­pate, less than 40 per­cent agreed, and rough­ly 30 per­cent of the 667 who par­tic­i­pat­ed had stopped respond­ing by the end of the five-year study.”
    • Relat­ed: Trump March­es For Life (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “So, I am gen­uine­ly sur­prised that Don­ald Trump has been so good on pro­life issues, and that he came to the March For Life today. And if peo­ple wor­ry that the march is becom­ing too asso­ci­at­ed with Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, then they should not fault Trump for it, but should redou­ble efforts to get more Democ­rats to get involved.”

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 Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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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