Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 298

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 298, which is a fair­ly unin­ter­est­ing num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. New Rule: Give It to Me Straight, Doc (Bill Maher, YouTube): eight min­utes. This is a very good clip about COVID mis­in­for­ma­tion, although the lan­guage is not fam­i­ly-friend­ly. It goes in a direc­tion I did not expect towards the end.
   • Relat­ed: Why do so many vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple remain irra­tional­ly fear­ful? Lis­ten to the professor’s sto­ry. (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “To take just one exam­ple, major media out­lets trum­pet­ed new gov­ern­ment data last week show­ing that 5,800 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans had con­tract­ed Covid. That may sound like a big num­ber, but it indi­cates that a vac­ci­nat­ed person’s chances of get­ting Covid are about one in 11,000.… A car trip is a big­ger threat, to you and oth­ers. About 100 Amer­i­cans are like­ly to die in car crash­es today. The new fed­er­al data sug­gests that either zero or one vac­ci­nat­ed per­son will die today from Covid.”
2. On Good Par­ties (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Break­ing Ground): “A Good Par­ty is a place where bonds of friend­ship, fos­tered in a spir­it of both char­i­ty and joy, serve as the build­ing blocks for com­mu­nal life over­all. The wed­ding feast, that abun­dant ban­quet of Chris­t­ian life, is always pre­fig­ured in the con­vivial sym­po­sium of friend­ship. The king­dom of heav­en, when it comes, will be a very Good Par­ty. Good Par­ties don’t mere­ly offer us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to gath­er with those we love. Rather, more impor­tant­ly, they teach us how to love.” This is real­ly quite some­thing. I like it a lot.
3. The Ques­tion That Dic­tates How Chris­tians Approach Cul­ture and Pol­i­tics (David French, The Dis­patch): “It’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly obvi­ous that one expla­na­tion for pro­found­ly dif­fer­ent Chris­t­ian approach­es to pol­i­tics and cul­ture rests with dif­fer­ent answers to the fol­low­ing ques­tion: Does the pri­ma­ry threat to the church come from with­in the church or with­out? Put dif­fer­ent­ly, does the church stum­ble and fall pri­mar­i­ly because of the sins of the church or because of the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal head­winds direct­ed against the church?”
   • In Here, Out There: On Assess­ing Spir­i­tu­al Threats (Dan Dar­ling, Sub­stack): “At times when we are com­bat­ing cul­tur­al ideas, we are not argu­ing with the world, but try­ing to equip the next gen­er­a­tion of Chris­tians whose faith will be chal­lenged by ideas that run con­trary to Scrip­ture. Our peo­ple are inun­dat­ed on every side by mes­sages that are at odds with Jesus’ teach­ings. Pop cul­ture, social media, friends, etc form a pow­er­ful influ­ence on this cohort of young peo­ple.” Not a rebut­tal, but a com­ple­ment.
4. It’s Time for Social Con­ser­v­a­tives to Stop Fawn­ing Over Hun­gary (Lyman Stone, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “What made Hungary’s fam­i­ly pol­i­cy work wasn’t the pop­ulism, but the bor­ing tech­noc­ra­cy of it. Flashy pop­ulist pro­grams failed, while just push­ing cash out the door to fam­i­lies (as is the norm in coun­tries like Swe­den, Den­mark, or Nor­way, all of which have high­er birth rates than Hun­gary) worked. Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives should learn from this: if you want a high­er birth rate, you’re going to have to pay for it.” This was way more inter­est­ing than I antic­i­pat­ed.
5. Why is Every­thing Lib­er­al? (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “In a democ­ra­cy, every vote is sup­posed to be equal. If about half the coun­try sup­ports one side and half the coun­try sup­ports anoth­er, you may expect major insti­tu­tions to either be equal­ly divid­ed, or to try to stay polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral. This is not what we find.” This is basi­cal­ly one real­ly good obser­va­tion expound­ed in detail. The author, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, is a research fel­low at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.
6. Repa­ra­tions: A Crit­i­cal The­o­log­i­cal Review (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “With tax col­lec­tors and sol­diers through­out the Gospels, there is no talk of resti­tu­tion for impe­r­i­al suprema­cy or extrac­tive sys­tems, nor any sum­mons to dis­man­tle the struc­tures they inhab­it­ed, just the straight­for­ward com­mand to live a god­ly life, be gen­er­ous to oth­ers, and repay what you have stolen.” Well done book reviews are amaz­ing. This is as good as the best reviews by Scott Alexan­der.
7. The Great Unset­tling (Paul Kingsnorth, Sub­stack): “We in the West invent­ed this thing called ‘moder­ni­ty’, and then we took it out into the world, whether the world want­ed it or not. Once we called this process ‘the white man’s bur­den’ and export­ed it with dread­noughts. Now we call it ‘devel­op­ment’ and export it via the World Bank.” Wide-rang­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Wor­ship Leader Late To Church After Repeat­ed­ly Dri­ving Over Bridge (Baby­lon Bee)
• Fake IKEA Employ­ee (Twit­ter): a fun­ny two minute video
• Chris­t­ian Read­ing The News Sure Is Glad His Hope Isn’t In The Unit­ed States Of Amer­i­ca (Baby­lon Bee)
• Egg Mag­ic (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): eleven min­utes
• How prod­uct place­ments may soon be added to clas­sic films (Jon­ty Bloom, BBC): “items can be dig­i­tal­ly added to almost any movie or TV show. For exam­ple, adver­tis­ers could put new labels on the cham­pagne bot­tles in Rick­’s Cafe in Casablan­ca, add dif­fer­ent back­ground neon adver­tis­ing signs to Ocean’s 11, or get Char­lie Chap­lin to pro­mote a fizzy drink.” Also, the reporter has a won­der­ful name and I hope is soon assigned to a gar­den sto­ry.
• To Do (SMBC)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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.