TGFI, Volume 559: a WWI parallel and age-gap discourse

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.

It’s grad­u­a­tion week at Stan­ford and I’ve been busier than nor­mal — few­er links this week as a result. Are you grad­u­at­ing? Want to keep receiv­ing these emails? They’re mir­rored on Sub­stack — sub­scribe at https://theglendavis.substack.com/

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The War in Ukraine Has Now Gone On Longer Than World War I (Con­stant Méheut, New York Times): “The war in Ukraine has often been com­pared to World War I for its bru­tal infantry assaults and heavy casu­al­ties. Yet the idea that it could, by any mea­sure, sur­pass a con­flict so long and bloody that French sol­diers hoped it would be ‘the last of the last’ once seemed unthink­able. That is just what hap­pened on Thurs­day. The war in Ukraine — which reached 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months — has now out­last­ed World War I.… Rough­ly nine mil­lion to 11 mil­lion sol­diers died in World War I, com­pared with about half a mil­lion in Ukraine so far.”
2. More Than Evo­lu­tion Requires (David Brooks, Com­ment): “As [Beha] began to appre­ci­ate the flaws in the athe­ist world­views, he suf­fered a cri­sis of faith in athe­ism. But there is a big dif­fer­ence between los­ing faith in athe­ism and dis­cov­er­ing faith in God. He seems to have expe­ri­enced the pause between those two states that many have expe­ri­enced. Kierkegaard famous­ly likened it to being sus­pend­ed above water and doing the motions of swim­ming with­out actu­al­ly being in the water and swim­ming. In some ways the hero of this book is Lud­wig Wittgen­stein. Wittgen­stein was no Chris­t­ian, but he under­stood that ‘if all pos­si­ble sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions be answered, the prob­lems of life have still not been touched at all.’ ”
3. Will I Get Can­celed for Dat­ing a Fresh­man? (Abi­gail Shri­er, The Free Press): “Is it worth the risk of pub­lic expo­sure to talk to this girl you like? Tom, few things in life are _more_ worth the risk. Few oppor­tu­ni­ties will ever be as valu­able as the chance to con­nect with a girl you might come to love. You’re a junior and she’s a fresh­man which, in the per­verse cal­cu­la­tion of delib­er­ate over­re­ac­tion, means some of your cen­so­ri­ous peers may deem you ‘preda­to­ry.’ Anony­mous cam­pus spaces reward social­ly pro­gres­sive moral per­for­mance. Ordi­nary inter­per­son­al sit­u­a­tions morph into show tri­als, ruled by the jeal­ous who delight in sham­ing men out of nor­mal feel­ings and behav­ior. Don’t let them fool you.”
4. Deep Blue Fam­i­lies: A Sur­pris­ing Mix of Trad and Egal­i­tar­i­an Val­ues (Joshua Sohn, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…my fam­i­ly lives in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, where Kamala Har­ris beat Don­ald Trump 90% to 6% in the last elec­tion. Essen­tial­ly all the fam­i­lies in my kid­s’ ele­men­tary school are Democ­rats, and most are lib­er­al Democ­rats. These fam­i­lies also have some remark­able fea­tures: mar­riage is vir­tu­al­ly uni­ver­sal, while divorce is vir­tu­al­ly nonex­is­tent. Almost every kid is grow­ing up in a two-par­ent mar­ried fam­i­ly. And if we’re going to high­light the gen­er­al retreat from mar­riage and par­ent­hood in Blue Amer­i­ca, we should also look at the cir­cum­stances where Blue Amer­i­cans buck the trend. As it turns out, there are three fea­tures that might account for these strong Blue fam­i­lies in my own family’s social cir­cle: (1) These fam­i­lies have a sur­pris­ing mix of egal­i­tar­i­an and “trad” — lifestyle mark­ers. (2) They have reject­ed the mon­ey-first Midas mind­set in favor of a fam­i­ly-first one. (3) They have found ways to cre­ate a sense of com­mu­ni­ty.”
5. A Med­ical Stu­dent Took His Own Life. His Par­ents Blame the School. (Fran­nie Block, The Free Press): “I’ve report­ed on more than a dozen instances of insti­tu­tion­al over­reach dur­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings at universities—ranging from seri­ous alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct or cheat­ing to inves­ti­ga­tions over whether or not a stu­dent under the age of 21 drank a beer. In all of these sto­ries, the stu­dents’ fam­i­lies told me two things. First, that the uni­ver­si­ties failed to grant them due process. Sec­ond, that they failed to take the stu­dents’ men­tal health into con­sid­er­a­tion. In each case, the par­ents con­sis­tent­ly felt that the schools failed their chil­dren and were more con­cerned with image con­trol than nur­tur­ing their stu­dents. The stu­dents felt like the schools always had the upper hand, and didn’t give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prop­er­ly defend them­selves when their entire futures were on the line. The stu­dents, res­i­dents, and staff at Texas Tech Health who I inter­viewed told me their insti­tu­tion is no excep­tion.”

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.