Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 426

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 426, and I am absurd­ly pleased that 4+2=6. In some regards I am very easy to amuse.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Keep­ing the Faith at Stan­ford (Isabel­la Griepp, The Stan­ford Review): “Stay­ing true to your faith is a seri­ous under­tak­ing at a place like Stan­ford, but it can also be the most reward­ing part of your time on cam­pus. It is vital that you use your first quar­ter in col­lege to get plugged into Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty.”
   • The author is in Chi Alpha.
2. How Rich Donors and Loose Rules Are Trans­form­ing Col­lege Sports (David A. Fahren­thold and Bil­ly Witz, New York Times): “One play­er at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty now makes $750,000 a year, accord­ing to the group that pays him. At Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, some play­ers not only get a pay­check — they get a free car lease to boot, cour­tesy of a donor col­lec­tive.… The New York Times iden­ti­fied more than 120 col­lec­tives, includ­ing at least one for every school in each of the five major col­lege foot­ball con­fer­ences. The aver­age starter at a big-time foot­ball pro­gram now takes in about $103,000 a year, accord­ing to Open­dorse, a com­pa­ny that process­es pay­ments to the play­ers for the col­lec­tives.”
3. 15 Rea­sons Why Mass Media Employ­ees Act Like Pro­pa­gan­dists (Caitlin John­ston, per­son­al blog): “Just because a lot of the mass media’s pro­pa­gan­dis­tic behav­ior can be explained with­out secret con­spir­a­cies doesn’t mean secret con­spir­a­cies aren’t hap­pen­ing. In 1977 Carl Bern­stein pub­lished an arti­cle titled ‘The CIA and the Media’ report­ing that the CIA had covert­ly infil­trat­ed America’s most influ­en­tial news out­lets and had over 400 reporters who it con­sid­ered assets in a pro­gram known as Oper­a­tion Mock­ing­bird. We are told that this sort of covert infil­tra­tion doesn’t hap­pen any­more today, but that’s absurd.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus in response my com­men­tary last week on how to think about jour­nal­ism. Most of the 15 rea­sons seem to revolve around this insight: jour­nal­ists respond to incen­tives and the sys­tem pro­vides rewards that ben­e­fit them but not their readers/viewers. We should remain mind­ful of this.
4. Two arti­cles about man­hood:
   • Under­stand­ing the Young Male Syn­drome (Rob K Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “In his cross-cul­tur­al research, the psy­chol­o­gist Mar­tin J. Sea­ger has found 3 con­sis­tent require­ments to achieve the sta­tus of man­hood in var­i­ous soci­eties around the world. First, the indi­vid­ual must be a fight­er and a win­ner. Sec­ond, he must be a provider and pro­tec­tor. And third, he must main­tain mas­tery and con­trol of him­self at all times. Across cul­tures, there seems to be an implic­it under­stand­ing of what being a man is… Indeed, mas­culin­i­ty is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be an arti­fi­cial­ly induced sta­tus, achiev­able only through test­ing and care­ful instruc­tion. Real men do not sim­ply emerge like but­ter­flies from their boy­ish cocoons. Rather, they must be care­ful­ly shaped, nur­tured, coun­seled, and prod­ded into man­hood.”
     • This is long and worth read­ing for any­one who has an inter­est in gen­der dynam­ics.
   • News Men Can Use (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “I also do these prac­ti­cal posts because it’s impor­tant for those of us Chris­t­ian lay peo­ple who have skills and knowl­edge to step up and share them. The truth is, pas­tors aren’t life coach­es and often don’t know what they are talk­ing about in areas out­side of their core com­pe­ten­cy in preach­ing the Bible and the­ol­o­gy. So it’s unfair and even dan­ger­ous to rely on them to be gen­er­al pur­pose guides to life. That means lay peo­ple have to be will­ing to step up in the areas where they have real insight and expe­ri­ence.”
     • I can­not endorse the point Renn makes in this excerpt strong­ly enough. There’s a lot pas­tors don’t know. I get ner­vous when I hear a min­is­ter opin­ing pub­licly on a top­ic I know the Bible says very lit­tle about.
     • When you look for pas­tors, look for those with enough humil­i­ty to know that they are not an expert in things like busi­ness, law, pol­i­tics, lead­er­ship, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, con­sult­ing, biol­o­gy, astro­physics, invest­ment bank­ing, immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, etc. There may be spe­cif­ic state­ments in some of those fields that pas­tors can make with God’s author­i­ty, but they are sure­ly lim­it­ed.
     • You want a pas­tor who speaks con­fi­dent­ly where the Bible speaks clear­ly and speaks cau­tious­ly where the Bible is silent. But as a Chris­t­ian layper­son, you should feel empow­ered to speak con­fi­dent­ly when you have rel­e­vant knowl­edge in your field of exper­tise.
5. Two Chris­tians — one on the left and one on the right.
   • On the left: Shawn Fain’s Old-Time Reli­gion (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, The Atlantic): “ ‘One of the first things I do every day when I get up is I crack open my devo­tion­al for a dai­ly read­ing, and I pray. Ear­li­er this week, I was struck by the dai­ly read­ing, which seemed to speak direct­ly to the moment we find our­selves in,’ Fain explained in his speech. The com­men­tary Fain read observed that great acts of faith are rarely born of care­ful cal­cu­la­tion, and most often include an ele­ment of fear. ‘When I made the deci­sion to run for pres­i­dent of our union, it was a test of my faith, because I sure as hell had doubts,’ Fain said. ‘So I told myself: Either you believe it’s pos­si­ble to stand up and make a dif­fer­ence, or you don’t. And if you don’t believe, then shut up and stay on the side­line.’ ”
   • On the right: Evan­gel­i­cal Mike John­son ‘Raised Up’ as House Speak­er (Jack Jenk­ins, a Reli­gion News Ser­vice wire sto­ry reprint­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “John­son has been tied to mul­ti­ple Bap­tist church­es over the years and cur­rent­ly attends Cypress Bap­tist Church in Ben­ton, Louisiana, accord­ing to the Louisiana Bap­tist Mes­sage. He is also a for­mer lawyer and com­mu­ni­ca­tions staffer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which lat­er became known as Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian legal firm.”
6. What “Lati­no” Miss­es (Luis Par­rales, Per­sua­sion): “Lati­nos are proud of their ances­try, espe­cial­ly when it’s relat­ed to nation­al ori­gin. But most don’t accept the sig­nif­i­cance or the weight of eth­no­ra­cial iden­ti­ty that our dis­course projects onto them. It’s an atti­tude that’s not exact­ly col­or-blind or post-racial; it sim­ply rec­og­nizes how race, eth­nic­i­ty, nation­al ori­gin (or what­ev­er label we use to cat­e­go­rize peo­ple) often blend togeth­er.”
7. More com­men­tary on the Israel/Gaza war:
   • I Don’t See a Bet­ter Way Out (Ned Lazarus, The Atlantic): “I have ded­i­cat­ed much of my pro­fes­sion­al life to seek­ing peace­ful change in this con­flict, try­ing to lis­ten to and under­stand Israelis and Pales­tini­ans and find ways to work toward peace or jus­tice or coex­is­tence or mutu­al under­stand­ing or any­thing bet­ter than what there is now.… I see no way out of the night­mare so long as Hamas con­tin­ues to rule the Gaza Strip, and no viable way to remove it from pow­er with­out an Israeli ground offen­sive.”
     • The author is a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
   • The Prob­lem of West Bank Set­tle­ments (Tomas Pueyo, Sub­stack): “You can’t under­stand the Pales­tin­ian per­spec­tive with­out under­stand­ing the issue of set­tle­ments in the West Bank. It’s their biggest source of irri­ta­tion, it makes many Pales­tini­ans’ lives insuf­fer­able, and it’s prob­a­bly Israel’s most con­tentious pol­i­cy. So let’s under­stand why Israel is there in the first place, why it’s build­ing set­tle­ments there, and what will hap­pen to them.”
     • Look­ing over his Sub­stack, the author has writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles about Israel and Pales­tine late­ly and they seem to be well-researched and are also try­ing to present the strongest, fairest argu­ments from both sides. Rec­om­mend­ed.
   • Debunk­ing Myths About Israel & Pales­tine (Gur­winder, Sub­stack): “Israel must curb its fanat­i­cal ele­ments — its bombs are hit­ting too many civil­ians, its set­tle­ment-build­ing is out of con­trol, its Supreme Court is under attack by its own gov­ern­ment, and its ultra-ortho­dox cit­i­zens are rapid­ly out­breed­ing its sec­u­lar ones. But Israel’s excess­es are Hamas’s norms. Fur­ther, it’s the only lib­er­al democ­ra­cy in a sea of autoc­ra­cies, and unlike all of them it’s will­ing to open­ly crit­i­cize itself and set high human­i­tar­i­an stan­dards even if it can’t always meet them.”
   • Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Day (Antonin Scalia, C‑SPAN): eleven min­utes of now-deceased Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia speak­ing about the Holo­caust and the high­ly-edu­cat­ed and refined soci­ety that pro­duced it.
     • This speech from 1997 ascends into straight fire start­ing around 3 min­utes in (hon­est­ly, jump right there). The father of a XA stu­dent texted this to me and said it “should be required lis­ten­ing for every stu­dent at elite col­leges.”
     • Pre­fer to read? The offi­cial con­gres­sion­al tran­script is at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1997–05-14/html/CREC-1997–05-14-pt1-PgE923‑4.htm (although the tran­script butch­ers the New­man quote at the end, which you can find in its full­ness at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/discourse5.html)
   • For Israel, There Are No Good Options Now (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “I wish I had some sane idea of what hap­pens now. We can only grieve for all those inno­cents trapped in this hell. All I can say is that if Israel con­tin­ues to wage war in Gaza with this lev­el of civil­ian casu­al­ties, and con­tin­ues to expand its foot­print on the West Bank this aggres­sive­ly at the same time, and responds to West­ern requests to take a pause and think things through with anger and defi­ance, it will be hard to sus­tain West­ern sup­port indef­i­nite­ly.”
   • A War Against the Jews (Michael Oren, Sub­stack): “…dead Jews buy us only so much sym­pa­thy. In fact, there is prob­a­bly a for­mu­la. Six mil­lion dead in the Holo­caust pro­cured us rough­ly 25 years of grace before the Euro­peans refused to refu­el the U.S. planes bring­ing life­sav­ing muni­tions to Israel dur­ing the Yom Kip­pur War in 1973. Four­teen hun­dred butchered Jews bought us a lit­tle less than two weeks’ worth of pos­i­tive cov­er­age.”
     • The author is a for­mer Israeli politi­cian and served as Israel’s ambas­sador to the US.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Wrong Psalm (Tim Hawkins, YouTube): four amus­ing min­utes
• AI Humor (SMBC): the mouseover text on this one is actu­al­ly wise
• Self-Esteem (SMBC)
• The Flori­da Man Games: includ­ing such gems as “EVADING ARREST OBSTACLE COURSE: Jump over fences, through back yards, and away from actu­al police offi­cers to earn your free­dom!” and “A CATALYTIC CONVERTER, 2 BIKES, AND A HANDFUL OF COPPER PIPES: RACE AGAINST TIME: Com­pete head to head in a race that lets you live a day in the life of a Flori­da man head­line” 
• A store let cus­tomers steal shoes — if they could out­run a pro sprint­er (Kyle Mel­nick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Some cus­tomers thought­the man­agers were jok­ing, but they still took the chance. Most did not rec­og­nize Zeze — who has run the 100-meter dash in 9.99 sec­onds and the 200-meter dash in 19.97 sec­onds — or know he was a pro­fes­sion­al sprint­er. Zeze wore a black polo and a band on his left arm that said ‘SECURITY.’ Zeze eas­i­ly caught the first run­ner, who grabbed a pair ofblack shoes around 11:30 a.m. and ran away on a busy side­walk. Zeze said he sprint­ed at about 35 per­cent of his max­i­mum speed to catch most cus­tomers.”

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.