TGFI, Volume 574: be slow to judge

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.

Where pos­si­ble, the links that fol­low are gift links. Click with impuni­ty!

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. My Hus­band Did Noth­ing Wrong. The Inter­net Pun­ished Him Any­way. (Eri­ka Alvarez, The Free Press): “Going viral has shown me first­hand that we have become quick to vil­i­fy peo­ple from a brief clip, fill­ing in every­thing we can­not see with assump­tions. You could see that my hands were full. You couldn’t hear my hus­band offer to help or hear me tell him to eat. You couldn’t know that he was griev­ing or that I want­ed to take care of him that evening. If our viral moment con­tributes any­thing to the ongo­ing cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion about how we judge what we see online, I hope it reminds us to be more com­fort­able say­ing, ‘I don’t know the whole sto­ry.’ ”
2. Crit­i­cize like a Chris­t­ian (Jacob Valk, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Over the next few years, I devel­oped a per­son­al rule: Don’t speak up on a top­ic unless I’ve read at least one well-regard­ed book on it. My lit­tle rule isn’t in the Bible. I don’t want to bind anyone’s con­science. But I know that social media entices me to offer my thoughts and opin­ions on near­ly every sub­ject, and remind­ing myself that it’s fool­ish to speak on issues I don’t under­stand has saved me (some) embar­rass­ment over the years. If you feel tempt­ed to cri­tique oth­ers on the great issues in pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion, sci­ence, and the­ol­o­gy, it’s wise to ask your­self this: Do I actu­al­ly know what I’m talk­ing about?”
3. The Bib­li­cal Cen­sus­es Are Cor­rect Demo­graph­ic Records (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “Long­time read­ers know that one of my great­est joys in life is read­ing the Bible, think­ing about the Bible, dis­cussing it with oth­ers, link­ing it to things I study, and then using this knowl­edge to mer­ci­less­ly troll the most uptight of my broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ. So let’s talk about the cen­sus­es of Num­bers.… And if you know any­thing about those cen­sus­es, you know one or two things: 1. They count 603,550 men of fight­ing age. 2. That num­ber is so absurd­ly high it defies belief, and it is the basis of a lot of peo­ple dis­be­liev­ing the sto­ries. I want to con­vince you that we should believe the cen­sus num­bers in Num­bers as they are writ­ten — and that ‘as they are writ­ten’ does not mean what your Eng­lish head­ing thinks it means.”
   • Part­ly pay­walled, but a ton of his argu­ment is freely acces­si­ble. This is some­thing we cov­ered in Food For Thought last year and may revis­it again.
4. Reli­gious Schol­ars Met With Anthrop­ic. What They Heard Stunned Them. (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “I have spent my career explor­ing what peo­ple believe and what those beliefs mean for the world. But as I lis­tened, it became clear that Anthropic’s inter­est in the world of faith was about more than train­ing its tech­nol­o­gy. Rather, the com­pa­ny was shar­ing a new kind of cre­ation sto­ry — one that rais­es pro­found ques­tions about the nature of the human spir­it and the future of human­i­ty.… Mr. Olah knew that in tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian cir­cles, even ask­ing ques­tions about A.I. con­scious­ness or wor­ry­ing about how peo­ple treat the mod­els could seem not just sil­ly but hereti­cal. He also knew that his sec­u­lar Sil­i­con Val­ley peers often dis­missed reli­gious per­spec­tives out­right. ‘I was ner­vous about this being an issue that could cause a lot of con­flict,’ he said. But Mr. Olah knew enough about Christ and about Claude to believe he could work across that chasm.”
5. There Is No Sec­u­lar Rem­e­dy to Rape Cul­ture (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “There is no sec­u­lar rem­e­dy for rape cul­ture. There’s just not. There’s noth­ing that works, noth­ing that res­onates, noth­ing that actu­al­ly changes how peo­ple and soci­eties see each oth­er. With­out the Chris­t­ian view of the body, a col­lege cam­pus turns sex into a sport which women will inevitably lose. With­out the Chris­t­ian view of the body, sex­u­al assault activists will work for a world their very beliefs make impos­si­ble. The sec­u­lar sex­u­al eth­ic is a quest for fire with­out heat. It just doesn’t work.”
6. The Rideshare Rev­o­lu­tion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “This is one of the clear­est demon­stra­tions of pos­i­tive-sum change I know of. Yes, Uber dev­as­tat­ed the taxi indus­try. But they didn’t just ‘drink their milk­shake.’ They made six addi­tion­al milk­shakes in the process. The com­bined effect of a mas­sive price cut and a mas­sive con­ve­nience boost mul­ti­plied vehi­cle miles rough­ly sev­en-fold. Who would have imag­ined that demand could be so elas­tic?” — The charts are actu­al­ly amaz­ing.
7. Are Black Protes­tants and White Evan­gel­i­cals Actu­al­ly the Same? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “My argu­ment is that evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants and Black Protes­tants are almost exact­ly alike and form one clus­ter of Amer­i­can reli­gion, while the oth­er cat­e­go­ry con­sists of main­line Protes­tants and Roman Catholics.… So, if Black Protes­tants and evan­gel­i­cals are so incred­i­bly sim­i­lar on all these reli­gios­i­ty mea­sures, then why do we sep­a­rate them out? I bet you can prob­a­bly guess why: it’s pol­i­tics. RELTRAD tries to rec­og­nize all the dif­fer­ences between groups, not just reli­gios­i­ty. The fact that 90% of Black Protes­tants vot­ed for Har­ris in 2024 com­pared to 80% of white evan­gel­i­cals who sup­port­ed Trump makes it pret­ty hard to jus­ti­fy col­laps­ing them into one cat­e­go­ry. That would obfus­cate more than it would reveal. But, as you can pret­ty eas­i­ly tell – evan­gel­i­cals and Black Protes­tants may strong­ly dis­agree at the bal­lot box but they often walk in lock­step dur­ing Sun­day ser­vices and mid­week Bible study.”
   • Empha­sis removed for clar­i­ty (Burge bolds wild­ly).

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.