TGFI, Volume 560: faith still winning 7–1

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. 7‑to‑1: The strik­ing sci­en­tif­ic link between reli­gion and bet­ter health (Baugh­man et al, Chris­t­ian Post): “In a new review from the Wheat­ley Insti­tute, we ana­lyzed find­ings drawn from Oxford University’s three Hand­books of Reli­gion and Health, cov­er­ing the best exist­ing research in the field. Of 1,069 high-qual­i­ty stud­ies on 15 phys­i­cal-health domains, 876 found pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tions between reli­gious involve­ment and phys­i­cal health and 124 found neg­a­tive ones. A rough­ly 7‑to‑1 ratio. The strongest sig­nals come from exact­ly the areas that Amer­i­can med­i­cine spends the most time and mon­ey on. Among high-qual­i­ty stud­ies of cig­a­rette smok­ing, pos­i­tive find­ings out­num­ber neg­a­tive ones by about 90 to 1. On sub­stance abuse and addic­tion, 43 to 1. On mor­tal­i­ty and longevi­ty, 15 to 1.”
  2. Bench-Press and Be Bap­tized (Josh Code, The Free Press): “The morn­ing was for con­tem­pla­tion; the after­noon for com­pe­ti­tion. At one o’clock, ref­er­ees appeared, wear­ing striped black-and-white shirts, to judge a penal­ty-kick con­test, a game of vol­ley­ball with a 10-pound ball, a mini-Hyrox race, and a long-range game of corn­hole that involved a sling­shot. There was a man named Ed wear­ing a cow­boy hat, tab­u­lat­ing scores. The men com­pet­ed with their week­night groups, each one marked by shirts dis­play­ing team names (Sons of Thun­der, Light of Author­i­ty, Front­line Men of Faith), but by the begin­ning of the first event—a three-man car­ry relay race—many a shirt had already come off.… I had not in recent mem­o­ry been around this much testos­terone and did not antic­i­pate I would again soon. The pres­ence of the Holy Spir­it had been hard to dis­cern amid the pyrotech­nics. But I did hear that sev­er­al guys got bap­tized in big steel tubs at the end of the week­end.”
  3. The World’s Lead­ing Deep­fake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes (Eli Saslow, visu­als by Erin Schaff, New York Times): “ ‘I miss the days when it was a grainy video of a shark swim­ming up the street,’ Farid said one night, as he sat on the back deck of his house with his wife, Emi­ly Coop­er. He put down his phone and poured a whiskey. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy is get­ting so good. It takes me to a dark place.’ ‘Because you can’t tell just by look­ing any­more?’ Coop­er asked. ‘Because nobody can,’ Farid said. ‘I don’t trust any­thing. Every image I see, I’m draw­ing lines for shad­ows and doing geom­e­try in my head, try­ing to fig­ure out what I’m look­ing at. It’s over. With­in a year or two, our whole visu­al sys­tem will be utter­ly use­less.’ ‘And then what? You give up? You retire?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said.”
  4. The Antiprophet (Mag­gie Phillips, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Rather than demand­ing per­fect ortho­doxy upfront, Burge argues that church­es should make room for doubters, seek­ers, and par­tial believ­ers because the act of par­tic­i­pa­tion itself car­ries social and spir­i­tu­al val­ues. ‘The church actu­al­ly can serve a dual pur­pose. It can save souls, but it can also save soci­ety,’ he said. His advice for spir­i­tu­al seek­ers is sim­i­lar to his coun­sel to church lead­ers: don’t let the per­fect be the ene­my of the good. ‘Find a church that you don’t hate,’ he said, ‘And just go there. It’s not that hard.’ ”
  5. Protests Are Not Emo­tion­al Sup­port Groups (Dan Sto­ryev and Maria Kuznetso­va, Per­sua­sion): “If Amer­i­cans want to actu­al­ly enact change, they seri­ous­ly need to re-think their strat­e­gy. Take it from us: we both grew up in Putin’s Rus­sia and saw well-inten­tioned protests fail to stop an aspir­ing despot. We know that author­i­tar­i­ans are typ­i­cal­ly unwill­ing to respond to the kind of protest No Kings exem­pli­fies: loud, rau­cous, and ulti­mate­ly harm­less. These ‘fes­ti­val protests,’ as we call them, are con­ve­nient for their par­tic­i­pants. They are fun and usu­al­ly do not require much sac­ri­fice or risk. They also look good on TV and Tik­Tok feeds. But they often achieve next to noth­ing.… protests in gen­er­al are becom­ing less effec­tive. In the 1990s, around 65% of non-vio­lent move­ments suc­ceed­ed in over­throw­ing a dic­ta­tor. In the late 2010s, that fig­ure was down to 34%. Vio­lent move­ments are even less effective—their suc­cess rate is cur­rent­ly around 8%, down from a peak of more than 40% in the 1970s.”
  6. The Evan­gel­i­cal Busi­ness Mind­set (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “The over­whelm­ing evan­gel­i­cal the­o­log­i­cal and mis­sion­al focus is on sav­ing souls. This lends itself to think­ing of busi­ness as pri­mar­i­ly about mak­ing mon­ey to fund mis­sions, rein­forc­ing the sweaty start­up mind­set. Busi­ness is not seen as cul­ture-shap­ing in its own right. Then add to this the way that evan­gel­i­cals approach church as an entre­pre­neur­ial endeav­or. The very way evan­gel­i­cals do church can form them into a sweaty start­up busi­ness mind­set. The net result is a lot of evan­gel­i­cal mon­ey and suc­cess, but not much cul­tur­al pow­er.”
    • I con­tin­ue to think Renn under­es­ti­mates the extent of an evan­gel­i­cal elite, but he makes sev­er­al sol­id obser­va­tions in this arti­cle.
  7. Youth Group Taught Me Ideas Are Dan­ger­ous (Austin Sug­gs, Sub­stack): “Still, in my expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple walk away from youth group with a the­ol­o­gy con­sist­ing in three main ideas: Jesus loves you, don’t have sex before you get mar­ried, and be care­ful going to col­lege because your pro­fes­sors are going to try to make you an athe­ist.”
    • (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)

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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