Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 309

in which I pro­vide my views on ser­mon orig­i­nal­i­ty

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.

TIL that the num­ber 309 is is the small­est num­ber whose 5th pow­er con­tains every dig­it at least once. 3095=2,817,036,000,549. I’m real­ly stunned that some­one fig­ured that out.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘Ser­mon­gate’ Prompts a Quandary: Should Pas­tors Bor­row Words From One Anoth­er? (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Ben­jamin Franklin wrote of his admi­ra­tion of a young Pres­by­ter­ian preach­er much respect­ed for his preach­ing, which was appar­ent­ly deliv­ered extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly. When a doc­tri­nal dis­pute erupt­ed in the con­gre­ga­tion, how­ev­er, an adver­sary rec­og­nized that a pas­sage deliv­ered by the preach­er had been lift­ed from an uncred­it­ed source. Franklin stuck by the pla­gia­rist. ‘I rather approved his giv­ing us good ser­mons com­posed by oth­ers,’ he wrote, ‘than bad ones of his own man­u­fac­ture.’ ”
    • The appro­pri­ate prin­ci­ples seem so obvi­ous to me:
    • Nev­er present some­one else’s per­son­al sto­ries as though they hap­pened to you. It’s hard to call that any­thing oth­er than lying.
    • If you gain an insight from some­one else, why would you deprive your hear­ers of that good insight? USE IT. Cred­it it in the way that seems most appro­pri­ate, but a ser­mon is not a writ­ten resource peo­ple are going to cite nor one that peo­ple are going to track down your ref­er­ences on. I don’t even think pla­gia­rism is the right term in this con­ver­sa­tion: there’s no stan­dard way to cite oth­er ser­mons nor should there be. Peo­ple who get a bee in their bon­net about this seem so odd to me.
    • In fact, you should always assume that the mes­sages I deliv­er have been enriched by insights from oth­ers. I love God’s Word and I love my stu­dents too much to just give them my own lim­it­ed obser­va­tions. My own prac­tice: I copy and paste the text into a Word doc­u­ment. Then I begin typ­ing my insights and con­struct­ing a rough out­line. Then I con­sult schol­ar­ly and ser­mon­ic resources and revise my outline/notes when I real­ize I’ve mis­un­der­stood some­thing or that I missed an impor­tant point. Typ­i­cal­ly that means I read two or three com­men­taries and will some­times skim one or two ser­mons from preach­ers I respect. If some­one’s phras­ing is so good I adopt it, I usu­al­ly add, “I heard a pas­tor say” or “an aca­d­e­m­ic com­men­tary real­ly helped me out on this point” and some­times will even give the pre­cise source. But not always. Some­times cit­ing some­thing ver­bal­ly breaks up the flow too much. Some­times after an espe­cial­ly fact-laden mes­sage I will send out an email roundup of the most impor­tant sources (that tends to hap­pen after apolo­getic ser­mons when I’m appeal­ing to extrascrip­tur­al facts).
    • It gets com­pli­cat­ed with insights I gleaned years ago and have preached mul­ti­ple times since. Some­times I don’t even remem­ber that it was­n’t orig­i­nal to me (whether clever phras­ing or an entire ser­mon out­line). That’s how learn­ing works! I’m not try­ing to deceive any­one, but I am 100% con­fi­dent that I word some things a cer­tain way because some­one else word­ed it that way to me and I thought, “that’s per­fect” and now that I’ve said it 70 times I just know that’s how I think about the sub­ject.
    • If you ever want to know if some­thing I said is orig­i­nal to me, just ask. If I quot­ed some­one else (and remem­ber that I have), I’ll be thrilled to point you to a resource that helped me!
  2. What Makes a Cult a Cult? (Zoë Heller, New York­er): “The good news is that ratio­nal objec­tions to flaws in cult doc­trine or to hypocrisies on the part of a cult leader do have a pow­er­ful impact if and when they occur to the cult mem­bers them­selves. The ana­lyt­i­cal mind may be qui­etened by cult-think, but it is rarely dead­ened alto­geth­er. Espe­cial­ly if cult life is prov­ing unpleas­ant, the capac­i­ty for crit­i­cal thought can reassert itself.” The focus here is on way-out-there cults. Inter­est­ing nonethe­less, even giv­en the author’s blind spots (I think it would have been a stronger arti­cle if she had men­tioned a few sec­u­lar beliefs as par­al­lels).
  3. Our Unequal Polyg­a­mous Past (Conn Car­roll, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “This brief his­to­ry of human sex­u­al rela­tions shows us three things: 1) we are hard­wired to form monog­a­mous pair bonds; 2) the priv­i­leged among us will always try to monop­o­lize more mates; and 3) we can check the priv­i­lege of the pow­er­ful by enforc­ing monog­a­mous cul­tur­al norms.”
  4. Wok­e­ness:
    • As a Gay Child in a Chris­t­ian Cult, I Was Taught to Hate Myself. Then I Joined the Church of Social Justice—and Noth­ing Changed (Ben Appel, Quil­lette): “For years, I feared homo­pho­bic right-wing evan­gel­i­cals. But these days, I’m equal­ly wary of the pro­gres­sive activists who push a dis­tinct­ly homo­pho­bic agen­da that denies the bio­log­i­cal real­i­ty of sex—and who claim that what we are attract­ed to isn’t male or female bod­ies per se, but rather male or female gen­der iden­ti­ties. This out­look effec­tive­ly imag­ines away the exis­tence of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, which, in the real world, is of course root­ed in phys­i­cal attrac­tion based on bio­log­i­cal attrib­ut­es.”
    • If you hate the cul­ture wars, blame lib­er­als (Kevin Drum, per­son­al blog): “It is not con­ser­v­a­tives who have turned Amer­i­can pol­i­tics into a cul­ture war bat­tle. It is lib­er­als. And this should­n’t come as a sur­prise since pro­gres­sives have been brag­ging pub­licly about push­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty left­ward since at least 2004. Now, I’m per­son­al­ly hap­py about most of this. But that does­n’t blind me to the fact that “per­son­al­ly hap­py” means noth­ing in pol­i­tics. What mat­ters is what the medi­an vot­er feels, and Democ­rats have been mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from the medi­an vot­er for years:” Inter­est­ing and very dif­fer­ent from the mes­sage I usu­al­ly hear, which blames polar­iza­tion on con­ser­v­a­tives who are said to have moved much more to the right than lib­er­als have moved to the left.
    • Cul­ture Wars are Long Wars (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Cul­tur­al insur­gents win few con­verts in their own cohort. They can, how­ev­er, build up a sys­tem of ideas and insti­tu­tions which will pre­serve and refine the ideals they hope their com­mu­ni­ty will adopt in the future. The real tar­get of these ideas are not their con­tem­po­raries, but their con­tem­po­raries’ chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. Cul­ture wars are fought for the hearts of the unborn. Future gen­er­a­tions will be open to val­ues the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion rejects out­right. This will not be appar­ent at first. Beneath the offi­cial com­ings and goings of the cohorts above, a new con­sen­sus forms in in the cohorts below. Ideas will fes­ter among the young, but their impact will be hid­den by the inabil­i­ty and inex­pe­ri­ence of youth. But the youth do not stay young. Even­tu­al­ly a tran­si­tion point arrives.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
    • What Hap­pened To You? (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “[We have wit­nessed a] sud­den, rapid, stun­ning shift in the belief sys­tem of the Amer­i­can elites. It has sent the whole soci­ety into a pro­found cul­tur­al dis­lo­ca­tion. It is, in essence, an ongo­ing moral pan­ic against the specter of ‘white suprema­cy,’ which is now bizarrely regard­ed as an accu­rate descrip­tion of the largest, freest, most suc­cess­ful mul­tira­cial democ­ra­cy in human his­to­ry.”
    • The West’s cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion is over (Ed West, UnHerd): “Life of Bri­an couldn’t be made 20 years ear­li­er, and nei­ther could it be made now; its satire of Jesus, a prophet of Islam, would risk upset­ting Mus­lim sen­si­bil­i­ties, which it’s fair to say peo­ple have become slight­ly wary of doing. At the very least it would need to cut out the scene point­ing fun at a man who, absurd­ly to the film­mak­ers and audi­ences, iden­ti­fies as a woman; absurd in 1979, as it had been in 1879 and 1779 and in every year before that, but a sacred idea in 2021. It’s sacred in the sense that its believ­ers have cap­tured the moral citadel where the most pow­er­ful ideas are pro­tect­ed by taboo, achieved either by emo­tion­al argu­ment or intim­i­da­tion (and both can be effec­tive). This is not some dark new age of can­cel cul­ture, how­ev­er, it’s just a return to nor­mal­i­ty.”
  5. Pan­dem­ic-relat­ed
    • Why Did­n’t COVID-19 Kill the Con­sti­tu­tion? (Jacob Sul­lum. Rea­son): “COVID-19 did not kill the Con­sti­tu­tion. But the cri­sis made it vivid­ly clear that we can­not count on politi­cians or bureau­crats to wor­ry about lim­its on their author­i­ty, espe­cial­ly when they believe they are doing what is nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pub­lic from a dead­ly dan­ger. The task of enforc­ing those lim­its falls to judges who are will­ing to stick their necks out.”
    • What Are the Lim­its to Gov­ern­men­tal Author­i­ty over the Church? (Ben Edwards, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “Christians/churches must sub­mit to every gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion unless it would mean dis­obey­ing God (i.e., cause them to sin) or the gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to reg­u­late some­thing out­side its sphere of author­i­ty.”
  6. On Chi­na
    • Chi­na Won’t Bury Us, Either (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Gar­ry Kas­parov has a pithy way of sum­ming up the past 18 months of tribu­la­tion. ‘Chi­na gave us the virus,’ the chess and human-rights cham­pi­on told me over a recent break­fast. ‘And the free world gave us the vac­cines.’ ”
    • Why a Chi­nese inva­sion of Tai­wan would be a cat­a­stro­phe for Chi­na and the world (Jon Stokes, per­son­al blog): “The world’s largest, most valu­able tech com­pa­nies are depen­dent either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly on the steady out­put of TSMC’s fabs. If those fabs went offline or became unavail­able in the west because they were con­trolled by PRC, it would imme­di­ate­ly dev­as­tate the glob­al econ­o­my. An unknow­able num­ber of large com­pa­nies just wouldn’t be able to refill their inven­to­ries for an inde­ter­mi­nate­ly long time.” This is about com­put­er chips and how a Chi­nese inva­sion of Tai­wan will be dis­as­trous for that mar­ket (which touch­es on so many oth­ers) no mat­ter how the inva­sion plays out. Very thought­ful.
  7. Scripps Spelling Bee 2021: Zaila Avant-garde Wins (Mag­gie Astor and Maria Cramer, New York Times): “Zaila, who just fin­ished eighth grade in her home­town, Har­vey, La., showed a prowess for spelling at 10, when her father, who had been watch­ing finals of the Scripps Nation­al Spelling Bee on ESPN, asked her how to spell the win­ning word: maro­cain. Zaila spelled it per­fect­ly. Then he asked her to spell the win­ning words going back to 1999. She spelled near­ly all of them cor­rect­ly and was able to tell him the books where she had seen them.” Read the whole thing — this kid is amaz­ing at more than spelling! The inter­face is weird — you’ll have to click “Read more” just before the time­line.

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 The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

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