Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 277

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. How To Get Out Of The Friend Zone (Aaron Renn, The Mas­culin­ist): “Friend­ships between men and women have the char­ac­ter­is­tic that they often evolve into asym­me­try of intent, which is exploita­tive if it per­sists…. remem­ber, just as no woman is under any oblig­a­tion to go out on a date with a man such as you, you are under no oblig­a­tion to be a friend to women.”
   • Every once in a while I like to toss out some­thing sure to rile peo­ple up, just to make sure you’re all pay­ing atten­tion. 
2. God Mode Acti­vat­ed: Meet the Gamers Bring­ing Jesus to Twitch (Christo­pher Hut­ton, Medi­um): “Dustin Phillips is a blond-haired, beard­ed children’s pas­tor in Texas who also serves as GMA’s CEO. On Twitch, he goes by the han­dle Pas­tor­Doost­yn and is known as the “demon-slay­ing pas­tor.” He preach­es the gospel to his 1,400 fol­low­ers while stream­ing games like Doom and Poke­mon.“ Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who was no doubt pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on finals. 
3. Boy Scouts Face At Least 82,000 Sex Abuse Claims (Min­istry Watch): “Today is the dead­line set by a bank­rupt­cy court for fil­ing a sex-abuse claim against the Boy Scouts of Amer­i­ca (BSA). The num­ber of claims so far filed now exceed 82,000, far more than the 9,000 claims filed in Catholic Church cas­es.”
   • Some of you have heard me say this before: the sex­u­al abuse scan­dal in the church is hor­rif­ic, yet it will be dwarfed by what we uncov­er about sex­u­al abuse in pub­lic schools and in youth orga­ni­za­tions. The church­es deserve rebuke for their han­dling of the wicked­ness in their ranks; sad­ly, I doubt that you will hear near­ly as much about the far more mas­sive scan­dals lurk­ing in non­re­li­gious insti­tu­tions.
4. Andy Stan­ley on Evan­gel­i­cals After Trump (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “In the Gospels, Jesus calls on his fol­low­ers to go out, teach his mes­sage, and bap­tize peo­ple. Stan­ley has orga­nized his life around this imper­a­tive, called ‘the Great Com­mis­sion.’ The ques­tion for evan­gel­i­cals, now, is whether the unde­ni­able asso­ci­a­tion between Trump and their ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty will make that work hard­er. ‘Has this group of peo­ple who have some­how become “evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers”’ aligned with Trump ‘hurt the Church’s abil­i­ty to reach peo­ple out­side the Church? Absolute­ly,’ Stan­ley said. But he’s not over­ly wor­ried: A year or two from now, he said, ‘all that goes away.’ New lead­ers will rise up. The Trump era of evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry will fade. Stan­ley chuck­led. ‘And this will just be, for a lot of peo­ple, a bad dream.’”
   • Relat­ed: The Cul­tur­al Con­se­quences of Very, Very Repub­li­can Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, The Dis­patch): “What’s the cul­tur­al effect of a very, very Repub­li­can Chris­tian­i­ty? It’s way too sim­ple to say that it impairs the abil­i­ty of Chris­tians to reach their friends and neigh­bors. In some places it enhances the church’s appeal and inte­grates Chris­tians with­in their com­mu­ni­ty. In oth­er places it cre­ates a host of chal­lenges and need­less­ly alien­ates Chris­tians from their fel­low cit­i­zens.” Insight­ful.
5. Vic­tim­hood or Devel­op­ment? (Glenn Loury, John McWhort­er, Shel­by Steele and Eli Steele, Quil­lette): “Again, the biggest mis­take we made is to buy into the idea that our vic­tim­iza­tion by racism was our source of pow­er rather than our self, our skills, our tal­ents, our devel­op­ment. As vic­tims, we had won a great civ­il rights move­ment. The down­side is it seduced us.” A fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion to eaves­drop on. You can also watch it on video.
6. Madi­son Cawthorn, the GOP’s young star, arrives in Wash­ing­ton (Matthew Kas­sel, Jew­ish Insid­er): “He… seemed to believe that evan­ge­lism was a call­ing on par with pub­lic ser­vice. ‘If all you are is friends with oth­er Chris­tians, then how are you ever going to lead some­body to Christ?’ Cawthorn mused. ‘If you’re not want­i­ng to lead some­body to Christ, then you’re prob­a­bly not real­ly a Chris­t­ian.’”
   • I share that arti­cle to pro­vide con­text for this arti­cle: New­ly Elect­ed GOP Con­gress­man Madi­son Cawthorn Has Tried to Con­vert Jews to Chris­tian­i­ty (Pilar Melen­dez, The Dai­ly Beast): “Madi­son Cawthorn, the North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can who will become the youngest mem­ber of Con­gress in his­to­ry, has admit­ted he tried to con­vert Jews and Mus­lims to Chris­tian­i­ty.” The jour­nal­ist seems gen­uine­ly shocked.
   • Con­trast that with Con­vert Me If You Can (David Harsyani, Nation­al Review): “To be hon­est, I’m often sur­prised at how shy Chris­tians are at [evan­ge­lism]. As a hea­then, though, I am flat­tered by the atten­tion. And as a per­son in pos­ses­sion of free will, I am also uncon­cerned.” 
7. Pas­tor John MacArthur and Cal­i­for­nia church clos­ings: Why isn’t this a nation­al sto­ry? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Indoor wor­ship ser­vices are banned in Cal­i­for­nia, a state of megachurch­es. You don’t have to be a reli­gion expert to know that restric­tion wasn’t going to fly, espe­cial­ly when stores and oth­er busi­ness­es had no sim­i­lar restric­tions…. Again, reli­gious folks see a chasm between how they’re treat­ed and how oth­er pro­tes­tors are treat­ed. And in-per­son nude danc­ing is a form of pro­tect­ed cul­tur­al expres­sion, as opposed to pub­lic wor­ship?”
   • Relat­ed: Lock­downs For Thee, But Not For Me (Joshua Schoe­naker, per­son­al blog): a study in hypocrisy, dif­fi­cult to excerpt.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Ratio­nal (SMBC)
• ‘We Must Can­cel Thanks­giv­ing,’ Says CDC Sci­en­tist Who Looks Sus­pi­cious­ly Like A Turkey In A Lab Coat (Baby­lon Bee)
• Study Finds Con­nec­tion Between Believ­ing Rus­sia Rigged 2016 Elec­tion And Believ­ing 2020 Elec­tion Was Fool­proof (Baby­lon Bee)
• I Am Also Dis­ap­point­ed (Imgur)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Man­ly wed­ding rings for tough guys who are dudes (Dan Brooks, The Out­line): “I don’t hunt, but I briefly con­sid­ered buy­ing a cam­ou­flage ring, part­ly to sig­nal my deep com­mit­ment to irony and part­ly to get bet­ter ser­vice at the auto parts store.” I real­ly enjoyed this essay, and I hope that many of you have need of wed­ding bands in the not-too-distant future. First shared in vol­ume 210.

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.