Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 401

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 401, the 79^th prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Oth­er Half of Dis­ci­ple­ship (Mike Glenn, Scot McK­night’s Sub­stack): “The test of every great recipe is, does the dish taste good when it’s pre­pared? The test of truth for every dis­ci­ple is, did the teach­ing of Jesus prove true when it was lived out? Paul was con­fi­dent of Jesus’ faith­ful­ness because he had lived out the teach­ings of Jesus in the most try­ing of cir­cum­stances. That’s why he was able to write, ‘I know in whom I have believed.’ Most of us lack this kind of true life con­fi­dence in God’s Word because we’ve nev­er tried to live out what we know. A mem­o­rized dis­ci­ple­ship is only half known.”
2. Home­less in the City Where He Was Once May­or (Mike Bak­er, New York Times): “The words jolt­ed Mr. Mar­tin with a mix of recog­ni­tion and dis­be­lief. He had known Craig Coyn­er for more than 50 years, watch­ing with admi­ra­tion as the man from one of the most promi­nent fam­i­lies in Bend, Ore., rose through an acclaimed career — as a pros­e­cu­tor, a defense lawyer and then a may­or who helped turn the town into one of the nation’s fastest-grow­ing cities. Now, at age 75, Mr. Coyn­er was occu­py­ing a bed at the shel­ter on Sec­ond Street, his house lost to fore­clo­sure, his toes gnarled by frost­bite, his belong­ings lim­it­ed to a tub of tat­tered cloth­ing and books on the floor next to his bed.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, this is a wild and heart­break­ing sto­ry. I have unlocked the pay­wall.
3. The Long Road to Con­fronting China’s War on Reli­gion: Part I (Carl M. Can­non & Susan Crab­tree, Real Clear Pol­i­tics): “The impulse [to restrict reli­gion is root­ed in the truth] that the major faiths observed in Chi­na are not indige­nous to the world’s old­est civ­i­liza­tion. Bud­dhism was import­ed from India and Tibet. Islam arrived in over­land trad­ing routes and human migra­tion from the Mid­dle East, while Chris­tian­i­ty, anoth­er Abra­ham­ic faith, came across the ocean from Europe and Amer­i­ca. To Com­mu­nist lead­ers, and many Han Chi­nese civil­ians, these tra­di­tions rep­re­sent poten­tial­ly desta­bi­liz­ing for­eign influ­ence.  The para­dox, of course, is that Marx­ism was also a for­eign import, one imposed on Chi­nese soci­ety – in Mao Zedong’s own words – from ‘the bar­rel of a gun.’ It not only desta­bi­lized China’s exist­ing social struc­tures and spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions, but as Marx­ist-Lenin­ism mor­phed into Mao­ism, also became a kind of nation­al reli­gion itself – with Mao Zedong in the role of sav­ior.”
4. There is No Chris­t­ian Argu­ment for Pro­tect­ing Pornog­ra­phy (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “This chart reveals that at the exact same time there’s been a sig­nif­i­cant decline in over­all sex­u­al activ­i­ty, there’s been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in young adults who’ve had a same-sex encounter. Now let’s ask a ques­tion: What could be true of a gen­er­a­tion that would cause it both to 1) have a lot few­er sex­u­al encoun­ters than gen­er­a­tions before it, but also 2) be much more will­ing than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions to exper­i­ment? I think I have one plau­si­ble answer.… Could it be that a sex reces­sion and a blur­ring of the lines between male and female are con­sis­tent con­se­quences of young peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced a porno­graph­ic stag­ing of the human body since before puber­ty? Giv­en all this porn, why have sex, and why not have it with whomev­er?”
5. From the Com­ments (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Pro­fes­sion­al med­ical ethics are bogus. There is no con­sis­ten­cy and the entire pro­fes­sion serves to pan­der to the prej­u­dices of the edu­cat­ed.”
   • Brief but bru­tal per­spec­tive on the med­ical resis­tance to human chal­lenge tri­als.
6. Raise Your Thresh­old For Accus­ing Peo­ple Of Fak­ing Bisex­u­al­i­ty (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “Sup­pose some­one (let’s say a woman) has exact­ly equal sex­u­al attrac­tion to both men and women. Their male dat­ing pool is all het­ero­sex­u­al and bisex­u­al men (95%+ of men), and their female dat­ing pool is all les­bian and bisex­u­al women (about 5–10% of women). So their poten­tial dat­ing pool is about 90% male. So this ‘per­fect­ly’ bisex­u­al woman could be expect­ed to date about 10x as many men as women, just by num­bers alone. The aver­age per­son dates about sev­en peo­ple before mar­riage (yes, this seems low to me too). So if our bisex­u­al woman sam­ples exact­ly even­ly from her male vs. female dat­ing pool, we would expect about a 50–50 chance (0.90^7 = 0.478) that all sev­en of her rela­tion­ships would be with men.”
   • A fas­ci­nat­ing break­down of some things I had rarely con­sid­ered.
7. The Cost Dis­ease of the Pop­ulist Sec­tor (Daniel W. Drezn­er, Sub­stack): “The com­min­gling of the rich and the pow­er­ful is a sto­ry as old as civ­i­liza­tion, but in the cur­rent era of cap­i­tal­ism the dynam­ic has become even more prob­lem­at­ic. David Brooks warned about ‘sta­tus-income dis­e­qui­lib­ri­um’ in Bobos in Par­adise: those who pos­sess sta­tus but not wealth live first-class lives dur­ing the day but mid­dle-class lives in the evening. Over time, these folks start to resent the mid­dle-class aspects of their exis­tence.”
   • This is a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion scan­dals than I had con­sid­ered before.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Noah Start­ing To Think The Wood­peck­ers Were A Bad Idea (Baby­lon Bee) 
• Sun­rise (Pearls Before Swine)
• This is like an AI-dri­ven Can­va. Def­i­nite­ly worth play­ing around with: https://designer.microsoft.com/
• Com­pli­ments (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 My White Priv­i­lege Didn’t Save Me. But God Did (Edie Wyatt, Quil­lette): “Not long after, I walked into a sub­ur­ban Bap­tist church, full of strange, unfash­ion­ably dressed, con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. I was a Marx­ist, a fem­i­nist, foul-mouthed, a chain-smok­er, and des­per­ate. The love I received in that place is the rea­son that I will defend the rights of fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians to my dying breath.”

This is amaz­ing. Reminder: titles are rarely cho­sen by the author and often do not reflect the essence of an arti­cle. From vol­ume 279.

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.