Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 512: denominations are good and smart people are bad

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why Denominations Are Good, Actually (Eric Tonjes, Mere Orthodoxy): “I often hear nondenominational brothers and sisters talk about denominations as if they are the source of divisions in the church. Certainly, the church is divided, in both tragic and unavoidable ways. Some divisions are the product of sin and selfishness. Others are temporary but necessary because of disagreements about Scripture and practice. While the church still shares a spiritual unity, it is institutionally split, and we should rightly long to see it more unified than it is. The thing that puzzles me is the way many people think that by leaving any larger denomination or affiliation group they are somehow helping to increase the unity of the church. If your family is divided, disowning everybody isn’t going to make it more united.”
  2. People with higher cognitive ability have weaker moral foundations, new study finds (Eric W. Dolan, PsyPost): “People with higher cognitive ability tend to endorse moral values less strongly across the board, according to new research published in the journal Intelligence. The pattern held across two independent studies and did not differ by gender. These findings challenge popular assumptions that smarter people hold stronger or more ‘enlightened’ moral values.” 
    • I actually began to chuckle at the article’s repeated insistence that “most people assume smarter people are more moral.” Fact check: false. Smart people assume smarter people are more moral, sure. But most people? It’s hard not to notice that clever people are really good at talking themselves into whatever they need to talk themselves into. And that means they’re good at rationalizing selfish and bad behavior.
  3. Heartbreak and Heroism in Hill Country, Texas (Dan Crenshaw, The Free Pres): “The Guadalupe River that snakes through downtown Kerrville averages a depth of just 1.65 feet. But between 5:15 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. that day, it surged from two feet to 34 feet, becoming a literal wall of water that swept through Kerr County communities.… One never knows if they will be a hero when the time comes. Only a test of tragedy will be the judge. Many think they will act with courage, but fail. Many think they will lack the courage, but instead become the hero we need. Neighbors saved neighbors. Ordinary people became heroes. That is the spirit of Texas. No flood can ever wash it away.” 
    • That’s the same Dan Crenshaw who serves as a congressman. Many amazing and heartbreaking anecdotes in this brief article.
  4. The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters (Derek Thompson, Substack): “Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent. Almost every age group cut their party time in half in the last two decades. For young people, the decline was even worse. Last year, Americans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did in 2003.”
  5. Economic Nihilism (Julia Steinberg, Palladium Magazine): “Economic nihilism is then the ideology of the young, aspirant class, willing to put in two years—but only two years—at whatever firm is prestigious upon graduation. Economic nihilism is the ideology that celebrates taking shortcuts. The economy itself is abstracted away, what’s left is a salary or its equivalent in crypto payouts.”
  6. Have Mercy on Me, a Zynner (Luke Simon, Christianity Today): “Your soul no longer pants for living water (Ps. 42:1) because the buzz has numbed its thirst. We’re trading spiritual dependence for a chemical calm, and we’re left with faith without hunger, worship without depth, and spirituality without surrender. We become what Jesus warned against—not whitewashed tombs but white-pouched ones.”
  7. “When people argue against free will, you often see them smuggle in some intriguing moral assumptions.” (Rob Henderson, Twitter) 
    • The post has both text and a two-minute video of the author saying the same thing (taken from a longer video). The text is a good summary of the video, but the video gets a lil’ spicy at the end in a way the written text does not.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 511: CPS, prosperity, & journalism



On Fridays — sometimes Saturdays when Friday is a holiday — I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ICE Goes After Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution (Andy Olsen, Christianity Today): “The pastor asks if he can go with them or even follow them. ‘They need me,’ he says. An agent says the pastor cannot go with them. Torosian tells the agents that the couple was persecuted in Iran and fled because of their faith. The agents don’t respond. ‘They came here for freedom, not like this,’ Torosian tells the agents. ‘I know you are doing your job, but shame on you. Shame on this government.’”
  2. Does CPS Investigate One Third of All Children in the US? (Maxwell Tabarrok, Substack): “Does CPS investigate one out of every three American children? The answer to this one is not available directly in the primary source reports and the underlying data is only available after an application for research use, so we’ll have to trust a group of researchers at the Washington University school of public health. They download and de-duplicate the master data files from 2003–2014 and confirm that 37% of American children are the subject of at least one screened-in referral to CPS from ages 0–18.”
  3. Have You Heard the Good News? (Clifford S. Asness and Michael R. Strain, The Free Press): “Yes, we have real problems. But widen the aperture, and you’ll see that there has never been a better time to be alive than the present day.… a relative standard will always find relative poverty. But using an absolute standard finds that income poverty is below 6 percent. On a consumption basis, well over 20 percent of households were in poverty in the 1960s, and 11 percent were in poverty in 1990. Today, the consumption poverty rate is around 1 percent.”
  4. When We Started To Lie (Matti Friedman, The Free Press): “People writing letters complaining about press errors and demanding corrections, then and now, miss the point: These aren’t errors. They’re the result of the press doing a different job correctly.”
  5. Duke Law Journal Sent a Secret Memo to Minority Applicants Telling Them They’d Get Extra Points for Writing About Their Race (Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon): “When the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023, it said that colleges and universities could not use essays as a Trojan horse for racial preferences. The documents from Duke illustrate how a top law review has skirted that directive, creating a points-based system that foregrounds race and could put the law school in legal jeopardy.… The packet was overseen by journal editor in chief Gabriela Nagle Alverio, who received her B.A. in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University…”
  6. You Don’t Need the Same Politics to Surf Together (David Litt, The Free Press): “But over the years, Matt and I got to know each other better, and the better we got to know each other, the clearer it became that we had absolutely nothing in common. He was into Ultimate Fighting; I was into Ultimate Frisbee. He was covered in tattoos; I was covered in J.Crew. His definition of a workplace injury was death by violent electric shock; mine was carpal tunnel syndrome.”
  7. Where I Learned the Power of Looking at Everything (Rachel Kushner, New York Times): “Having arrived early for the ceremony, I lingered near Sather Gate, with its ornate patinated metalwork, and then headed toward Doe Library, where I used to not study and stared at people instead. Everything glowed with a kind of institutional grandeur. My superego scolded me further: ‘Look where you were! The best public university in the world, only to squander your luck!’ The beauty of the campus, which I had no memory of appreciating, seemed almost crushing in its majesty.”

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.

Thoughts on This Fourth of July

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are reading through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this summer for the Chi Alpha Summer Reading Project. Every other week I’ll post some reflections on the readings. 

When I laid out the reading schedule for The Four Loves, I didn’t realize that we would read Lewis’ remarks on patriotism on the fourth of July. How delightful!

I’ve actually written about this chapter of The Four Loves before, so I’ll take a slightly different direction today.

Lewis celebrates the love of country as one of the most basic of loves. He points out that the love of your nation is an indispensable part of loving all of humanity.

As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.… those who do not love the fellow-villagers or the fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not.

This worries some people, because doesn’t loving your country lead to a dislike of others? Not at all! One of the virtues of healthy patriotism is that it allows you to love and respect people from other nations.

[This kind of patriotism] becomes militant only to protect what it loves. In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners. How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different.

By contrast, a disdain for your own nation will lead to disdain for others. Part of celebrating diversity is realizing that you contribute to it. Your culture can enrich a foreigner just as much as their culture can enrich you, and so to deny them by pretending there is nothing good about your culture is cruel.

This doesn’t mean that you need to ignore the flaws of your nation. Lewis devotes several pages in this chapter to helping people sort through the fact that “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful things.” Much of what he says reminds me of the way G.K. Chesterton talked about patriotism in Orthodoxy chapter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patriots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. It is because people love their nation that they want to fix it. 

The following from the aforementioned Chesterton chapter is one of my favorite quotes of all time — I beg you to read through it slowly.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico [Glen’s note: Pimlico is part of London]. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

When a lot of us truly, sincerely, and earnestly love America over time, our love (and the efforts that spring from it) will transform America. That’s what has happened in the past, and God willing it will continue into the future. 

Lewis writes about more than patriotism in this chapter, and I commend the rest of it to you. But today is the Fourth of July, and love of nation seemed like the right theme to focus on. So from me, from C.S. Lewis, and from G.K. Chesterton: happy Independence Day!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 510: gambling, persecution, and free will

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Online Sports Gambling and College Students: A Christian Response to a Growing Industry (Kimberley Reeve and Jared Pincin, Christian Higher Education): “Because the Bible does not offer direct guidance on the topic of gambling, Christian denominations take differing positions.… The common thread across these traditions is that there is a point where gambling becomes morally impermissible.” 
    • Related: How to Rein in Runaway Sports Betting (Lyman Stone, Substack): “A good regulatory response is simple: ban all win limits. Let winners win. Bettors don’t like limits on winnings. They are obviously unfair. They are also clearly a key source of profits for companies.… Secondly, there should be limits on how much an individual can lose on a website. Once an individual has lost a certain amount of money, betting websites should be required to shut down their account. The harms of gambling are disproportionately caused by big-losers, and gambling companies can identify those big losers and protect them. They don’t do this because they make money when losers lose.… So no limits for winning, limits for losing is a pretty reasonable regulatory approach. Winners don’t threaten serious social harms. Losers do. Uncapping winners and protecting losers will also dramatically worsen the balance sheet of gambling sites, forcing them to charge higher spreads on bets, which will deter many gamblers.”
  2. As Christians Are Slaughtered, the World Looks Away (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “The world should have seen it coming. Since 2009, Islamists in northern Nigeria have destroyed over 18,000 churches and, throughout the country, have murdered over 50,000 Christians. A further 5 million Christians have been displaced within the country, according to a 2023 Vatican report.… If Western media reports on the persecution at all, it typically characterizes it as land disputes between neighboring ethnic groups. For instance, after the atrocities at Yelwata, the BBC reported: ‘The authorities have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of victims on both sides, as any attack usually leads to revenge and then a cycle of violence.’ But where is the evidence that Christians are killing Fulani Muslims by the hundreds, shouting ‘Christ is king’ as they hack people of other faiths to death?”
  3. Pentecostals Keep Growing: What the Assemblies of God’s 2024 Report Shows About the Spirit-Filled Movement (Ed Stetzer and Todd Korpi, ChurchLeaders): “The AG in the United States is a part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship (WAGF), which together makes up one of the largest Protestant bodies on the planet with over 85 million adherents. The WAGF is now larger than the Anglican communion, which is often cited as the third-largest Christian tradition. Instead, the WAGF is itself now the third-largest Christian denominational tradition.” 
    • Ed Stetzer is a professor/dean at the Talbot School of Theology, and Todd Korpi is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Assemblies of God is, of course, the sponsor of Chi Alpha and the group with which I am ordained.
  4. When Women Are Radicalized (Claire Lehmann, The Dispatch): “There is growing awareness of how young men can be drawn into far-right extremism or misogynistic subcultures, but we in the media—and society more broadly—pay less attention to how young women become drawn into political subcultures. Indeed, the terms ‘radicalization’ and ‘women’ are rarely—if ever—seen together. This oversight has consequences, because radicalization—defined as rigid commitment to an ideological cause to the point where it distorts one’s worldview, harms mental health, undermines relationships, or disrupts functioning—is not a male-only phenomenon.”
  5. Solipsism»Determinism (Bryan Caplan, Substack): “A large majority of my smartest friends insist that determinism is true. Physics textbooks say so, basic logic (‘Every effect must have a cause’) says so, and they say so. Who am I to disagree? My answer begins with a truism: The foundation of science is repeated, careful observation. If scientists are allowed to dismiss piles of repeated, careful observations as ‘illusion,’ there is no science. Next step: I have a lifetime of repeated, careful observation of my own mind. Via introspection, I directly observe myself making genuine choices in every waking moment. Therefore: Any ‘scientific’ theory that contradicts these observations is, at best, incomplete.”
  6. God and Woman at Cornell (Mary Eberstadt, First Things): “Why does secularism flourish on college campuses? Earlier today, some of us were talking about the philosopher René Girard, who had an idea that sounds simple, but isn’t: We figure out what we desire by seeing what other people desire. That’s part of what happens with students on campus, and it’s why even those raised in a religious home tend to become more secular—because they don’t see a lot of people like themselves in a place like Cornell. The idea dawns, even subconsciously, ‘Well, maybe there’s a reason why they all think differently from me. After all, we’re in a very sophisticated place with highly educated people, so maybe I should be like that.’ That’s the relatively benign force that drives people who were raised religious toward secularism. There is another force, more malevolent: intimidation, the chilling effect of being surrounded by, or perceiving oneself to be surrounded by, people who think your belief system is ridiculous. There is also the fact that college is famously the place where a lot of young people break free from the constraining Judeo-Christian rulebook about sex and marriage. These realities together conspire to drive college kids away from faith.”
  7. Audiences Prove that Experts Are Dead Wrong (Ted Gioia, Substack): “The rebirth of longform runs counter to everything media experts are peddling. They are all trying to game the algorithm. But they’re making a huge mistake. They believe that longform is doomed. They see that digital platforms reward ultra-short videos on an endless scroll. And they understand that this works because the interface is extremely addictive. So short must defeat long in the digital marketplace. That’s obvious to them. But all the evidence now proves that this isn’t happening.”

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 509: a Christian assassin, Harvard Law Review, Juneteenth

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stop Striving and Have a Baby (Nicholas Clairmont, The Free Press): “…having kids isn’t just possible, thinkable, or doable. It’s actually super fun, massively easier than anyone tells you, and so energizing and clarifying that if you are an ambitious person, you should have a kid out of pure personal selfishness.”
  2. Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative (Jim Mustian & Michael Biesecker, Associated Press): “Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump.” 
    • In response: The Problem of the Christian Assassin (David French, The New York Times): “Our nation is relearning a lesson that it never should have forgotten. Extremist Christian language and theology can lead to extreme Christian violence in the same way that extreme language can lead to extreme violence in other faith traditions and among people who have no faith at all. Christians aren’t better than anyone else. We’re fashioned from the same human clay, and we’re susceptible to the same temptations and failures.”
  3. The Gospel Doesn’t Impart a Lens, but a Life (Steven M. Bryan, Mere Orthodoxy): “I suspect that some of the ways that we speak about those who abandon Christian faith and become secular mirrors a secular understanding of what it means to become a Christian in the first place. To speak about ‘de-construction’ implies that becoming a Christian is a matter of constructing a ‘worldview.’ It risks ratifying the claim that becoming a Christian is something like becoming a Marxist or a nationalist or even a postmodernist. It is simply to dismantle one story about the world and to construct another. To speak about ‘de-conversion’ implies that the Gospel imparts a lens, not life.” 
    • The author is a New Testament professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
  4. What Church Do You Attend? Maybe More Than One, Survey Finds (Adelle Banks, Roys Report): “Researchers for the multiyear Hartford Institute for Religion Research study found that 46% of some 24,000 churchgoers responding to their survey reported active engagement with more than one church.”
  5. Matt Yglesias on debating (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “In practice, one big reason to debate is so you can put four people on the floor and attract an audience and some public attention, yet without slighting any one of the ‘stars’ by making it a panel. As a method of truth-seeking, I do not think public debate does very well.”
  6. Exclusive: Harvard Law Review Axes 85 Percent of Submissions Using Race-Conscious Rubric, Documents Show (Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon): “The Free Beacon obtained more than 500 documents from the journal’s two latest volumes, including the one currently in production. The new documents are all from 2024 and 2025—after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action at universities—and span four distinct stages of the article selection process. They provide the most comprehensive picture yet of the racial and ideological preferences at the elite law review, which has become a key front in the Trump administration’s war on Harvard and is now the subject of three federal probes. The documents show that at least 42 different editors considered race or gender when making recommendations in 2024. That number accounts for 40 percent of the 104 editors who serve on the journal at any given time, all of whom have a vote in publication decisions. While some editors recommended pieces on the grounds that the author was a minority, others paid more attention to the article’s footnotes, combing through the citations to see how many sources were white, black, or transgender.” 
  7. Articles which appear to have been written in honor of Juneteenth: 
    • Juneteenth Is Our Second Independence Day (Condoleeza Rice, The Free Press): “But even though my family has been celebrating Juneteenth since my childhood, it wasn’t until 2021 that Congress voted, almost unanimously, to make Juneteenth National Independence Day a federal holiday. Because many Americans are unfamiliar with its significance, some, perhaps understandably, wonder why it needed national recognition at all. After all, all Americans celebrate the Fourth of July—the ultimate celebration of our nation’s founding, of our independence and our liberty.  To me, Juneteenth is a recognition of what I call America’s second founding.” 
      • The author is a fellow believer and also the director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
      • The article contains this stunning paragraph: “I was eight years old when, on a Sunday morning in September 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. I felt the blast a few blocks away in the church where my father was the pastor. Four little girls, two of whom I knew, were killed.”
    • What American Students Aren’t Taught About Slavery (Coleman Hughes, The Free Press): “What I learned from teaching slavery to a group of college freshmen is that many (perhaps most) American kids graduate high school believing, falsely, that slavery happened only in America. Their minds are not blown by rehearsing the brutal facts of American slavery. Their minds are blown to learn that other brutal slaveries also existed all over the world. Nor is this historical amnesia confined to high school students. The United Nations has deemed March 25 a day of remembrance for the transatlantic slave trade. There is no UN day of remembrance for the Arab slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Indian Ocean slave trade, or any of the slaveries localized to specific regions such as the Indian subcontinent, China, Korea, and Eastern Europe—each of which accounted for millions of slaves.… Instead of whitewashing the grim facts of American slavery—as American history textbooks did in the past, and as certain corners of the American right would be all too happy to revive—I recommend taking the opposite approach: adding material rather than subtracting it. We must include the global and ubiquitous nature of slavery in every school curriculum.” 
      • The author, himself African-American and Puerto Rican, is a journalist and a visiting professor at the University of Austin.
    • Frederick Douglass Found His Mission in the Black Church (Jessica Janvier, Christianity Today): “Douglass’s muddled experience with evangelical Christianity mirrored what many other slaves experienced. Many of them came to faith through evangelicalism and were able to grasp the hope of emancipation—and equality. Yet they also saw white evangelical preachers espouse proslavery doctrines and comfort with tearing apart Black families to uphold the lucrative institution. With this hypocrisy in mind, Douglass famously wrote, ‘I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.’ ”

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.

The Four Loves: Introduction

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are reading through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this summer for the Chi Alpha Summer Reading Project. Every other week I’ll post some reflections on the readings. 

Today we complete our first reading, the ten pages of chapter 1.

What stood out to me is something that probably seemed like a throwaway observation back in 1960.

I was looking forward to writing some fairly easy panegyrics on the first sort of love and disparagements of the second. And much of what I was going to say still seems to me to be true…. Every time I have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have ended in puzzles and contradictions. The reality is more complicated than I supposed.

Lewis knew what he intended to write, but trying to work it out clearly enough to put it on paper showed him that his thinking was fuzzy. Contradictory, even. Putting feelings, impressions, and assumptions into words is clarifying.

generative AI has entered the chat

ChatGPT and its competitors are tools and they have a place, but please don’t let them undermine your ability to write out a clear argument. Writing what you think is one of the only ways to force yourself to grapple with what you think. Talking it out can also help, but it’s not as brutal as writing. The flow of conversation can allow you to gloss over a weak point in your argument, but having to write out each of your assumptions and inferences on paper doesn’t provide such wiggle room.

I think most of you know that I write my sermons out word-for-word and then try to deliver the sermon without consulting my notes. Why do I write my sermons out if I don’t intend to read the resulting manuscript? It’s for precisely the reasons I mentioned above: to write it out means that any weak spots in my thinking become clear. I still make mistakes in both interpretation and argumentation, but I avoid a lot of obvious mistakes that would otherwise crop up. Delivering the sermon without the notes is about better connecting with the audience. If my thinking on the subject is sufficiently clear, I don’t need the notes except for when I’m quoting a passage from the Bible or some other source.

How does generative AI play into this? I don’t use AI to write my sermons because the goal isn’t a well-written sermon, the goal is a thought-through sermon. And specifically, a thought-through-by-me sermon. A well-written sermon is mostly the byproduct of preparing a well-thought-through sermon. And so if I were to use a tool like chatGPT to write a sermon for me, I would be an actor, not a preacher. Actors need scripts. Preachers need convictions. I need to know (and I need you to know) that I believe what I preach, and I can only know I believe it fully if I write it myself.

Even if I became confident that a ChatGPT sermon would be better than mine and you would enjoy it more, that wouldn’t sway me. Preaching that way would enfeeble me, perhaps even corrupt me. To be a preacher means many things, but among them is the claim that I really mean it. Not just that I mean the things I say in that specific sermon. I have to mean the whole Christianity thing. To be a preacher is to claim that I’m doing my best to follow Jesus. Even if I never preached a sermon against slander, if I had a habit of posting slanderous things on social media you would nonetheless judge me a hypocrite and someone who should be kept away from the pulpit. To stand in the pulpit is to stand before God and man and say, “I really mean it and I’m trying.” Part of that “really meaning it” is manifest in the way I prepare sermons.

This isn’t a new thing. Even before tools like chatGPT came along every preacher had the option of plagiarizing other preachers’ sermons. It has always been looked down upon, partly for its dishonesty (one of the implicit claim of a sermon is “this is what I came up with”) and partly because it meant the preacher wasn’t growing — the act of crafting a sermon makes you a better Christian (or forces you to embrace hypocrisy) and a clearer thinker.

This is not an anti-AI rant. I will sometimes use generative AI after I’ve written my sermon. I will give it prompts like “Here is the manuscript of a sermon I intend to preach to a group of Stanford students. What’s the biggest blind spot in this sermon?” or “What’s the most devastating critique you can make of it?” or “Is there anyone this might needlessly offend?” And then I’ll take that feedback and use it to refine the sermon. Using AI like this is fine because it forces me to strengthen my thinking and wrestle with my convictions. At times the AI has suggested that I should take out a potentially offensive claim or tone down some rhetoric and I’ve thought, “Nah — this is what people need to hear and this is how they need to hear it.” Other times I consider the feedback and say, “Huh — I hadn’t thought about it that way. Yeah, let me reword that so that I’m making the point I intend to make and not being distractingly offensive.”

Obviously, none of you are preachers (at least, none of you has that as a key part of your job). But there is probably some area of your life where you need to be able to think clearly and to know that you have thought clearly. Don’t allow the wonderful tool of generative AI to keep you from developing that skill. If you’d like to mull that over, I recommend the wonderful and very short story The Whispering Earring.

Lewis, of course, had no idea that such a thing as generative AI would ever be invented. He just mentioned that his thinking about love was unclear until he tried to write about it. One of the beauties of reading a well-thought-through book is that it continues to have relevance decades after it was written and that its insights are relevant to new domains that did not exist when its arguments were crafted.

If you’re not reading The Four Loves with us, I highly recommend it. You can download a free copy at archive.org.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 508: euthanasia, nitpicking, and homesteading misadventures

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Are you graduating this weekend? Congratulations! Still want these emails after you lose your Stanford account? Subscribe for free with your long-term email address at https://theglendavis.substack.com/
  2. White lies hide dark truths (Tom Tugendhat, Substack): “What is assisted dying? Suicide exists. Killing exists. Both are real, longstanding, legal concepts. But assisted dying? That’s a phrase suspended between the act and its denial. The bill claims to offer choice, dignity and control. But its language and its silences speak volumes about who holds power and who is expected to disappear quietly. Patients are not poisoned, they are ‘assisted’. Doctors don’t kill, they ‘participate in the process’. Institutions aren’t forced to comply, they’re just not ‘protected’ from being compelled. Patients ‘take life-ending medication’, as if it’s a herbal tea. Death is cleaned, blanched and euphemised. This new bill doesn’t just hide the reality of its actions; it hides the decision from the family.” 
    • The author is a member of the British parliament.
    • Related in terms of “safeguards”: Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up. (Brian M. Rosenthal, New York Times): “Four years ago, an unconscious Kentucky man began to awaken as he was about to be removed from life support so his organs could be donated. Even though the man cried, pulled his legs to his chest and shook his head, officials still tried to move forward. Now, a federal investigation has found that officials at the nonprofit in charge of coordinating organ donations in Kentucky ignored signs of growing alertness not only in that patient but also in dozens of other potential donors.”
  3. If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “If you say Joe Criminal committed ten murders and five rapes, and I object that it was actually only six murders and two rapes, then why am I ‘defending’ Joe Criminal? Because if it’s worth your time to lie, it’s worth my time to correct it. If one side lies to make all of their arguments sound 5% stronger, then over long enough it adds up.”
  4. College Students Are Using ‘No Contact Orders’ to Block Each Other in Real Life (Pamela Paul, Wall Street Journal): “Administrators, adolescent psychologists and sociologists describe Gen Z students as fundamentally different from earlier generations. Many have difficulty with confrontation and little experience working through interpersonal conflicts, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic. They have mastered the terminology of ‘harassment’ and ‘discrimination,’ sometimes with just cause and other times to brand a run-of-the-mill disagreement.” 
    • Some wild stories in here.
  5. My expensive, exhausting, happy failed attempt at homesteading (Mike Riggs, Washington Post): “How many square feet of raised beds do you need to meet a toddler’s strawberry demand? I still don’t know. We dedicated 80 square feet to strawberries last season. The bugs ate half our harvest, and the other half equaled roughly what our kid could eat in a week. Have you ever grown peas? Give them something to climb, and they’ll stretch to the heavens. Have you ever shelled peas? It is an almost criminal misuse of time. I set a timer on my phone last year. It took me 13 minutes to shell a single serving. Meanwhile, a two-pound bag of frozen peas from Walmart costs $2.42. And the peas come shelled.”
  6. At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI (Lyndie Chiou, Scientific American): “Ono says. ‘I don’t want to add to the hysteria, but in some ways these large language models are already outperforming most of our best graduate students in the world.’ ”
  7. On the protests in LA: 
    • Still looking for articles with insight — let me know what you find helpful.
    • ‘Delete That Photo or We’ll F— You Up’ (Leighton Woodhouse, The Free Press): “I have been to dozens of mass protests like the one that exploded in Los Angeles on Friday. What I saw in Los Angeles on Sunday was different.… The demonstrations are ugly, but so is what precipitated them.”
    • 11 Theses on the Unrest in Los Angeles (Isaac Sauls, Persuasion): “Trump wants the fight. The protesters want the fight. So… we’ll get the fight.”
  8. The Best and the Brightest Under Pressure (Matt Stoller, Substack): “I do not know if there is a broader realization of the harm that elites have done among my classmates.… Nearly everyone I met has matured into someone who is kinder than they were as a college student, willing to overlook flaws and acknowledge vulnerability. I was genuinely impressed, and felt a deep connection to my class. But I also periodically asked, ‘do you know someone who died of fentanyl?’ And the answer was always no, sometimes accompanied by surprise that most Americans do have personal experience with a family member or friend, or friend of a kid, who died.”

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 507: kindness, China, and the Dead Sea Scrolls

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Kindness Became Criminalized (Anastasia Boden, The Dispatch): “Three years ago, the city of Tempe, Arizona, was celebrating Austin Davis as a hero. It even gave him an award for his charitable work, which included driving the city’s homeless people to addiction or mental health services and putting on Sunday picnics, where he shared food with those who were hungry. Last summer, he was jailed for the same work.” 
    • This article is very much worth your time.
  2. The Mass Trauma of Porn (Freya India, Substack): “Imagine you meet a teenage girl who starts telling you about her childhood, when she mentions, somewhat casually, that she was shown porn by a strange man. He introduced her to it when she was nine, before she had even held hands with a boy, before she had gotten her first period, without her parents knowing. Week after week, he showed her more, each time something more extreme. By ten it seemed normal. By eleven, she was watching regularly on her own. She is calm about this, reassuring you that this has happened to most of her friends. Would anyone think this was normal? Part of coming-of-age, her healthy development? Exploring her sexuality? Or would we call this abuse? This is exactly what is happening to children today when we hand them a smartphone. But instead of one stranger introducing them to porn, it is a billion-dollar industry, profiting from their trauma.”
  3. Many of Dead Sea scrolls may be older than thought, experts say (Nicola Davis, The Guardian): “While some scrolls were radiocarbon dated in the 1990s, Popović said scholars did not tackle the problem of castor oil contamination – a substance applied in the 1950s to help experts read the manuscripts, but which could skew results.” 
    • The scholarly study is available at PLOS One: Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis
    • Note that when the article says stuff like “Many of the Dead Sea scrolls could be older than previously thought, with some biblical texts dating from the time of their original authors” it means something different than I would mean. When I talk about the original author of Daniel, I mean Daniel. That’s not the assumption they’re working under. Setting that aside, the big takeaway is that some of the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to be significantly older than we thought, and that should encourage Christians because it shows that the textual evidence for the Old Testament is even stronger than previously realized.
  4. Some China-related news 
    • Why Taiwan Is the West Berlin of Our Time (Jay Sophalkalyan, The Dispatch): “At this juncture, Taiwan occupies that same fateful role West Berlin did. It stands unbowed along the fault line between tyranny and liberty—a free society that, by the cold arithmetic of authoritarianism, ought not to exist. But the stakes are even higher.… this small island nation is an irrefutable repudiation of the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological creed. It proves that prosperity does not necessitate repression, and that liberal democracy is neither a Western imposition nor a cultural anomaly—it is a universal aspiration springing from the shared yearnings of the human spirit.”
    • Facing a Precarious Future in Hong Kong (Peter Maize, Christianity Today): “Chan believes that Hong Kong churches are within a 10-year grace period before the government imposes any significant changes. He says Flow is willing to cooperate to a certain degree. For example, he would put a Chinese flag on their stage if the government requires it. Yet for requirements that go against the Bible, ‘we will follow Jesus,’ Chan said. ‘We will not compromise our faith. We’re mentally prepared for the future.’ That preparation includes a deliberate decision not to keep a database of members and an expectation that the Flow Church might disappear soon.”
  5. Come to Me, All You Networking Techies (Natalie Mead, Christianity Today): “It’s not easy to be a Christian in the Bay Area. I’ve lived in San Francisco for 12 years. But it’s often impractical, even impossible, for Christians to put down roots here.… I know many techies whose faith didn’t survive the pressure to succeed, the money, and the cultural indoctrination. Mine did only by God’s grace. So when a friend on the East Coast shared a recent New York Times story about a Christian ‘revival’ occurring in Silicon Valley, I groaned—not because I’m against revival in the Bay Area! I was just skeptical of its supposed locus: the tech industry.”
  6. Fellowship in the Fiery Furnace: Do Christian Persecution Narratives Transcend Racial Divides? (Brooklyn Walker & Paul A. Djupe, Religion in Public): “In this article, we show that religious threat, or beliefs that your religious group is the target of persecution, can actually bring together people across America’s deep and persistent racial divide. As political scientists continue to wrestle with the meaning of racial difference in American politics, our work suggests that other types of identities, like religious identities, and the threat that makes those identities salient, should be an important part of the conversation.” 
  7. How Certain Are Clergy of their Faith? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “There’s a statement in this survey, ‘My religion would be the best one for all people no matter their background or current religion’ that really gets to the heart of the matter. This is a great example of how the evangelical understanding of religion differs from other faith groups. In this sample, 93% of the evangelical pastors said that their religion was the best one for all people. That was 22 points higher than Black Protestants. It was also significantly higher than Catholic priests and mainline Protestant pastors. For the Catholics, 58% thought that they had a superior perspective and it was a bare majority of the mainline at 51%. I do want to note that the non-Christian clergy had a much different approach here — a majority disagreed that they had a superior worldview.” 
    • Lots of fascinating stats in this brief article.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 506: isms, nonsense responders, and tap water

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ismism (J. Budziszewski, blog): “Ismism – four syllables, ‘izzum izzum’ — is the bad mental habit of criticizing a proposition not on its own terms, but in terms of the ‘ism’ which one takes it to express. For example, suppose Sheila is concerned that young people who marry are tying the knot later and later in life. Brian snorts, ‘You’re one of those conjugalists.’ Then he criticizes Sheila for other beliefs which he himself associates with so-called conjugalism. For instance, he protests ‘I don’t think everyone has to marry.’ But Sheila didn’t say that everyone has to marry. She may not even think so, and it doesn’t follow as a conclusion from her premise. Ismism is guilt by association: ‘Your belief must be wrong, because I, personally, group it with other beliefs I consider wrong.’ ” 
    • The author is a philosophy prof at UT Austin.
  2. Fascinating: “nonsense responders” significantly affect survey data https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1926128833947738321
    • The entire thread is worth reading. Bottom line from a tweet near the end of the thread: “Mentally adjust survey results in your head if you don’t see the authors rigorously working to remove nonsense responders.”
  3. How to Find Ancient Assyrian Cities Using Economics (Max Tabarrok, Substack): “In ancient Kaneš, court transcripts, trading contracts, and merchant accounting were all recorded on clay tablets. Clay tablets preserve well, so this period is in some ways better known then the next several thousand years of history. The authors claim that ‘the closest comparable corpora of ancient trade data are almost 3,000 years later, coming, for example, from the medieval Italian merchant archives and the Cairo Genizah’.… The cherry on top: the entire city burned in a fire, preserving the clay records to be recovered forty centuries later. The authors use some natural language processing and manual inspection to narrow down from tens of thousands of tablets to several hundred unambiguous mentions of trade between two of 25 Anatolian cities that have enough trade connections with each other to be identified in a gravity model.”
  4. Star Harvard business professor stripped of tenure, fired for manipulating data in studies on dishonesty (Richard Pollina, New York Post): “A renowned Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired after an investigation found she fabricated data on multiple studies focused on dishonesty.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  5. Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump’s DC, the New Right Is Listening. (Ian Ward, Politico): “In Moscow, Wilson explained that his political philosophy is not theocratic in the commonly understood sense of a government run exclusively by the church. To the contrary, he maintains that God ordains earthly authority in three separate spheres of life: the church, the family and the civil government. Within each of these spheres, the relevant authorities must abide by scriptural commandments. In the familial sphere, for instance, parents must educate their children according to Biblical principles, and wives must subordinate themselves to their husbands in accordance with a covenantal view of the family. In the sphere of civil government, officials should strive to bring the law in line with Biblical commandments, although those principles don’t have to be applied ‘woodenly,’ as Wilson put it: Governments do not have to enforce the Biblical mandate that households build balustrades on their roofs, but they should enforce the principle that homeowners are liable for risks incurred on their property. Above all, Wilson believes, the three spheres of earthly authority must remain separate.” 
    • This is a far more informed article than I expected it to be. The journalist (Ian Ward) and the subject (Doug Wilson) have both been featured in these emails before. I highly recommend this article as an example of what fair reporting of a religious person looks like.
    • For a taste of Wilson’s style, check out his response to this and a few other articles about him: Pete Hegseth, Me, and Meeting with Important Jews (Doug Wilson, personal blog).
    • My quick take on Wilson: when he is right he is very right and when he is wrong he is very wrong, and whether he is right or wrong he is almost always confident and entertaining.
  6. The Unparalleled Daily Miracle of Tap Water (A. Cerisse Cohen, New York Times): “During a two-year stint in Montana, I went on long hikes and sipped stream water, shockingly cold and straight from the glaciers, but other than that, I drank from the tap. And then I landed in Los Angeles, where everyone I met used a filter.… Thanks to warnings from seemingly everyone around me in the city, I began to worry about things I never before considered threatening, like dust (could cause cancer), anything with seeds (could cause cancer) or certain planetary configurations (responsible for all other misfortunes). If I put my purse on the floor, or oriented my bed the wrong way, it was endangering my energy! Maybe I’d been lulled into a false sense of security about everyday life.” 
    • Drink tap water. It’s awesome.
  7. U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says (Edward Wong, New York Times): “Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to ‘aggressively revoke’ visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in ‘critical fields.’.… In 2020, officials in the first Trump administration canceled the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers after announcing they were banning from campuses Chinese citizens with direct ties to military universities in their country. It was the first time the U.S. government had moved to bar a category of Chinese students from getting access to American universities, a ban the Biden administration kept in place.”

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 505: porn, divorce, and a delightful philosopher

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness (Christine Emba, New York Times): “Despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn. Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded.… But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart.”
  2. Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children’s Adult Outcomes (Andrew C. Johnston,  Maggie R. Jones  & Nolan G. Pope, NBER): “We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births.” 
    • This paper will have significant influence — expect to see its findings quoted in op-eds and public debates. The authors are at UT Austin, the Census Bureau, and U of Maryland. Excerpt is from the abstract. It’s a 30 page paper with about 30 more pages of graphs and charts.
  3. Two perspectives on AI: 
    • Everyone’s Using AI To Cheat at School. That’s a Good Thing. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “Unlike many people who believe this spells the end of quality American education, I think this crisis is ultimately good news. And not just because I believe American education was already in a profound crisis—the result of ideological capture, political monoculture, and extreme conformism—long before the LLMs. These models are such great cheating aids because they are also such great teachers. Often they are better than the human teachers we put before our kids, and they are far cheaper at that. They will not unionize or attend pro-Hamas protests.”
    • Why We’re Unlikely to Get Artificial General Intelligence Anytime Soon (Cade Metz, New York Times): “It is indisputable that today’s machines have already eclipsed the human brain in some ways, but that has been true for a long time. A calculator can do basic math faster than a human. Chatbots like ChatGPT can write faster, and as they write, they can instantly draw on more texts than any human brain could ever read or remember. These systems are exceeding human performance on some tests involving high-level math and coding. But people cannot be reduced to these benchmarks.”
  4. Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025) (Christopher Kaczor, Word on Fire): “MacIntyre was proud never to have earned a PhD: ‘I won’t go so far as to say that you have a deformed mind if you have a PhD, but you will have to work extra hard to remain educated.’ However, his prolific research won him ten honorary doctorates and appointments as Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He held academic positions at Oxford, Yale, Manchester, Leeds, Essex, University of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Brandeis, Boston University, Wellesley College, Vanderbilt, London Metropolitan University, Duke, and three appointments at Princeton. But he found a lasting home at the University of Notre Dame.” 
    • Full of delightful anecdotes about an amazing Catholic philosopher.
  5. An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound To Happen? (Katherine Dee, Substack): “In 2006 the South African philosopher David Benatar published Better Never to Have Been, arguing that existence itself is harm, because, according to him, the absence of pain is always good while the absence of pleasure matters only to someone forced to miss it. His book supplied the term antinatalism and the asymmetrical equation that sustains it: any new birth inevitably adds suffering to the ledger.… To make a long story short—too short, in fact, there’s a documentary worth of story in this—Gary Mosher, an irascible vlogger and erstwhile amateur physicist best known as Inmendham, ended up coining efilism—‘life’ spelled backwards—during this period to insist that every sentient organism is a factory for pain and ought to be snuffed out.” 
    • Actually wild. I often criticize utilitarianism and its offshoots, this story illustrates the things I warn about in a tragic way.
  6. The Man Who Knew When to Step Down (David French, New York Times): “We live in a country that is positively obsessed with career success and thus defines people through their work more than through their family — or even their individual virtue. In many of America’s elite circles, you are your career, and when your career is over, how much of you remains? Again, this isn’t simply a problem for judges and politicians. The problem isn’t solely how the powerful define themselves; it’s how we define them. It’s how we choose whom to respect and honor. It takes a person of real fortitude and self-respect simply to walk away.”
  7. The myth of the single market (Luis Garicano, Substack): “The IMF puts the hidden cost of trading goods inside the EU at the equivalent of a 45% tariff. For services the figure climbs to 110%, higher than Trump’s ‘Liberation day’ tariffs on Chinese imports—measures many saw as a near-embargo.… As a result, actual trade between EU countries is less than half that between US states.” 
    • The author is a professor of public policy at the London School of Economics and a former EU member of parliament.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Hidden In Oklahoma Is The Only All-You-Can Eat Chick-Fil‑A In America (Natalie Avila, Mashed): “Since 2005, the University of Oklahoma has offered its students all-you-can-eat Chick-fil‑A, serving chicken sandwiches, nuggets, waffle fries, and sauces. It’s located inside the Couch Restaurants Diner, a food hall attached to a freshman dorm that always offers unlimited bites. The dining hall welcomes current university students, employees, and guests of both.”
  • Move Toward The Light (Loose Parts)
  • Gently (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.