Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 420

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 420, a num­ber with cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance and also two inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prop­er­ties. 420 = 101 + 103 + 107 + 109 = 20 x 21. In oth­er words, it is both the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes and also the prod­uct of two con­sec­u­tive num­bers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. We Are Repa­ganiz­ing (Louise Per­ry, First Things): “The supreme­ly strange thing about Chris­tian­i­ty in anthro­po­log­i­cal terms is that it takes a top­sy-turvy atti­tude toward weak­ness and strength. To put it crude­ly, most cul­tures look at the pow­er­ful and the wealthy and assume that they must be doing some­thing right to have attained such might. The poor are poor because of some fail­ing of their own, whether in this life or the last. The small­ness and fee­ble­ness of women and chil­dren is a sign that they must be com­mand­ed by men. The suf­fer­ing of slaves is not an argu­ment against slav­ery, but an argu­ment against allow­ing one­self to be enslaved. Most cultures—perfectly logically—glorify war­riors and kings, not those at the bot­tom of the heap. But Chris­tian­i­ty takes a per­verse atti­tude toward sta­tus and puts that per­ver­si­ty at the heart of the the­ol­o­gy. ‘God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ is a baf­fling and alarm­ing claim to any­one from a soci­ety untouched by the strange­ness of the Jesus move­ment.”
   • This is a remark­able essay about Chris­tian­i­ty by a non-Chris­t­ian. 10/10 rec­om­mend.
2. Ross Douthat’s The­o­ries of Per­sua­sion (Isaac Chotin­er, The New York­er): “This is not con­spir­a­cy-adja­cent, but I think that nice sec­u­lar peo­ple like you and Sam are sort of blind to some obvi­ous super­nat­ur­al real­i­ties about the world. I think lots of peo­ple have good rea­sons to end up in that kind of ter­ri­to­ry. And the ques­tion I don’t know the answer to is: Why is it so nat­ur­al once you’re in that ter­ri­to­ry to go all the way to where R.F.K. is?” He con­tin­ued, “I spend a lot of my own intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy try­ing not to let my sort of eccen­tric views blind me to the fact that the estab­lish­ment still gets a lot of bor­ing, obvi­ous things right.”
   • I found this interview/profile of Douthat charm­ing.
3. Sin­gle­ness Is Not a Sin (Lyman Stone, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Mar­riage is insti­tut­ed for mutu­al ser­vice by spous­es and joint ser­vice to the next gen­er­a­tion. Celiba­cy is insti­tut­ed for ser­vice to the church (not as a require­ment for church ser­vice but as a pos­si­ble aid to it). Wid­ows like­wise are com­mand­ed to be hos­pitable and help­ful to younger peo­ple. Unless sin­gle­ness is clear­ly defined as a state that has some pur­pose ori­ent­ed toward the good of the neigh­bor (not just inci­den­tal­ly ben­e­fi­cial but pur­po­sive­ly so), it is dif­fi­cult to under­stand what pos­si­ble endorse­ment the sta­tus can be giv­en. It is not sin­ful, but it is not good.”
4. Let’s Have a Talk About Edu­ca­tion and Reli­gious Atten­dance (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “I just don’t know how you look at all this data that I’ve brought to bear and con­clude that there’s not a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship between edu­ca­tion and reli­gious atten­dance. You most cer­tain­ly can­not con­clude that it’s a neg­a­tive rela­tion­ship. That finds basi­cal­ly no sup­port in this data at all. There’s some evi­dence that the rela­tion­ship may not be sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, but for me, the regres­sion clears that up. Peo­ple who are more edu­cat­ed are more like­ly to be attend­ing a reli­gious ser­vice in the local house of wor­ship this week­end than those with a high school diplo­ma or less. That’s what the pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence tells me.”
   • A deep­er dive than you often find on this top­ic. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
5. ‘O Slay the Wicked’: How Chris­tians Sing Curs­es (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “Do we ever say any­thing uncom­fort­able in the pres­ence of evil — or worse, do we even care? The psalmists did. We accuse them of cru­el­ty; they accuse us of a twist­ed sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. We accuse them of not con­sid­er­ing man; they accuse us of not con­sid­er­ing God.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
6. Before You Share Your Faith! How to Be ‘Evan­ge­lism Ready’ (Matt Smethurst, The Gospel Coali­tion): a 16 minute pod­cast rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I liked the con­tent, the deliv­ery was less grip­ping than I expect­ed. Worth­while.
7. Book Review: Elon Musk (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I think Elon Musk is 1‑in‑1,000 lev­el intel­li­gent — which is great, but means there are still 300,000 peo­ple in Amer­i­ca smarter than he is. I think he wins by being 1‑in-10,000,000 intense.”
   • This review is full of fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. 10/10 rec­om­mend if you have any inter­est what­so­ev­er in Elon Musk.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Deter­mined (SMBC)
• Every­one Who’s Ever Worked Any­where Ever Comes For­ward To Allege Their Boss Cre­at­ed A Tox­ic Work Envi­ron­ment (Baby­lon Bee): the text on this one is gold. Worth read­ing in addi­tion to the head­line.
• UNO Reverse (brief twit­ter video)
• Sharks (Pearls Before Swine)
• Chris­tian­i­ty Defeat­ed After Athe­ist Points Out That They Still Eat Shell­fish And Wear Mixed Fab­rics (Baby­lon Bee)
• Mak­er of ‘smart’ chasti­ty cage left users’ emails, pass­words, and loca­tions exposed (Loren­zo Franceschi-Bic­chierai, TechCrunch): “A com­pa­ny that makes a chasti­ty device for peo­ple with a penis that can be con­trolled by a part­ner over the inter­net exposed users’ email address­es, plain­text pass­words, home address­es and IP address­es, and — in some cas­es — GPS coor­di­nates, due to sev­er­al flaws in its servers, accord­ing to a secu­ri­ty researcher.”
  • Every­thing about that open­ing para­graph is mak­ing me laugh.
• Repur­pos­ing dead spi­ders, count­ing cadav­er nose hairs win Ig Nobels for com­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic feats (Lisa Rathke, AP News): “Count­ing nose hairs in cadav­ers, repur­pos­ing dead spi­ders and explain­ing why sci­en­tists lick rocks, are among the win­ning achieve­ments in this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for humor­ous sci­en­tif­ic feats, orga­niz­ers announced Thurs­day.”
• Date With Tay­lor Swift Off To Rocky Start As She Already Writ­ing Some­thing In Her Song Idea Book (Baby­lon Bee)

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.