Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 397

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 397, which is a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Stan­ford Needs East­er (Isabel­la Grieppe & Diego Gar­cia-Camar­go, Stan­ford Review): “So, instead of sheep­ish­ly fol­low­ing the cul­tur­al sta­tus quo, con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is more to our lives than our mate­r­i­al real­i­ty. Con­sid­er the exis­ten­tial pos­si­bil­i­ty that the God of the uni­verse sent His only Son because of His Love for you; that on this day He took upon him­self the bro­ken­ness of this world in a tor­tu­ous death for you; and that He con­quered death to offer you hope and pur­pose in Lov­ing and serv­ing Him by Lov­ing and serv­ing oth­ers.”
   • Isabel­la is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha
   • Relat­ed — The Man on the Mid­dle Cross (Alis­tair Begg, YouTube): four min­utes
   • Relat­ed — It’s Fri­day… But Sun­day’s a Com­ing! (S.M. Lock­ridge, YouTube): three and a half min­utes
2. The Lim­its of For­give­ness (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, The Point Mag­a­zine): “In a forum we both par­tic­i­pat­ed in for the Boston Review, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go philoso­pher Agnes Callard once observed that if a per­son is wronged and there­fore made angry at anoth­er per­son, there’s no log­i­cal rea­son for that anger to be extin­guished, ever. Sure, it may run its course, or the angry indi­vid­ual may become bored with the emo­tion or sim­ply elect to drop it, but there is no log­i­cal rea­son, once the anger is felt at the ini­tial offense, that one should ever stop feel­ing angry—even once one has avenged one­self.”
   • Well worth your time.
3. NASA Astro­naut Asks for Prayer for Moon Mis­sion (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The last time he was in space, Glover said, he real­ly felt clos­er to God. Not because he was above the sky but because, as James 4:8 says, when you sub­mit your­self to God and come near to God, God comes near to you. Read­ing the Bible in space was a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence. Glover remem­bers being in weight­less­ness in his quar­ters on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion and read­ing Philip­pi­ans 4. Some of the words were so famil­iar to him, like verse 13, which says in his New King James Ver­sion, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me.’ But there were oth­er pas­sages he felt like he was see­ing for the first time. Like in verse 12, where Paul writes, ‘I have learned both to be full and to be hun­gry.’ Glover had nev­er noticed that before. It expressed exact­ly how he felt about him­self and his train­ing and mis­sion.”
4. With some of my fel­low Stan­ford Law stu­dents, there’s no room for argu­ment (Tess Win­ston, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I often think of one of my first-year pro­fes­sors, who was appalled by these stu­dents’ stig­ma­tiz­ing of the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al role. He asked one: Giv­en that pros­e­cu­tors decide whether and what charges to bring against a defen­dant, isn’t it prefer­able for well-qual­i­fied peo­ple to fill the role? With­out miss­ing a beat, the stu­dent respond­ed: No, being a pros­e­cu­tor is sim­ply evil.”
   • I have unlocked the pay­wall on this one. The author is a third year law school stu­dent at SLS.
5. Do Your Polit­i­cal Beliefs Affect Your Par­ent­ing? (Leonard Sax, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “A mom brought her six-year-old daugh­ter into the office with a fever and a sore throat. I asked the lit­tle girl to open her mouth and say ‘Ah.’ She shook her head and clenched her mouth shut. ‘Mom, it looks like I’m going to need your help here,’ I said. ‘Could you please ask your daugh­ter to open her mouth and say ‘Ah’?’ Mom arched her eye­brows and replied, ‘Her body, her choice.’ Wow. This mom was invok­ing the ‘My body, my choice’ slo­gan of abor­tion-rights activists to defend her 6‑year-old daugh­ter’s refusal to let me, the doc­tor, look at her daughter’s throat. I have been a fam­i­ly doc­tor for near­ly 34 years. Until recent­ly, I saw no con­nec­tion between pol­i­tics and par­ent­ing.”
   • Real­ly inter­est­ing. Also accu­rate, if my expe­ri­ence is any guide. There is a marked dif­fer­ence in the par­ent­ing philoso­phies peo­ple hold in the Bay Area based upon their pol­i­tics.
6. I just fin­ished The Witch Tri­als of J.K. Rowl­ing pod­cast and I rec­om­mend it. The sev­en episodes were all engag­ing and the author comes at every­thing from a unique per­spec­tive. The episodes are around an hour long.
7. Before Pol­i­tics, There’s the World (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “this piece on adop­tion by Laris­sa Mac­Far­quhar in the New York­er. It is, I think, a pitch-per­fect exam­ple of the con­tem­po­rary ten­den­cy to sim­ply wish away any sort of neces­si­ty oth­er than moral or polit­i­cal neces­si­ty. The essay is a relent­less chron­i­cle of all of the ills of adop­tion, why adop­tion is alien­at­ing and trau­mat­ic for the adopt­ed child, how adop­tion scars adoptees for life, divides them from their cul­tures, leaves the with­out an iden­ti­ty…. Yet what Mac­Far­quhar says in paren­the­ses and half-sen­tences is the most impor­tant point of all — that adop­tion is inher­ent­ly a response to the unavoid­able tragedies of human life, a nec­es­sar­i­ly imper­fect solu­tion to very real and per­sis­tent prob­lems.… Almost entire­ly undis­cussed is the fact that the world hous­es both chil­dren who need homes and lov­ing and nur­tur­ing adults with homes to share. That’s why adop­tion exists. That’s always been why adop­tion exists. Kids need par­ents and par­ents need kids. No facile trau­ma nar­ra­tive can change that basic arith­metic.”
   • deBoer is usu­al­ly a good essay­ist and he out­does him­self in this one.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Top 0 Things You Did To Earn Your Sal­va­tion (Baby­lon Bee)
• Quan­tum physi­cists declare they’ve dis­cov­ered some­thing easy to under­stand (Cos­mos Mag­a­zine)
• Chat­G­PT Launch­es Every Nuke On Plan­et After Being Asked To Write Anoth­er Son­ic The Hedge­hog Fan­f­ic (Baby­lon Bee)
• Coop­er­a­tion (SMBC)
• ‘AI Is Total­ly Safe And Devel­op­ment Should Con­tin­ue Rapid­ly,’ Says Total­ly Gen­uine, 100% Human Sci­en­tist (Baby­lon Bee)
• Free Will (SMBC)
• We’re broke (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Sec­u­lar­iza­tion and the Tribu­la­tions of the Amer­i­can Work­ing-Class (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I praise the schol­ar­ship and courage of Bri­an N. Wheaton.” Along with the relat­ed: Get­ting Past the Gate­keep­ers (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Your gate­keep­ers want you to write a book more like the one they would have writ­ten. If you do make revi­sions, make them in such a way that the book becomes not less your own, but even more your own. That’s not pride. If God con­de­scends to allow cer­tain insights to the his­to­ri­ans on your board, how won­der­ful! Let them write about them! Read and learn from them! But if He con­de­scends to allow cer­tain oth­er insights to you, you should write about yours, not theirs.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and phi­los­o­phy at UT Austin. From vol­ume 276.

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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.