TGFI Volume 530: a Christian doctor, the medical benefits of church attendance, and campus revival

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Accused of Des­e­cra­tion, a Doc­tor Faces the End of His Life’s Work (Ben­jamin Weis­er, New York Times): “One day in March 2015, sur­veil­lance cam­eras at a thou­sand-year-old Bud­dhist tem­ple on the out­skirts of Tokyo cap­tured a man wear­ing a hood­ed wind­break­er, a white col­lared shirt and black shoes, dab­bing at wood­en pil­lars with oil on his fin­ger­tip.… He is Masahide Kanaya­ma, 63, a sin­gle, child­less doc­tor who had devot­ed his life to help­ing women bear chil­dren; a man whose Chris­t­ian faith was insep­a­ra­ble from his work. He has prac­ticed in Man­hat­tan for near­ly three decades and is an expert in endometrio­sis, a con­di­tion in which cells sim­i­lar to the uter­ine lin­ing grow out­side the uterus. His patients describe how his surg­eries end­ed years of crip­pling pain and, in some cas­es, allowed them to have chil­dren.”
   • Unlocked. A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, brought to my atten­tion by an alum­nus. Pray for Dr. Kanaya­ma.
2. Church Could Save Your Life? (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, if you aren’t cur­rent­ly a church­go­er and you start attend­ing week­ly, you reduce your chances of devel­op­ing depres­sion by a third. A med­ica­tion this effec­tive would be wide­ly pre­scribed. But while your ther­a­pist or doc­tor may encour­age yoga, med­i­ta­tion, or more time out­side in nature, he or she almost cer­tain­ly won’t rec­om­mend you go to church. The ben­e­fits of ‘orga­nized reli­gion’ don’t fit with the big sto­ry we are telling in the West about the good­ness of aban­don­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs.”
3. It’s Here: Gen‑Z Revival Hits Cam­pus­es This Fall (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps you’ve heard the sto­ries of revival here and there—Asbury, the Salt Com­pa­ny, and var­i­ous col­lege min­istries across the coun­try. Sta­tis­tics also sound­ed promising—from Eng­land to the Unit­ed States, more young peo­ple report mak­ing a per­son­al com­mit­ment to Jesus and attend­ing church. The num­ber of peo­ple with no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, which had been increas­ing for decades, seemed to stall. To me, it felt like watch­ing a pot of water heat up—there were iso­lat­ed bub­bles but not enough to real­ly call it a boil.”
   • An encour­ag­ing arti­cle. Two notes:
     • I’m not hear­ing sim­i­lar reports from any min­istry at Stan­ford (note the Chica­go anec­dotes, though)
     • The Gospel Coali­tion’s the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments mean that this arti­cle is focused on cer­tain min­istries. I believe oth­er min­istries are see­ing sim­i­lar things nation­wide.
4. ‘I Should Have Quit’ (John Fet­ter­man, The Free Press): “Gise­le looked over at me. The cor­ner of my mouth was droop­ing ever so slight­ly. The droop­ing last­ed only a sec­ond or two, but she had watched a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment on strokes, and it had stayed with her. She spoke to the state troop­er who was dri­ving us. ‘I think he’s hav­ing a stroke. We have to get to the hos­pi­tal now.’ I thought she was crazy: ‘What are you talk­ing about? You’re nuts. I’m fine.’ She thought I was crazy: ‘We have to get to the emer­gency room now!’ The troop­ers switched on the police lights. We hap­pened to be 10 min­utes from Lan­cast­er Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, which spe­cial­izes in strokes and prob­lems of the heart. Had we been in a rur­al area of the state, with­out close access to a hos­pi­tal, I would have died. I did any­way. I am not entire­ly sure of the sequence, but dur­ing surgery, my heart stopped for sev­er­al sec­onds.”
   • Tears came to my eyes while read­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed regard­less of your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion.
5. That New Hit Song on Spo­ti­fy? It Was Made by A.I. (Kyle Chay­ka, The New York­er): “No realm of cul­ture or enter­tain­ment remains untouched by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence: Coca-Cola just released a Christ­mas ad made with A.I. visu­als; A.I. actors are being hyped in Hol­ly­wood. But the tech­nol­o­gy has had an espe­cial­ly swift impact on song­writ­ing. A cou­ple of years ago, a smat­ter­ing of A.I. tracks went viral for using tricks like repli­cat­ing the voic­es of pop stars, includ­ing Jay‑Z and Drake. Now we’re in the midst of a full-blown A.I. music moment. This month, an A.I. coun­try song called ‘Walk My Walk’ (with per­cus­sive claps and for­get­table lyrics such as ‘Kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk’) hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Coun­try Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, and passed three mil­lion streams on Spo­ti­fy; the per­former behind it is a square-jawed dig­i­tal avatar named Break­ing Rust. In Sep­tem­ber, Xania Mon­et, an A.I. R. & B. singer cre­at­ed by a young poet in Mis­sis­sip­pi, land­ed a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar record deal after sev­er­al Bill­board-chart­ing sin­gles.”
6. Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: how one porn plat­form made mil­lions suing its view­ers (Tarp­ley Hitt, The Guardian): “…since Sep­tem­ber 2017, Vixen’s own­ers had been pur­su­ing anoth­er rev­enue stream: fil­ing thou­sands of boil­er­plate copy­right law­suits against indi­vid­ual ‘John Does’ and col­lect­ing mil­lions in set­tle­ment fees – a mass lit­i­ga­tion cam­paign one fed­er­al judge likened to ‘a hi-tech shake­down’.… Accord­ing to West­law and Pac­er data from the past three years, Strike 3 account­ed for 50% of the fed­er­al copy­right dock­et all on its own. I first heard about Strike 3 in Sep­tem­ber, when some legal clerk friends men­tioned that near­ly every judge on their cir­cuit was han­dling a stack of Strike 3 cas­es – which are now so con­sis­tent as to have become rou­tine.”
   • I am shocked, SHOCKED, that a porn com­pa­ny would be uneth­i­cal in any way. How could they treat their users with any­thing but the utmost respect and cour­tesy? Treat­ing peo­ple with dig­ni­ty is prac­ti­cal­ly their entire busi­ness mod­el.
7. Pick­le­ball on Sun­day: Why some top col­lege play­ers are call­ing foul (Ben Brasch, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The NCAA has a long-stand­ing rule that adjusts cham­pi­onship sched­ules to accom­mo­date play­ers or teams from schools with writ­ten poli­cies bar­ring com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­days or oth­er days for reli­gious rea­sons. Twen­ty-two of the NCAA’s rough­ly 1,100 mem­ber schools have such poli­cies this year, the group told The Wash­ing­ton Post. But pick­le­ball is not an NCAA sport. And it’s not clear whether all three orga­ni­za­tions at the fore­front of the col­lege game, which includes more than 100 schools, are ready to make a change. Chris­tian­i­ty is cen­tral to the Nation­al Col­le­giate Pick­le­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, which hosts region­al and nation­al tour­na­ments, said its founder, Noah Suem­nick. The league’s web­site promi­nent­ly ref­er­ences a Bible verse from the Book of Matthew.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Met­ric Tip (xkcd) — this is mali­cious genius
• Stink­ing, Spongy, Dark, Huge: A Spi­der Web Unlike Any Seen Before (Adeel Has­san, New York Times): “Even in a pitch-black cave, what appears to be the world’s largest spi­der web is hard to miss. It stretch­es for about 1,140 square feet, about the size of a small home, hang­ing in a low and nar­row pas­sage in a cave span­ning the bor­der between Alba­nia and Greece.… Inside the spi­der metrop­o­lis — pop­u­la­tion 111,000 — were two species that had not been known to live togeth­er har­mo­nious­ly, main­ly because one species tends to eat the oth­er.”
• Atléti­co Ottawa’s ‘ici­cle kick’ lights up bliz­zard-hit Cana­di­an Pre­mier League final (YouTube): one and a half min­utes of Cana­di­an win­ter insan­i­ty fea­tur­ing impres­sive ath­leti­cism
• US Mint press­es final pen­nies as pro­duc­tion ends after more than 230 years (Maryclaire Dale, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “The U.S. end­ed pro­duc­tion of the pen­ny Wednes­day, aban­don­ing the 1‑cent coins that were embed­ded in Amer­i­can cul­ture for more than 230 years as sym­bols of fru­gal­i­ty and the price of a person’s thoughts but had become near­ly worth­less.… The last U.S. coin to be dis­con­tin­ued was the half-cent in 1857…”
• E‑mail Address­es That Would Be Real­ly Annoy­ing to Give Out Over the Phone (Michael Ward, McSweeney’s Inter­net Ten­den­cy) — this is 21 years old and still fun­ny
• Amaz­ing T‑Rec Illu­sion! (YouTube): two min­utes
  • An absolute­ly WILD illu­sion. You can see the mag­ic revealed at around the 1:30 mark. It’s worth watch­ing the whole thing straight through.
• St. Peter Get­ting Tired of Answer­ing Ques­tions About The Nephilim (Baby­lon Bee)
• Con­gress Pre­pares To Piv­ot From Doing Noth­ing Because Of The Shut­down To Doing Noth­ing Because They’re Con­gress (Baby­lon Bee)
• The Prob­lem With Mod­ern Pol­i­tics (Pearls Before Swine, Nov 14)
• Prayer (SMBC)

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.