Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 378

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 378, which is appar­ent­ly the max­i­mum num­ber of objects you can slice a cube into using 13 cuts.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Jesus Christ, Stream­ing Star (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Con­ceived by a lit­tle-known cre­ator, fea­tur­ing no major stars and fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly, at first, through small con­tri­bu­tions with­out the sup­port of a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, [The Cho­sen] began on an obscure pro­pri­etary app and is now giv­en away for free. Its I.P. is 2,000 years old. But despite the long odds, the faith-based dra­ma series has become a bona fide phe­nom­e­non in many parts of Chris­t­ian cul­ture, attract­ing a fer­vent ecu­meni­cal fan­dom while remain­ing almost invis­i­ble to oth­ers.”
  2. How Col­leges and Sports-Bet­ting Com­pa­nies ‘Cae­sarized’ Cam­pus Life (Anna Betts, Andrew Lit­tle, Eliz­a­beth Sander, Alexan­dra Tremayne-Pen­gel­ly & Walt Bog­danich, New York Times): “The deals came togeth­er large­ly in pri­vate, The Times found, with min­i­mal dis­cus­sion on cam­pus about their poten­tial impact on stu­dents, ath­letes and the integri­ty of col­lege sports.”
    • I love that the lead author is named Betts.
  3. AI Con­quers Diplo­ma­cy (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Keep in mind that since the game is zero-sum to do well the AI must con­vince humans to do what is NOT in their inter­est. We real­ly do need to invest more in the align­ment prob­lem.”
  4. Respons­es to the pro­posed “Respect for Mar­riage Act”
    • No respect for reli­gious free­dom in the “Respect for Mar­riage Act” (Kris­ten Wag­goner, World): “[This leg­is­la­tion] fuels hos­til­i­ty towards Amer­i­cans who hold beliefs about mar­riage root­ed in hon­or­able or philo­soph­i­cal premises.It impos­es a new oblig­a­tion to rec­og­nize same-sex rela­tion­ships on reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions that work close­ly with gov­ern­ment. It cre­ates new tools for pro­gres­sive activists and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice to enforce that oblig­a­tion. It gives the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice a new argu­ment for tak­ing tax-exempt sta­tus away from reli­gious non-prof­its. It makes reli­gious free­dom and free speech cas­es hard­er to win by ele­vat­ing the fed­er­al government’s inter­est in same-sex mar­riage.”
    • Why I Changed My Mind About Law and Mar­riage, Again (David French, The Dis­patch): “I agree with Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia pro­fes­sor Dou­glas Lay­cock. ‘The act con­tains “impor­tant pro­tec­tions” for reli­gious lib­er­ty, includ­ing “an explic­it state­ment by Con­gress that “diverse beliefs about the role of gen­der in marriage”—including the belief that mar­riage is between a man and woman rather than between per­sons of the same sex—“are held by rea­son­able and sin­cere peo­ple based on decent and hon­or­able philo­soph­i­cal premis­es” and that such beliefs “are due prop­er respect.“ ‘ Oth­er pro­vi­sions pro­vide pro­tec­tions for the tax exemp­tions for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, hold that reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions don’t have to par­tic­i­pate in the sol­em­niza­tion of same-sex mar­riages, and specif­i­cal­ly reject the approach of the Equal­i­ty Act, which sought to under­mine the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act.”
    • Respect For Mar­riage Act: An Impru­dent Com­pro­mise (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “[Law­mak­ers] have to make their polit­i­cal deci­sions rec­og­niz­ing the social and cul­tur­al real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, a coun­try where a major­i­ty of young peo­ple prize sex­u­al auton­o­my more than reli­gious lib­er­ty, and who love gay more than God. That’s not like­ly to get any bet­ter, and is in fact like­ly to get far worse. What then? I don’t iden­ti­fy with David French’s eager­ness to com­pro­mise, and I would draw the lines of com­pro­mise in dif­fer­ent places … but French seems to under­stand the shaky ground on which Chris­t­ian trads stand bet­ter than a lot of peo­ple who are right about mar­riage do.” Dreher is respond­ing to a dif­fer­ent arti­cle by French than the one below, which was print­ed a day lat­er.
    • An Open Let­ter to Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Chris­t­ian Faith (David French, The Dis­patch): “…read the text of the bill. Does that lan­guage tru­ly give the IRS a ‘new argu­ment for tax­ing tax-exempt sta­tus away’? And does the act cre­ate ‘new tools for pro­gres­sive activists and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice’ to enforce an oblig­a­tion to rec­og­nize same-sex mar­riages on ‘reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions that work close­ly with gov­ern­ment’? [It does not.]”
  5. Two arti­cles describ­ing how out-of-con­trol euthana­sia is get­ting in some coun­tries:
    • Sched­uled to Die: The Rise of Canada’s Assist­ed Sui­cide Pro­gram (Rupa Sub­ra­manya, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Next March, the gov­ern­ment is sched­uled to expand the pool of eli­gi­ble sui­cide-seek­ers to include the men­tal­ly ill and ‘mature minors.’ Accord­ing to Canada’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice, par­ents are gen­er­al­ly ‘enti­tled to make treat­ment deci­sions on their children’s behalf. The mature minor doc­trine, how­ev­er, allows chil­dren deemed suf­fi­cient­ly mature to make their own treat­ment deci­sions.…’ Dr. Dawn Davies, a pal­lia­tive care physi­cian who sup­port­ed MAiD when it was first con­ceived, said she had ‘tons of wor­ries’ about where this might lead. She could imag­ine kids with per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders or oth­er men­tal health issues say­ing they want­ed to die. ‘Some of them will mean it, some of them won’t,’ she said. ‘And we won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be able to dis­cern who is who.’ ”
    • “Safe­guards” Can­not Make Euthana­sia Safe (Robert Clarke, First Things): “There is a clear slip­pery slope from approv­ing euthana­sia in rare ter­mi­nal cas­es to approv­ing just about any men­tal health diag­noses. Twen­ty-three-year-old Shan­ti de Corte was recent­ly euth­a­nized due to the men­tal trau­ma she suf­fered from the 2016 Brus­sels air­port ter­ror­ist attack, after which she ‘nev­er felt safe.’ Her death sig­nals our society’s fail­ure to sup­port the vul­ner­a­ble and wound­ed. We have aban­doned authen­tic care and com­pas­sion in favor of death.”
  6. Mega­lopo­lis: how coastal west Africa will shape the com­ing cen­tu­ry (Howard W French, The Guardian): “By 2100, the Lagos-Abid­jan stretch is pro­ject­ed to be the largest zone of con­tin­u­ous, dense habi­ta­tion on earth, with some­thing in the order of half a bil­lion peo­ple [all in one giant mega­lopo­lis].”

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 Are the Wages of Sin Real­ly Death?: Moral and Epi­demi­o­log­ic Obser­va­tions (David Lyle Jef­frey and Jeff Levin, Chris­t­ian Scholar’s Review): “So, are the wages of sin real­ly death? As far as pop­u­la­tion-health research sug­gests, the answer is a guard­ed yes.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Bay­lor, one of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and the oth­er of lit­er­a­ture. From vol­ume 250. I know I shared it recent­ly. It’s worth shar­ing again.

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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