Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 297

slight­ly weird­er arti­cles than the usu­al (and more fun videos)

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.

This is vol­ume 297, which is known as a Kaprekar Num­ber. It’s such a weird thing I can bare­ly believe it has a name. To sim­pli­fy a bit, if you square the num­ber and split the dig­its in half and they add back up to the orig­i­nal num­ber, it’s a Kaprekar num­ber. Since 2972 = 88,209 and 297 = 88 + 209, that means 297 is one of these odd numer­i­cal enti­ties.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. About police shoot­ings: I’m real­ly sad and I also don’t have any arti­cles because I haven’t read any­thing inter­est­ing about them in rela­tion to the most recent episodes. If you find some­thing — espe­cial­ly some­thing writ­ten from a thought­ful Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive — please do let me know.
  2. Can the Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Find God? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “To be dropped into [a world like this] and not be per­sis­tent­ly open to reli­gious pos­si­bil­i­ties seems much more like prej­u­dice than ratio­nal­i­ty.”
    • Relat­ed: Anoth­er Obsta­cle to Elite Reli­gion (Audrey Poll­now, Sub­stack): “One friend—a very admirable per­son who has devot­ed their life to learn­ing and ser­vice rather than to acquir­ing mon­ey or prestige—told me that they could nev­er become a Chris­t­ian because the inabil­i­ty to be ‘good enough’ in the achieve­ment depart­ment would make them depressed.”
    • Relat­ed: Why the Church Is Los­ing the Next Gen­er­a­tion (Rus­sell Moore, newslet­ter): “If peo­ple reject the church because they reject Jesus and the gospel, we should be sad­dened but not sur­prised.  But what hap­pens when peo­ple reject the church because they think we reject Jesus and the gospel?”
    • Relat­ed: Can Amer­i­ca’s ‘Civ­il Reli­gion’ Still Unite The Coun­try? (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “Amer­i­cans are expect­ed to hold their hands over their hearts when they recite the Pledge of Alle­giance or stand for the nation­al anthem. Young peo­ple are taught to regard the coun­try’s founders almost as saints. The ‘self-evi­dent’ truths list­ed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the key pro­vi­sions of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the Bill of Rights have acquired the sta­tus of scrip­ture in the U.S. con­scious­ness.” The scare quotes around ‘self-evi­dent’ are weird.
  3. On Lov­ing Mor­tals (Cur­tis Yarvin, Athwart): “Here’s a catch-22, or a Meno’s Para­dox of sorts: why should these young men live well with­out a fam­i­ly for whom to do it, and why should young women tol­er­ate (much less love) men who don’t live well? Lov­ing a mor­tal saved me, and count­less oth­er men I know, from the Achil­lean fate, but in most cas­es it seems some­thing like a mir­a­cle.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, who called it enthralling.
  4. Stan­ford activists ‘Dis­turbed the War’ in the 1960s and 1970s (Lenny Siegel, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “After watch­ing the play, ‘Alice in ROTC-Land,’ thou­sands of demon­stra­tors poured out of Frost Amphithe­ater to con­front police. Inci­den­tal­ly, that per­for­mance launched the act­ing career of Sigour­ney Weaver, who played the title role.” Inter­est­ing and also very weird. The author seems to want Stan­ford to be a democ­ra­cy as though it were a gov­ern­ment. Full of fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes.
  5. The Splin­ter­ing of the Evan­gel­i­cal Soul (Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “This [col­lapse of media integri­ty] presents an extra­or­di­nary chal­lenge for Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship. Media con­sump­tion has been climb­ing for years, and it soared amid the pan­dem­ic. Mem­bers of our con­gre­ga­tions may spend a few hours a week in the Word of God (which should always be the Christian’s most impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion and author­i­ty) but 40 hours or more main­lin­ing the ani­mosi­ties of the day.” The author is a Stan­ford grad.
  6. A The­ol­o­gy of Free Speech (Brad Lit­tle­john, Gospel Coali­tion): “Thus, as Chris­tians, we must clear­ly affirm that free­dom of speech can be a great good. But it is an instru­men­tal good, a means to the end of pro­claim­ing truth and encour­ag­ing right­eous­ness. It is not an end in itself, as if the mere free­dom to open our mouths were sacro­sanct. We have a moral right to speak truth in due sea­son. We have no moral right to slan­der, deceive, curse, or insult. In order to secure our moral right to speak truth, how­ev­er, we gen­er­al­ly need to defend a legal right that includes a right to speak false­hood.” This is quite good.
  7. Whith­er the Reli­gious Left? (Matthew Sit­man, The New Repub­lic): “Unlike the bland con­for­mi­ty of civic reli­gion, the prophet­ic calls of par­tic­u­lar­is­tic faiths rarely line up with the needs of polit­i­cal par­ties. This cuts both ways: The reli­gious left, in all its diver­si­ty, will nev­er be a reli­able ally of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, nor will the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty always be a com­fort­able home for the reli­gious left.… That means the reli­gious left faces sim­i­lar dilem­mas as the social­ist left: dis­cern­ing how far and how fast to push, how to relate high ideals to the real­i­ties of main­stream par­ties.”

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 Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

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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