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.
Things Glen Found Interesting
- Jesus Is the Key to All Scripture (Peter Leithart, First Things): “We’re incredulous. ‘All things’ in Scripture are fulfilled in him? Really? Everything? Ehud thrusting a sword into obese Eglon? Jael cracking Sisera’s skull with a tent peg? David clipping and heaping up two hundred Philistine foreskins? Jehu gleefully slaughtering sons of Ahab? We dodge and backpedal, protecting Jesus from his hermeneutical excess. ‘Every episode and person contributes to the story of Jesus,’ we say. ‘But not every single person or event is directly about Jesus.’ There’s something to that, but it’s often a cop-out. And it keeps us from grasping the height and depth of Jesus’s glory. Jephthah is a test case.”
- An engaging article with strong insights about Jephthah’s story.
- I Once Thought Europeans Lived as Well as Americans. Not Anymore. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “I was shocked recently to learn that more Europeans die of heat death—largely due to lack of air-conditioning—than Americans die from gunshot wounds. I’m not saying America isn’t more dangerous in certain ways: We have higher non-gun murder rates and perilous weather patterns, among other problems. But it turns out European bureaucracy is literally deadly.… Circa 2025, my subjective judgment is that American living standards are 20 to 30 percent higher than those in Western Europe. That difference is likely to grow.”
- University suspends EBF, Kairos after Title VI investigations (Francesca Pinney, Stanford Daily): “Following student complaints to Stanford’s Title VI Office, the University determined that both houses violated Title VI, the federal law that prohibits harassment and discrimination based on race, color or national origin in educational institutions.”
- The details are kind of wild and may shock you if you’re not used to Stanford rhetoric. One student commented, “Tbh, that’s what most of NSO and my first quarter at Stanford felt like, and I was definitely told similar things by folks in my dorm, etc.”
- Some reflections on exercise:
- Don’t Skip Leg Day or the Lord’s Day (Sean DeMars, The Gospel Coalition): “Exercise prevents me from falling into two serious sins: sloth and idolatry. When I stop caring about my body, I drift toward passivity and excuse-making, and I become slothful. When I overprioritize fitness, I start building my identity around performance or image, which is a form of idolatry. But when fitness is tethered to calling and is viewed as fuel for long-term ministry, exercise finds its rightful place. It’s not ultimate, but it’s important. The heartbeat of this little theology of exercise is that redeemed bodies should be used in the service of joy, love, and mission.”
- How Exercise Fights Anxiety and Depression (Erik Vance, New York Times): “Decades of research have established that exercise has a positive effect on mental health. In studies of patients with mild to moderate depression, for example, a wide range of exercise regimens has been shown to be as effective as medications like SSRIs (though the best results generally involve a combination of the two).”
- Inclusivity In Healthcare Should Not Be Valued Above Our Paramount Mandate: First, Do No Harm (Janhavi Nilekani, Substack): “In the spring of 2022, a 50-year-old grandfather in North Carolina decided that he wanted his daughter’s newborn to suckle at his nipple.… Because this particular man identified as a transgender woman, doctors and academics from Duke University wholeheartedly supported his ‘unique desire’. Indeed, they published a research paper in Breastfeeding Medicine, providing details of the cocktail of hormones and drugs they used. With these, he was able to produce secretions, that were administered to his grandchild. The paper does not have a single sentence about the potential impact on the grandchild. It is an unimaginable breach of ethics. An adult male’s desire to be affirmed as a woman should never be met by feeding an experimental drug-infused substance to newborns with no capacity to consent.… Such experiments are possible only because medicine, in the push towards inclusivity, is forgetting our own core value: first, do no harm.”
- Sharing mostly for the shocking introductory story. The entire thing is long and probably does not cover new ground for regular readers. It is well-argued, though.
- The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide (Louise Perry, New York Times): “There is a very clear problem with assisted suicide in its new guise: The state, with its almighty power, is tasked with both paying for the support of the old and disabled and regulating their dying.… organs of the state that are tasked with solving an impossible financial problem — how to pay for more old people with less money — will be inexorably tugged toward what looks to a mindless bureaucracy like a ‘solution.’ ”
- Reason, Revelation, and Revolution (Joseph Loconte, The Dispatch): “Colonial assumptions about natural rights, human equality, religious liberty, government by consent, the right of revolution: Each drew heavily from Locke’s writings, which were considered mandatory reading for educated Americans. As we’ll see, the colonists were heirs of the Lockean tradition. As a result, freedom, reason, and revelation formed a conceptual trinity in the American Revolution. The powerful alliance of these ideas helps to explain the astonishing and enduring influence of the American example. Unfortunately, nonsense talk about the meaning and legitimacy of the American experiment is almost as ingrained in the New Right as in the progressive left.”
- A strong defense of Locke against his critics on the right. The author is a history professor and a Christian public intellectual.
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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.