Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 343

a briefer col­lec­tion than nor­mal

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 343, which has an unusu­al rela­tion­ship with the num­ber 18. Name­ly 343 = 180 + 181 + 182.

I don’t have much access to my com­put­er this week, so this is a briefer col­lec­tion than the norm. And there may not be an update next week at all — we’ll see.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Read­ers Around the World Are Pray­ing for Ukraine (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “…prayer is indeed pow­er­ful, often in ways we can’t account for. War, what­ev­er else it is, is spir­i­tu­al­ly dark, even demon­ic. From the first days of the Russ­ian inva­sion, reli­gious peo­ple and insti­tu­tions around the world have respond­ed by pray­ing. Writ­ten prayers and Psalms can be a life­line, help­ing us pray when our own words — and even our own faith — fail.”
    • The last prayer is amaz­ing con­tent for the New York Times and I post it here in full since some of you don’t have access through the NYT pay­wall:
    • “Father-God, may the attack­ers’ fin­gers freeze; may they drop things; may they not see clear­ly; may their equip­ment mal­func­tion; may they expe­ri­ence
    • over­whelm­ing hope­less­ness, enor­mous fatigue and a com­plete loss of any desire to fight; may their com­mu­ni­ca­tion be bro­ken; may there be con­fu­sion. Lead them to sur­ren­der. Stretch the kilo­me­ters before them into end­less kilo­me­ters of non­ad­vance­ment. Remove their lead­er­ship and replace them with peo­ple who make deci­sions that reflect a fear of you.
      Oh, God, infuse defend­ers with incred­i­ble surges of renewed alert­ness, strength, hope, courage. Inspire those who want to help. Show them spe­cif­ic, effec­tive ideas. Move them swift­ly and safe­ly.
      The worst is yet to come, Lord, if you do not stop it. But please, no peace where there is no peace. We ask for peace unit­ed with right­eous­ness and truth.God of all com­fort, be phys­i­cal­ly present with all the moth­ers, fathers, grand­par­ents and chil­dren who are hid­ing, hear­ing, smelling, endur­ing. Warm them; fill them with food; give them water, toi­lets, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their loved ones, the Gospel, hope in you.
      We repent of mak­ing idols of polit­i­cal lead­ers and news out­lets. For­give us for want­i­ng them to be our gods and sav­iors. For­give us for being unrea­son­able, for not want­i­ng to admit both the good and bad in all of our lead­ers. It is this spir­it that leads us to dic­ta­tors because we aban­don respon­si­bil­i­ty and rea­son. We con­fess the seeds of war that live in our own hearts.
      We hum­ble our hearts, our bod­ies. We ask you for mer­cy. Thank you that you love mer­cy and have all pow­er.”
  2. How Reli­gious Faith Can Shape Suc­cess in School (Ilana M. Hor­witz, New York Times): “I found that what reli­gion offers teenagers varies by social class. Those raised by pro­fes­sion­al-class par­ents, for exam­ple, do not expe­ri­ence much in the way of an edu­ca­tion­al advan­tage from being reli­gious. In some ways, reli­gion even con­strains teenagers’ edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties (espe­cial­ly girls’) by shap­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic ambi­tions after grad­u­a­tion; they are less like­ly to con­sid­er a selec­tive col­lege as they pri­or­i­tize life goals such as par­ent­hood, altru­ism and ser­vice to God rather than a pres­ti­gious career. How­ev­er, teenage boys from work­ing-class fam­i­lies, regard­less of race, who were reg­u­lar­ly involved in their church and strong­ly believed in God were twice as like­ly to earn bachelor’s degrees as mod­er­ate­ly reli­gious or non­re­li­gious boys.”
    • I find the ten­sion between faith and wealth inter­est­ing. They emerge as rivals in all sorts of sit­u­a­tions. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Tulane.
  3. This 47-year-old left a $800,000 salary to coach bas­ket­ball – now his small school is head­ed to NCAA March Mad­ness (Tom Hud­dle­ston, Jr): “In 2016, Aldrich was in the midst of a lucra­tive career. After being a part­ner at one of the world’s top law firms, he’d become the chief finan­cial offi­cer of a pri­vate equi­ty firm, with a salary of $800,000 per year, he told The Wash­ing­ton Post last week. But then, his best friend and for­mer col­lege bas­ket­ball team­mate Ryan Odom land­ed the job as head bas­ket­ball coach at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more Coun­ty. Odom offered Aldrich a posi­tion as direc­tor of recruit­ing, a job that paid only $32,000 per year. But it got Aldrich clos­er to ful­fill­ing a life­long dream: a career coach­ing col­lege bas­ket­ball. He accept­ed.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I did some dig­ging and turns out the coach is a devout Chris­t­ian.
  4. The Semi­con­duc­tor Ecosys­tem – Explained (Steve Blank, blog): “Con­trol­ling advanced chip man­u­fac­tur­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry may well prove to be like con­trol­lin g the oil sup­ply in the 20th. The coun­try that con­trols this man­u­fac­tur­ing can throt­tle the mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pow­er of oth­ers.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. SF is now boy­cotting most of the Unit­ed States (Joe Eskenazi,Mission Local):  “It will come as lit­tle sur­prise to any­one famil­iar with the M.O. of San Fran­cis­co gov­ern­ment that we have no tests nor audits nor analy­sis nor method­ol­o­gy to deter­mine if our trav­el bans or boy­cotts are mak­ing any dif­fer­ence for the good.… You could argue that, in 2016, San Fran­cis­co put itself in the van­guard of a move­ment. But, in the ensu­ing six years, nobody else has joined up. ‘No city has reached out to say they want to mir­ror our rules,’ con­firms Chu.” 
  6. The Real Rea­son That Pornog­ra­phy Can Lead to Male Sex­u­al Dis­sat­is­fac­tion (Ross Pomeroy, Real Clear Sci­ence): “…the unre­al­is­tic depic­tions of sex, female part­ners, and rela­tion­ships com­mon­ly seen in pornog­ra­phy can warp men’s expec­ta­tions of real-life sex. When het­ero­sex­u­al men expect sex with their part­ners to be just like the staged fan­tasies they see on the Inter­net, this can lead to dis­sat­is­fac­tion and even low­er their well-being.”
    • Sci­ence, catch­ing up to youth pas­tors since 2022.
    • Catch­ing up to bad youth pas­tors, actu­al­ly. The advice at the end is pret­ty ter­ri­ble by almost any­one’s stan­dards.
  7. The Chris­tians Who Think the Ukraine Inva­sion Means Jesus Is Return­ing to Earth (Alex Mor­ris, Rolling Stone): “For mil­len­nia, end times Chris­tians have tried to shoe­horn cur­rent events into proof of Jesus’ immi­nent return, tak­ing cryp­tic lan­guage from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew, and Rev­e­la­tion to come up with var­i­ous the­o­ries as to how the world will end. In most of these the­o­ries — embraced by con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal or fun­da­men­tal­ist branch­es of the faith — an enti­ty referred to as Gog and Magog descends from the ‘far north’ upon a peace­ful, recon­sti­tut­ed Israel, whose peo­ple had been ‘brought out from the nations, and all now dwell secure­ly,’ as it is described in Ezekiel. The result­ing war that fol­lows allows a Mes­si­ah to swoop in and come to Israel’s res­cue. It also ush­ers in the end of the world as we know it and the estab­lish­ment of a new and bet­ter king­dom of God on earth.”
    • The author most­ly did his home­work, but did mis­spell “pen­ta­costal” lat­er in the essay and def­i­nite­ly gets some of the men­tal­i­ty wrong.

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 one I have fond­ness in my heart for: 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.

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