TGFI, Volume 545: holistic ministry and cringe evangelicals

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. The Math Behind Christ’s Care for Our Flour­ish­ing (Bruce Wydick, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I decid­ed to go through the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ inter­ac­tions with people—conversations, teach­ings, and healings—and dig­i­tal­ly cat­e­go­rize all 171 record­ed inter­ac­tions (as delin­eat­ed by New Inter­na­tion­al Ver­sion sub­chap­ter head­ings) based on which of the fol­low­ing five dif­fer­ent facets of human need he was address­ing: (1) pure­ly spir­i­tu­al, (2) phys­i­cal needs, (3) social inclu­sion, (4) men­tal health, and (5) eco­nom­ic needs.… all of Christ’s mir­a­cles could have sim­ply been spir­i­tu­al dis­plays of pow­er, mir­a­cles of the shock-and-awe vari­ety, like calm­ing storms or walk­ing on water. But they weren’t. Instead, most of his mir­a­cles involve meet­ing var­i­ous human needs: people’s phys­i­cal ail­ments (restor­ing sight, mobil­i­ty), their social inclu­sion (heal­ing of lep­ers), their eco­nom­ic short­ages (loaves and fish­es), and maybe even their men­tal health—‘Peace be with you,’ (John 20:21). His mir­a­cles show how much the God of the uni­verse cares about all these dif­fer­ent facets of us that make us hap­py, healthy human beings.”
   • Cool find­ings in here with some nice charts. The author is a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist at USF, UC Davis, and Notre Dame. I did some dig­ging and he is an evan­gel­i­cal. One of us!
2. Mis­siles and Moments of Clar­i­ty (Ryan Cur­rie, The Gospel Coali­tion): “It’s 5 a.m. in Dubai. I’m awak­ened by a loud bang and my bed­room win­dows shak­ing. My wife also wakes with a start and sits up. My half-sleep­ing brain tries to process: _What was that?_ The adren­a­line kicks in and reminds me of the night­mare of chaos and fear that spreads in the Mid­dle East.… It’s strange how moments of cri­sis bring clar­i­ty. Each defen­sive burst clar­i­fies real­i­ties I was already aware of but had hid­den under the hum and drum of every­day life. These mis­siles pro­vide moments of clar­i­ty into what’s most impor­tant.”
   • I found this both inter­est­ing and mov­ing.
3. Why Amer­i­ca needs evan­gel­i­cals on the Supreme Court — and more (Aaron Renn, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Evan­gel­i­cals are 23 per­cent of U.S. adults and one of the most loy­al Repub­li­can vot­ing blocs, with 81 per­cent back­ing Don­ald Trump in 2024. Yet despite six of the nine Supreme Court jus­tices being appoint­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents, there are no evan­gel­i­cals on the Supreme Court.… As a minor­i­ty in a coun­try that has become post-Chris­t­ian in many respects, evan­gel­i­cals can’t and shouldn’t seek to dom­i­nate nation­al lead­er­ship roles. A diverse soci­ety will draw its tal­ent from all quar­ters. But for that very rea­son, it can’t be healthy when near­ly one-quar­ter of the nation­al pop­u­la­tion is fail­ing to con­tribute its fair share.”
   • Gift link. Renn sees much but also has a few blind spots. Worth a pon­der.
4. 10 Rea­sons Evan­gel­i­cals are Cringe (Matthew Lof­tus, Mere Ortho­doxy): “I don’t lose sleep over evangelicalism’s cringei­ness (at least not near­ly as much as I did when I was a teenag­er and being cringe was more offen­sive to me) because God did not let being cringe stop him from get­ting stuff done cul­tur­al­ly back when the Church was most­ly made up of illit­er­ate fish­er­men and he will bring about his work in the world regard­less of whether or not there are suf­fi­cient num­bers of evan­gel­i­cals among the elites. This is the most impor­tant rea­son, but it’s worth talk­ing about the issues Renn rais­es because some of the rea­sons are actu­al­ly good things that we should cel­e­brate and oth­ers are bad things that we should do some­thing about if we can.”
5. My Crit­i­cism of the Ivy League Isn’t Hypocrisy (Rob K. Hen­der­son, Wall Street Jour­nal): “If you went to an elite school, informed dis­sent is seen as a kind of betray­al. If you didn’t, you might be writ­ten off as some­one who doesn’t know what he’s talk­ing about. It’s a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ sit­u­a­tion. Ben­e­fit­ing from a sys­tem, though, doesn’t mean you for­feit the right to cri­tique it. In most walks of life, insid­er knowl­edge makes a crit­ic more cred­i­ble, not less. Expe­ri­ence counts for some­thing. Who is bet­ter placed to crit­i­cize an insti­tu­tion than some­one who has seen it from the inside?”
6. How the Deci­sion to Start a War Became the President’s (Char­lie Sav­age, New York Times): “It is sup­posed to be a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy that unless the Unit­ed States is under attack, the pow­er to declare war is vest­ed in Con­gress. But espe­cial­ly since the start of the Cold War, pres­i­dents of both par­ties have chipped away at that by claim­ing a right to order the mil­i­tary into var­i­ous lim­it­ed hos­tile sit­u­a­tions.… Suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions built on their pre­de­ces­sors’ inno­va­tions, a one-way ratch­et expand­ing the cir­cum­stances in which pres­i­dents had claimed and demon­strat­ed that they could by them­selves deploy troops into com­bat.”
7. SEIU Delen­da Est (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Code Ten): “Cal­i­for­nia lets inter­est groups pro­pose mea­sures for the state bal­lot. Any­one who gath­ers enough sig­na­tures (cur­rent­ly 874,641) can put their hare-brained plans before vot­ers dur­ing the next elec­tion year… The SEIU is known in Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal cir­cles for pio­neer­ing and per­fect­ing the art of extor­tion via bal­lot ini­tia­tive.… SEIU seems to have found a bug in direct democ­ra­cy: it incen­tivizes inter­est groups to search for the most destruc­tive pos­si­ble bal­lot ini­tia­tive that might nev­er­the­less get approved by low-infor­ma­tion vot­ers, since this gives them lever­age over any­one will­ing to bribe them into with­draw­ing their poi­son pill.”

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.