Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 434

On (most) Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I skipped last week due to the hol­i­days.

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 434, a num­ber which is a palin­drome. It is also the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes: 434 = 61 + 67 + 71 + 73 + 79 + 83

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Our God­less era is dead (Paul Kingsnorth, UnHerd): “I grew up believ­ing in things which I now look on very dif­fer­ent­ly. To put career before fam­i­ly. To accu­mu­late wealth as a mark­er of sta­tus. To treat sex as recre­ation. To reflex­ive­ly mock author­i­ty and tra­di­tion. To put indi­vid­ual desire before com­mu­ni­ty respon­si­bil­i­ty. To treat the world as so much dead mat­ter to be inter­ro­gat­ed by the sci­en­tif­ic process. To assume our ances­tors were thick­er than us. I did all of this, or tried to, for years. Most of us did, I sup­pose. Per­haps above all, and per­haps at the root of all, there was one teach­ing that per­me­at­ed every­thing. It was to treat reli­gion as some­thing both prim­i­tive and obso­lete. Sim­ply a bunch of fairy sto­ries invent­ed by the igno­rant. Sim­ply a mech­a­nism of social con­trol. Noth­ing to do with us, here, now, in our very mod­ern, sex­u­al­ly lib­er­at­ed, choose-your-own-adven­ture world.”
  2. Part of a Chris­tian’s Job is to Point Out that Mod­ern Life Stinks (Samue D. James, Sub­stack): “Part of the evan­gel­i­cal wit­ness right now should be to point out that mod­ern life stinks. Its tech­nol­o­gy makes us lone­ly. Its sex­u­al­i­ty makes us emp­ty. Its psy­chother­a­py makes us self-obsessed. Many peo­ple are on the brink of obliv­ion, held back in some cas­es only by med­ica­tion or polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty. We strug­gle to artic­u­late why we should con­tin­ue to live. Evan­gel­i­cals should jump in here.”
    • The end is straight fire.
  3. Uni­ver­si­ties Are Not on the Lev­el (Josh Bar­ro, Sub­stack): “I per­son­al­ly have also devel­oped a more neg­a­tive view of col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties over the last decade, and my rea­son is sim­ple: I increas­ing­ly find these insti­tu­tions to be dis­hon­est. A lot of the research com­ing out of them does not aim at truth, whether because it is politi­cized or for more venal rea­sons. The social jus­tice mes­sag­ing they wrap them­selves in is often insin­cere. Their pub­lic account­ings of the rea­sons for their inter­nal actions are often implau­si­ble. They lie about the role that race plays in their admis­sions and hir­ing prac­tices. And some­times, espe­cial­ly at the grad­u­ate lev­el, they con­fer degrees whose val­ue they know will not jus­ti­fy the time and mon­ey that stu­dents invest to get them. The most recent deba­cle at Har­vard, in which large swathes of acad­e­mia seem to have con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten what the term ‘pla­gia­rism’ means so they don’t have to admit that Clau­dine Gay engaged in it, is only the lat­est exam­ple of the lying that is endem­ic on cam­pus.”
    • Relat­ed: Har­vard Couldn’t Save Both Clau­dine Gay and Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The Ivy League believes in its pro­gres­sive doc­trines, but not as much as it believes in its own indis­pens­abil­i­ty, its per­ma­nent role as an incu­ba­tor of priv­i­lege and influ­ence.”
    • Also relat­ed: The Clau­dine Gay Affair (Fred­er­ick M. Hess, Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute): “High­er ed doesn’t have many friends on the right. In my expe­ri­ence, elite col­lege lead­ers aren’t all that both­ered by this (some seem per­verse­ly proud of it). Well, when pub­licly-sup­port­ed, high­ly vis­i­ble insti­tu­tions choose to take sides in polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al fights, there are con­se­quences. With the right hav­ing lost faith in high­er ed and becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­fort­able push­ing back on the col­lege car­tel, cam­pus lead­ers had bet­ter strap in for a bumpy ride.”
      • Brief and inter­est­ing, espe­cial­ly the per­son­al con­nec­tion to Clau­dine Gay.
  4. My Bible Read­ing Feels Flat — What Can I Do? (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “Is there some­thing you can do to move from ears attend­ing to words and minds grasp­ing for knowl­edge to hearts expe­ri­enc­ing pleas­ant­ness of what is with­in? Is there any­thing you can do? [The writer of Proverbs 22 says] yes, and the words he uses go like this: ‘Apply your heart to what your ear has heard and the knowl­edge that’s form­ing in your mind.‘”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent
  5. Did Islam­ic beliefs trig­ger the use of rape in Hamas attacks? If ‘yes,’ reporters should say so (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Well, what hap­pened to these Israeli women was off the charts and it’s about time reporters called it out for what it was. The attack­ers believed that their vio­lence was sanc­tioned by reli­gion, just as much as it was dri­ven by revenge. Hin­du human-rights activists have no illu­sions about these real­i­ties. I chanced upon a polit­i­cal Hin­du site that com­pares the Hamas bru­tal­i­ties against Jew­ish women with Mus­lim inva­sions of India and the mass rapes of Hin­du women as recent­ly as 1971.… [it blames] the whole rape-and-sex-slav­ery empha­sis of invad­ing Islam­ic hordes on Islam allow­ing each man four wives and lim­it­less slaves and con­cu­bines. The lat­ter real­ly aren’t in vogue in the 21st cen­tu­ry but ISIS had a huge sex slave sys­tem going among cap­tive Yazi­di women in Iraq and Syr­ia rough­ly from 2014–2017.”
    • This is a dis­turb­ing read. Also, this is not an indict­ment of Islam as a whole, but it is cer­tain­ly an indict­ment of some Mus­lim the­olo­gies.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.

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