Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 403

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 403, which is one of those num­bers that feels like it might be prime but is not — it is 13 · 31. I think it’s cool that its prime fac­tors are reversed ver­sions of each oth­er.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. What Hap­pened to His­to­ri­an Mol­ly Worthen? (Collin Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion Pod­cast). This 90 minute pod­cast episode was rec­om­mend­ed to me more than once, and I final­ly gave it a lis­ten. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. A well-known his­to­ri­an and jour­nal­ist con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty and tells her sto­ry here. JD Greear and Tim Keller play key roles in the sto­ry.
2. What the Church Should Do… (Mike Glenn, Sub­stack): “Sev­er­al times a week, every week, some­body will come up to me and say, “You know what our church should do?” … I’ll smile and say, ‘That’s a great idea. Get back to me when you’ve got it worked out.’ Most peo­ple are very annoyed by my answer. I don’t know why. God had giv­en them that bur­den, not me. I learned a long time ago, I can only do so much. I’ve also learned every fol­low­er of Christ is unique­ly gift­ed and called to serve the Kingdom’s redemp­tive mis­sion in the world.”
3. Died: Tim Keller, New York City Pas­tor Who Mod­eled Win­some Wit­ness (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Tim Keller, a New York City pas­tor who min­is­tered to young urban pro­fes­sion­als and in the process became a lead­ing exam­ple for how a win­some Chris­t­ian wit­ness could win a hear­ing for the gospel even in unlike­ly places, died on Fri­day at age 72—three years after being diag­nosed with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.”
   • Tim Keller Prac­ticed the Grace He Preached (Col­in Hansen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “His steadi­ness under this grow­ing hos­til­i­ty gave courage and com­fort to younger lead­ers who became dis­il­lu­sioned by the fall of so many of our for­mer heroes. Even I wor­ried about uncov­er­ing unflat­ter­ing secrets when I began writ­ing his biog­ra­phy. Instead, talk­ing to dozens of Keller’s close friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who knew him from child­hood only con­firmed my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of him.”
   • He Made Me Want to Be More Like Jesus (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “You see, the point about Tim Keller is that he was gra­cious toward peo­ple who couldn’t repay him, because he knew that Jesus had been gra­cious to him first. Tim real­ly, gen­uine­ly, total­ly believed that he was more sin­ful than he could ever have imag­ined, and more loved by God than he could have ever hoped. He believed this. And this belief spilled out in how he inter­act­ed with oth­ers.”
   • Tim Keller Prac­ticed the Grace He Preached (Col­in Hansen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “His steadi­ness under this grow­ing hos­til­i­ty gave courage and com­fort to younger lead­ers who became dis­il­lu­sioned by the fall of so many of our for­mer heroes. Even I wor­ried about uncov­er­ing unflat­ter­ing secrets when I began writ­ing his biog­ra­phy. Instead, talk­ing to dozens of Keller’s close friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who knew him from child­hood only con­firmed my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of him.”
   • We nev­er met, but Keller was extreme­ly influ­en­tial on me and I mourn his pass­ing.
4. How I became a ‘Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist’ (Ken­neth L. Wood­ward, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with find­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists is that no one can agree on what the term means.”
   • Vague­ly relat­ed: No One Par­tic­i­pates in Pol­i­tics More than Athe­ists (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The data is clear and unequiv­o­cal on this point — no one gets involved in the polit­i­cal process to the lev­el of the aver­age athe­ist.”
5. Why Is The Aca­d­e­m­ic Job Mar­ket So Weird? (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten):  “Col­leges want two things from their pro­fes­sors. First, they need them to teach class­es. Sec­ond, they need them to do good research, raise the college’s rep­u­ta­tion, and look pres­ti­gious. Col­leges want to pre­tend to stu­dents that the same peo­ple are doing both these jobs, because stu­dents like the idea of being taught by pres­ti­gious thought lead­ers. But they don’t want to actu­al­ly have the same peo­ple do both jobs, because the most valu­able use of pres­ti­gious thought lead­ers’ time is doing research or pro­mot­ing their ideas. Every hour Ein­stein spends in the class­room is an hour he’s not spend­ing in the lab mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies that will rain down hon­ors upon him­self and his insti­tu­tion. And there’s no guar­an­tee Ein­stein is even a good teacher. Solu­tion: hire for two dif­fer­ent posi­tions, but give them the same job title to make things max­i­mal­ly con­fus­ing for stu­dents. Have them occa­sion­al­ly do each oth­ers’ jobs, so stu­dents get even more con­fused. You very con­spic­u­ous­ly hire Ein­stein, and hold out the car­rot of being taught by Ein­stein. But Ein­stein actu­al­ly only teach­es one 400-lev­el sem­i­nar a year, and every oth­er class is taught by the cheap­est per­son able to teach at all.”
   • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. Rec­om­mend­ed espe­cial­ly to any­one who aspires to acad­e­mia.
6. Legal­iz­ing Mar­i­jua­na Is a Big Mis­take (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Of all the ways to win a cul­ture war, the smoothest is to just make the oth­er side seem hope­less­ly uncool. So it’s been with the march of mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion: There have been moral argu­ments about the excess­es of the drug war and med­ical argu­ments about the poten­tial ben­e­fits of pot, but the vibe of the whole debate has pit­ted the chill against the uptight, the cool against the square, the relaxed future against the Prin­ci­pal Skin­ners of the past.”
   • Unlocked and worth your time.
7. He Told Fol­low­ers to Starve to Meet Jesus. Why Did So Many Do It? (Andrew Hig­gins, New York Times): “As of this past week, 179 bod­ies have been exhumed and moved to a hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary in the coastal town of Malin­di, around 100 miles east of Shaka­ho­la, for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and autop­sy. The government’s chief pathol­o­gists report­ed last week that while star­va­tion caused many deaths, some of the bod­ies showed signs of death by asphyx­i­a­tion, stran­gu­la­tion or blud­geon­ing. Some had had organs removed, a police affi­davit said.”
   • I shared a news arti­cle about this before,  but this one has more detail. Wild. Unlocked.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• What Mid­jour­ney thinks pro­fes­sors look like, based on their depart­ment (Red­dit) — how is it so accu­rate, tho?
• Gift­ed (SMBC)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every­thing Is Bro­ken (Alana New­house, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Being on a ship near­ly 4 mil­lion square miles in area along with 330 mil­lion oth­er peo­ple and real­iz­ing the entire hull is pock­marked with holes is ter­ri­fy­ing.” Wide-rang­ing. From vol­ume 284.

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.