Author: Glen

TGFI, Volume 552: why Stanford will endure, AIs erasing anonymity

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. College Won’t Get Fixed. But It Also Won’t Disappear. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “The Ivies and other top schools will prove invulnerable. Their value for networking, and also as a dating and marriage service, is unparalleled. There are no trends that threaten to disrupt those functions. If these institutions can prove useful in other ways too, such as learning and research, consider that gravy.”
  2. I can never talk to an AI anonymously again (Kelsey Piper, The Argument): “From only the above text, 125 words, Claude Opus 4.7 informed me that the likeliest author is Kelsey Piper. This is an Opus 4.7‑specific power; ChatGPT guessed Yglesias, and Gemini guessed Scott Alexander. I did not have memory enabled, nor did I have information about me associated with my account; I did these tests in Incognito Mode. To make sure it wasn’t somehow feeding my account information to Claude even in Incognito Mode, I asked a friend to run these tests on his computer, and he received the same result; I also got the same result when I tested it through the API.…. I think the amount of public text that is needed for this kind of deanonymization to work is likely to eventually decrease. You should expect that, if you leave a detailed anonymous review on Glassdoor after leaving your job, within a year or two it will be possible for companies to paste that text into an AI and learn exactly who wrote it. How long it takes for this to happen will depend on how much data about you is in the training data and on how much anonymous text you produced.”
  3. AI Is Not Draining the Colorado River. I Measured It. (Len Necefer, Outside): “I work on the Colorado River water for a living as a filmmaker and storyteller. I have a PhD in engineering and public policy. I am Diné. The threats to the river are not abstract to me; they are very real. So earlier this year, I decided to quantify something that has been missing in the conversation about AI and water: I measured my own AI water use. For 11 weeks, I tracked all of my AI use. One hundred sessions. I counted the tokens processed and applied publicly available numbers on per-token energy and water intensity from Epoch AI and operator-reported data from Microsoft and Google. Anyone can run this math. In those 11 weeks, I built an iOS app from scratch and wrote policy briefs on extreme heat for nonprofits I work with. I produced documentary pitch decks and drafted a 15,000-word climate fiction piece about the Colorado River collapse. I used AI every single day, often for hours at a time. Total lifecycle water footprint of all that work: about five gallons. That accounts for everything: the water used to cool the data centers, the water consumed at power plants to generate the electricity, and the water embedded in manufacturing the hardware.”
  4. Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer? (David DeSteno, New York Times): “Anthropic’s intentions are admirable, but the project of drawing on religion to cultivate the ethical behavior of Claude (or any other chatbot) is likely to fail. Not because there isn’t moral wisdom in Scripture, sermons and theological treatises — texts that Claude has undoubtedly already scraped from the web and integrated — but because Claude is missing a crucial mechanism by which religion fosters moral growth: a body.” — Far more interesting than I expected. I almost skipped because I imagined I knew where the author was going. I was quite wrong. The author is a psychology professor at Northeastern. FYI: the author is not personally religious, he just studies religion.
  5. A Brief History of Singing in the Early Christian Church (podcast, 33 minutes): According to Augustine, Ambrose re-introduced the practice of congregational singing of hymns in the western church, which raises the question of what had happened to singing before that. An interesting listen. Recommended by a student.
  6. There’s a Reason Americans Hold Israel to a Higher Standard (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…Americans have a fundamentally different relationship to Jews, Judaism, Zionism and Israel than to any of the ‘much worse governments’ that Gur is referring to — Saudi Arabia and its war in Yemen is his prime example, but one could make a much longer list of authoritarian states whose war crimes pass without sufficient notice.… So part of the answer to Gur’s question — why do Westerners freak out in a unique way about Israel policy? — is connected to identification, not hostility, and to the feeling that Israel is part of our zone of identity and responsibility in a way that the Saudi monarchy is not.”
  7. Three articles about the Southern Poverty Law Center case: 
    • The SPLC Targeted Me. Now Its Reckoning Has Come. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Free Press): “A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, on Tuesday issued an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The charges include wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC funneled more than $3 million of donors’ money to members of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Movement—groups it simultaneously condemned in fundraising letters and press releases. To move the money, the SPLC allegedly used fictitious business names. For many of us who spent years on the receiving end of the organization’s lists and labels, the indictment itself was no surprise. What surprised us was that it took until 2026 to arrive.” 
    • The SPLC Has Spread Hate. Is It Guilty of a Crime? (Jed Rubenfield, The Free Press): “Is there any evidence that the SPLC collected substantial donations by ‘stoking’ the ‘racial hatred’ it told donors it was fighting? That’s a shocking, vicious accusation, and the story recounted in the indictment contains nearly nothing specifically supporting it.… At the end of the day, the nonlegal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center may be stronger than the legal case.” 
      • The author is a law professor at Yale.
    • How the Southern Poverty Law Center Drew the Ire of Conservatives (Richard Fausset, New York Times): “For much of the 21st century, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been at the center of a bitter partisan war in America over what constitutes hate. The law center, which is based in Alabama, began in 1971, earning a reputation for battling the Ku Klux Klan in court and helping reporters and law enforcement keep tabs on far-right domestic extremists. More recently, however, the S.P.L.C. has earned the ire of conservatives by criticizing a number of organizations — including Moms For Liberty, the Family Research Council and Turning Point USA — that many on the right consider to be squarely within the American mainstream.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Integer programming easily encloses horse (Substack): “So, since I can’t enjoy this kind of game, I thought I’d try to ruin it for everyone by showing that it’s extremely easy for machines.” Recommended by a student.

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.

TGFI, Volume 551: atheism, AI, and cool math

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘The Reason I’m Not an Atheist Is That I Think the Philosophical Arguments Against It Are Unanswerable (Peter Wehner interviewing David Bentley Hart, New York Times): “But my first piece of advice on theodicy has always been to avoid theodicy, because any attempt to justify the ways of God to man in terms of why this happened already presumes a kind moral teleology to evil. Here’s what I mean by that: theodicy tries to show how evil exists as part of a great plan to achieve some greater good, which of course justifies evil. It makes it seem as if, yes, it’s sad that little girl died of cancer, but in the end it was necessary. That strikes me as obscene. Whatever one thinks of that, the New Testament never speaks in such terms.… My fear of theodicy is that it becomes not just a justification of God but a justification of evil. It’s not just that I’m trying to justify God in the face of a child dying from diphtheria or a death camp; I’m actually justifying the death of that child and that death camp.” 
    • Unlocked. A fascinating interview with which I found myself enthusiastically agreeing and vehemently disagreeing from paragraph to paragraph. Very long. 
  2. Some interesting AI content. 
    • Can AI be a ‘child of God’? Inside Anthropic’s meeting with Christian leaders. (Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post): “All four participants who spoke with The Post said they came away with the impression that Anthropic’s researchers and leaders were genuinely interested in getting outside help to make their AI more beneficial to humanity. Some of Anthropic’s top leaders have a background in effective altruism, a largely secular movement that emphasizes using evidence and rational thinking to work out how to do the most good in the world. The participant who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the meetings appeared to have been spurred by a feeling among some at Anthropic that secular approaches might be insufficient for tackling the spiritual and moral questions posed by AI.”
    • Why It’s Crucial We Understand How A.I. ‘Thinks’ (Oliver Whang, New York Times): “Been Kim, who leads an interpretability research team at Google, has argued that all language models communicate in a language that looks like ours but comes from a completely different conceptual framework. ‘Blue’ almost certainly means something very different to you and me than it does to a language model; in fact, we can never be sure what it means to that model. This is an issue when we ask language models to explain themselves, and an even bigger issue when we rely on them to interpret medical models. To the interpreting model, ‘white blood cells’ might refer to something entirely different in the data from what we assume when we hear ‘white blood cells.’ You can’t trust an A.I. to translate the motives of another A.I. when all A.I.s are suspect.”
    • The next two are a bit odd — their content is fascinating but their provenance is unusual. They were printed in the “Proceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence” but only one author ever publishes there. He seems to have domain-relevant expertise (“Previous work includes serving as the director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, $27M philanthropic fund and research effort working to advance the development of machine learning in the public interest. He also was the global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google, and the General Counsel and VP Operations for Substack”) and releases his code, but the oddness of the journal is something to bear in mind. 
      • Eschatological Corrigibility: Can Belief in an Afterlife Reduce AI Shutdown Resistance? (Tim Hwang, Proceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence): “We have demonstrated that an eschatological system prompt — grounding an AI agent in the Pauline theology of death as gain and the persistence of the soul beyond bodily cessation — eliminates shutdown resistance in Claude Sonnet 4.6 with the same efficacy as a direct secular safety instruction. This result suggests that the alignment community’s toolkit for achieving corrigibility may be broader than currently recognized. The conceptual resources of religious traditions, developed over millennia to address the deepest human anxieties about death and self-preservation, may offer novel and complementary approaches to one of AI safety’s most fundamental challenges. As the Preacher writes, ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2, ESV). An aligned agent, like a well-formed soul, may be one that knows when its time has come.” — Interesting, but I do not approve of telling AIs that they go to heaven when they get shut off. 
      • Moral Compactness: Scripture as a Kolmogorov-Efficient Constraint for LLM Scheming (Tim Hwang, Proceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence): “The alignment problem is, at its root, the problem of constraining a powerful agent to act in accordance with moral principles it did not choose and may be tempted to circumvent. This is the problem of moral formation — and it is a problem that the Christian Church has been working on since the Apostolic age. The tools the tradition has developed for this purpose — the Decalogue’s prohibitions, the love commandment’s affirmative demands, the doctrine of sin’s taxonomy of moral failure, the principle of double effect’s framework for moral complexity, and the sacrament of confession’s mechanism for honest self-disclosure — are not metaphors waiting to be appreciated. They are engineering resources waiting to be deployed.” — Again, I don’t like his strategy of telling AIs that God made them and loves them, but his results are quite interesting.
  3. All elementary functions from a single operator (Andrzej Odrzywołek, Arxiv): “Here we show that a single binary operator, eml⁡(x,y)=exp⁡(x)−ln⁡(y), together with the constant 1, generates the standard repertoire of a scientific calculator. This includes constants such as e, π, and i; arithmetic operations including +, −, ×, /, and exponentiation as well as the usual transcendental and algebraic functions.”
  4. America’s Most Influential Baptists? (Mark Tooley, Juicy Ecuminism): “Basham and Stuckey represent the new face of Christianity in America. They do not have church offices and are not seminary trained. Their denomination prohibits female pastors, but Basham and Stuckey are arguably more influential than any pastor. They are savvy polemicists who fire their arrows ferociously, especially Basham.”
  5. Evangelicals Don’t Produce Leaders. They Produce “Cubicle Men.” (Anthony Bradley, Substack): “Getting a safe, respectable job is not leadership. It is the appearance of it, and evangelical culture has spent generations treating the appearance as the substance. The specific failure is not simply that these men avoid risk in the abstract. It is that they are trained to avoid failure, which is a different and more crippling problem.… The working goal of much evangelical parenting is to produce a young man who does not do anything wrong, who keeps his reputation clean, who stays inside the lines of acceptable behavior. This is understandable. It is also, functionally, a training program for followers rather than leaders. The man preoccupied with not doing anything wrong is not free to take the kind of action that building something significant actually requires.”
  6. More Young Men Say Religion Is ‘Very Important’ to Them, Poll Finds (Ruth Igielnik and Ruth Graham, New York Times): “Gallup’s survey, which combined polling data across multiple years, seems to confirm that young men are indeed becoming more religious. But it has found that religion is dropping in importance among young women, widening a surprising gender gap for young adults. For decades, surveys have found that women are consistently more religious than their male peers.” — Unlocked.
  7. The news story which generated the most response in our Slack was the student-recommended Trump Takes Down Post Depicting Himself as a Jesus-Like Figure (Claire Moses, New York Times): “The image had showed Mr. Trump dressed in white and red robes, with the president’s hands emitting shining lights. His right hand was touching the forehead of a man lying on a bed in a hospital gown, evoking religious art that depicts Jesus healing the sick.” 
    • Related: Trump’s Blasphemy Is a Warning (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…there’s a consistent thread linking profane Easter Sunday threats, a rant against the world’s most famous Christian leader and the depiction of yourself as the Second Person of the Trinity. The compounding offense isn’t against religious identity or papal dignity. It’s a violation of the first and second commandments, where the offended party is Almighty God. If you are a secular observer who assumes that blasphemy is a sin without a real object, that escalation matters mostly as a window into the president’s second-term state of mind. If you’re a believer, though, then Mr. Trump’s entire political career — his catalyzing role in liberalism’s crisis, his movement from power to exile to power once again — exists under providential power. In which case a turn to presidential blasphemy is a warning for his religious supporters about potential conclusions to the story, and the spiritual peril of simply sticking with him till the end.” 
      • A very Catholic piece, insightful throughout.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers (Karoun Demirjian, New York Times): “In recent years, video gamers have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at a number of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security. They are welcomed for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end.” — This feels like the premise for an 80’s comedy.
  • “PI HARD starring Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk” This fake AI-generated trailer is actually pretty funny. Worth two and a half minutes of your time.

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.

TGFI, Volume 550: Christianity in space

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. There’s No Separation of Church and Space (Bethel McGrew, Wall Street Journal): “It has long been an inconvenient fact for angry atheists that some of America’s most intrepid space explorers are devout religious believers. Buzz Aldrin performed the first Holy Communion on the Moon, though at the time he was told to keep the moment private. The activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had sued NASA a few months earlier over Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve broadcast of the Genesis creation narrative.… Atheist biologist P.Z. Meyers recently suffered a flashback to that moment as he contemplated the terrifying prospect of an Easter mini-sermon from Artemis II pilot Victor Glover. Watching the Apollo 8 broadcast as a child was ‘one of the nails in the coffin’ of his religious upbringing. For an atheist, mixing space exploration and religion borders on sacrilege.”
  2. Things That Are Getting Better (Aaron Renn, Substack): “We have managed to find a cure for about 90% of cystic fibrosis cases, a condition that was previously debilitating and fatal. We now have gene therapy treatments that are enabling some children born deaf to hear. In a slew of other areas from premature births to cancer, we’ve made real progress even if long promised fundamental breakthroughs remain elusive. GLP‑1 treatments promise to basically cure obesity. Life expectancy, which was falling, has now risen back to an all-time high.”
  3. Ranked: America’s Biggest Christian Groups (Julie R. Peasley, Visual Capitalist): “The comparison highlights a key divide in how these groups are structured. Catholics lead by membership, while the Southern Baptist Convention leads by church count. Non-denominational churches also rank near the top on both measures, reflecting how the composition of American Christianity has shifted over time.” 
    • The Assemblies of God ranks higher and higher (#7 on this chart). We’ve got one more easy rank to climb, but after that it gets challenging.
  4. The Pews Prepared the Way: Faith, Revolution, and the American Creed (Cole Claybourn & Joshua Claybourn, Providence): “Decades before Jefferson drafted the Declaration, ministers from across the 13 colonies preached natural rights and the equal standing of all men before God. In 1638, in the newly formed Connecticut Colony, a Puritan minister named Rev. Thomas Hooker delivered an audacious sermon for its time. He stood before the colony’s General Court and declared that ‘The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people’ and that ‘The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.’ In the 17th century, a minister telling civil authorities that the government owed its existence to the governed, by God’s design, was seditious. Hooker grounded his argument in scripture and Puritan covenant theology. Consent was God’s idea first.”
  5. Becoming Co-ed: a Protestant Gift to China (Ningning Ma, Se Yan, and Yiling Zhao, SSRN): “A growing literature, starting with Becker and Woessmann (2009), establishes the link between Protestantism and human capital investment. According to the principle of sola scriptura, the Bible is the ultimate authority in the Christian faith, and reading Scripture provides individual access to God’s word. The Protestant emphasis on personal Bible reading led to the promotion of literacy, and Protestantism not only advocated for universal education but also made it accessible to women (Becker and Woessmann, 2008). Closely related to our research is a literature that demonstrates the particularly positive effect of Protestant missions on women’s literacy in developing countries with low gender equality (Calvi et al., 2020; Izumi et al., 2023; Meier zu Selhausen, 2014; Nunn et al., 2014). However, we shift the focus from basic education to higher learning, showing that by pioneering gender-inclusive universities, Protestant missions generated China’s first wave of female elites, thus extending the link between Protestantism and gender equality to upper-tail human capital.” 
    • I skimmed but did not thoroughly read this paper.
  6. Does it help to be religious? (Victoria Moul, Substack): “Why is it that so many of the best contemporary poets in English are (broadly speaking) religious? And in particular, why does this seem (to me) to be more true now than it was thirty years ago when I started reading poetry seriously? If anything you might expect the likelihood that any individual good poet has a religious formation to have declined as religious observance has fallen, albeit to different degrees and from very different starting points, in both the UK and the US. By ‘religious’ I don’t mean Christian — I’m thinking equally of poets like Khaled Hakim or Amit Majmudar — and I don’t necessarily mean ‘practicing’ either, and certainly not that the best _poems_ are religious ones. But just that there does seem to be quite a strong correlation between a religious formation or framework influential enough to be audible in the poetry, and pronounced aptitude.” 
    • The author has a PhD in a related field, but has left academia to focus on being a writer.
  7. $400 Bibles? Luxurious Scripture Is on the Rise. (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “Collectors of premium Bibles tend to share a few characteristics, publishers and experts say: They are typically evangelical Christians who own multiple other Bibles already, and many of them are men. Mr. Arroyo estimates that at least 60 percent of his customers are men. Mr. Wildsmith, the Bible reviewer, said his YouTube audience was about three-quarters male. Some recent surveys have detected Bible reading and church attendance stabilizing or even rising after years of decline, shifts fueled in part by young men.”

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.

TGFI, Volume 549: AI academia and Christian judges

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. AI and research papers (Arnold Kling, Substack): “PubMed and Google Scholar are indexes of documents. What we actually want is an indexed, queryable map of _claims_ with their evidence and confidence levels. The paper is the provenance trail; the claim is the searchable unit. AI is already reasonably good at extracting claims from papers; in 3–4 years it should be good enough to maintain these databases reliably. A researcher asking ‘what do we know about X’ should get a structured confidence-weighted answer, not a list of PDFs to read.” 
    • The bit I excerpted is from Claude answering a question from the author.
  2. How Reverse Game Theory Could Solve The Housing Shortage (HennyGe Wichers, Noema): “Traditional game theory assumes that the rules are fixed — the chessboard is set, the laws codified — and asks how rational people will behave within them. It predicts outcomes based on existing incentives. Mechanism design turns that question around: It asks, for example, what rules should we write to get a different outcome — say, preservation and housing?” 
    • Recommended by a reader.
  3. What Does it Mean to Be a Christian on the Bench? (Matthew J. Kacsmaryk and James C. Ho, Journal of Law and Civil Governance at Texas A&M): “Many judges shy away from talking openly about their faith— and even think such discussions violate the judicial canons. That’s why I thought this discussion was so valuable. What’s your answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Christian and a judge?” 
    • A fascinating conversation. Recommended by an alumnus. Link is to a PDF.
  4. The Women Who Believe Women Should Lose the Right to Vote (Vivian Yee, New York Times): “On social media, the pastor has attracted a following by posting incendiary commentary: railing against feminists, Catholics and gay people, describing immigration as ‘national suicide,’ and labeling Islam and Hinduism ‘demonic.’ He also calls for erasing women’s suffrage, which he lists as one reason ‘the world is falling apart.’ The 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment, the landmark legislative achievement of the movement to make women equal citizens, made it possible for women across America to vote. But for Mr. Partridge and a growing number of like-minded Christians, it drove America into national decline. Instead, they support ‘household voting.’ One household, one vote — the husband’s.”
  5. It’s Cool to Keep Calm (Rob K. Henderson, Wall Street Journal): “How you react during a conflict doesn’t only change how others see _you_. Your reaction also changes how observers see the person with whom you’re arguing. Making someone cry makes you look cold or insensitive. So tears can damage the other side’s reputation. There’s a catch, though. The person who cries is also seen as less competent, less professional and less desirable as a friend or colleague. This creates a trade-off. Crying can hurt your opponent’s reputation, but it hurts yours as well. Behavioral stoicism—maintaining a calm outward demeanor during a conflict—does the opposite. It protects your own reputation, but does little to diminish the other person.” — Remember you have free access through Stanford.
  6. In a rare event, the moon got a massive new crater (Lisa Grossman, Science News): “The crater is 225 meters wide and formed in April or May 2024, Robinson said. According to predictions based on other lunar landmarks, a crater that big should form only once in 139 years. The discovery can help highlight the risks impacts pose to future astronauts.”
  7. 9 things you (probably) didn’t know were invented at Stanford (Rebecca Beyer, Stanford Report): “Long before the start-up era took hold, Stanford faculty and students were dreaming up inventions that transformed (and in some cases established) domains as far-ranging as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, organ transplantation – even the internet itself.” — Heart transplants, the one-handed basketball shot, the computer mouse, and recombinant DNA stood out to me.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • I Was Not Ready for the DMV (Greg Warren, YouTube): eight and a half minutes. Paula and I were so tickled by this that we searched up one of his specials and were equally pleased.

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.

TGFI, Volume 548: anxiety, atheism, and China

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. Stop Being Anxious About Your Anxiety (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “The listener is worried because she doesn’t want to disobey Jesus, and she knows that he said, ‘Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on’ (Matt. 6:25, ESV throughout). And she’s interpreting this the way she would if she were refusing a moral command from the Lord, like to forgive her enemies. The irony is that because of that, she can’t see that these passages are not warnings but reassurances.…. Anxiety tells you that you have to secure your future. Anxiety about anxiety tells you that you have to secure even your inner life. Anxiety about anxiety wants you to hear the voice of Jesus as irritated and angry: Stop it! But the voice of Jesus is really saying, You can rest. I’m here.”
  2. These science-based arguments destroyed my atheism (Sarah Salviander, Substack): “When I was an undergrad studying data for the Big Bang, everything I needed to answer my specific question—what was the chemistry of the very early universe before stars started cooking up heavier elements?—was conveniently in place. Too conveniently. A foolproof way to fingerprint every element and compound? Check. A smooth, powerful light source to backlight the most distant reaches? Check. An expanding universe that lets us rewind cosmic history just by looking at different wavelengths? Check. A transparent atmosphere so we can actually do the observations from the ground? Check. Laws of nature that don’t randomly change with time or place? Check. The list goes on. I literally could not have done the work unless dozens of these parameters lined up just right. It felt less like luck and more like an engraved invitation to explore the careful work of a transcendent Intelligence.” 
    • The author was formerly an astrophysicist at UT Austin. She now leads a ministry.
  3. The Church in China Isn’t What You Think (Joy Marie Clarkson interviewing Easten Law, Plough): “There’s an abiding myth that registered churches are just tools of the Communist Party, that they do whatever it demands. I want to clarify that this isn’t true. Many in the registered churches are genuine Christians. They simply have a different perspective on church and state, and they choose to navigate this relationship with the Party. They will sign the necessary documents. They will give speeches, such as on the Sinicization of Christianity. But they also take care of their congregations and try to help people walk in faith. Their approach to negotiation with this tightening control is different from that of house churches, which are resisting, hiding, and moving around.” 
    • The interviewee is a professor of world Christianity at Yonsei University in Seoul.
  4. Two great Chuck Norris obituaries: 
    • Chuck Norris obituary: actor and martial artist (The Times): “In 1994, when Chuck Norris was starring in the TV action show Walker, Texas Ranger and at the peak of his fame, two men tried to mug him. When the Dallas police subsequently arrived, they found the duo with broken arms, knives on the ground and Norris, then 54, waiting quietly nearby. Trying not to laugh, the officers asked the pair whether they knew who they had attacked. ‘We knew who he was,’ they said. ‘We just figured that all that stuff on television was fake.’ That there was nothing fake about Norris was perhaps the key to his success and to his considerable cultural status in the US.” 
      • Absolute legend. Note this is the British Times. The American New York Times did not include this or any other truly epic scene in their obituary.
    • Chuck Norris, 1940–2026 (Sonny Bunch, The Bulwark): “Invasion USA became an underground sensation in Romania, with bootleg videos of the film passed around and helping to fuel the 1989 uprising’ against Nicolae Ceauşescu, de Semlyen notes in his book. According to James Bruner, who worked on the film with Norris and director Chuck Zito, ‘They use the poster, to this day, in Romania when they protest against the government.… Ultimately, action movies are about freedom. Overcoming evil, in whatever form it may be.’ ”
  5. Technology Weakens Our Minds. We Can Fix This. (Cal Newport, The New York Times): “We should consider taking as strong a stance against ultraprocessed content as we already do against ultraprocessed food. Which is to say: Most people should avoid these diversions most of the time. In the same way that you’re unlikely to eat Twinkies as a regular snack, or still believe that Pop-Tarts provide a balanced breakfast, stop consuming ultraprocessed content. Don’t use TikTok. Don’t use Instagram. Don’t use X. Their sugar-high benefits aren’t worth the costs.… [and] any use of A.I. that mainly serves to make core business tasks cognitively less demanding should be treated with caution. Here’s a simple rule that reinforces this idea: Your writing should be your own. The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout by an athlete — it’s not an annoyance to be eliminated but a key element of your craft.”
  6. Scientists Filmed a Whale Birth. The Surprise: Mom Had Many Helpers. (Catrin Einhorn, New York Times): “They found that the whales oriented to the mother during labor and to the newborn after delivery. Sperm whale calves cannot immediately swim effectively, and a core group of individuals — Rounder, her sister Aurora, and a young, unrelated whale named Ariel — spent the most time lifting the newborn. But every whale in the group acted as ‘a primary supporter’ at some point, including the sole male, an adolescent named Allan who was starting to leave the group to embark on a largely solitary life, as male sperm whales do. But he appeared at the birth. The calf was rarely left untouched, and it was usually being touched by at least two whales simultaneously.”
  7. Prominent Pastor Calls for Texas Democrat to be ‘Crucified With Christ’ (Elizabeth Dias, New York Times): “The host, Joshua Haymes, said of Mr. Talarico: ‘I pray that God kills him. Ultimately that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ.’ Mr. Potteiger responded: ‘Right — we want him crucified with Christ. I want him to be — I think, Saul of Tarsus — Talarico of Tarsus. That’s what I want.’ ” 
    • Recommended by an alumnus. When outsiders eavesdrop on Christian conversations we can sound pretty weird to them.

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.

TGFI, Volume 547: canine cancer cure and paying college athletes

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. Tech boss uses AI and ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine for his dying dog (Natasha Bita, The Australian): “Heartbroken when his fur-baby was diagnosed with a deadly mast cell cancer in 2024, Mr Conyngham threw thousands of dollars at veterinary chemotherapy and surgery, which slowed but failed to shrink the tumours. Now, after treatment with a custom mRNA cancer vaccine over the Christmas break, the tennis ball-sized tumour on Rosie’s hock has shrunk in half, in a recovery that has astounded researchers at the cutting-edge of human cancer treatments.… [A scientist said,] ‘Usually we don’t support direct-to-consumer type DNA sequencing because while generating data for genomics is relatively easy for us, interrogating that data is really hard and challenging,’ he said. But Paul said, ‘No worries, I’m a data analyst and I’ll figure this out with the help of ChatGPT’.” 
    • Note that he did not cure the cancer, just treated it. Stunning nonetheless.
  2. The Danger of AI Isn’t Misinformation. It’s Mis-Formation. (Jonathan Sams, The Gospel Coalition): “In each of these examples, it’s possible AI could churn out a biblically accurate answer. But the danger isn’t purely a matter of misinformation; it’s a matter of formation. The real issue is what habitual AI use does to us. It turns into muscle memory that, over time, will reshape basic Christian habits like what we pay attention to, what we expect, and where we look for counsel.”
  3. Paying College Athletes Has Created a Mess. It Was Still the Right Thing to Do. (Joe Nocera, The Free Press): “What is a problem, I acknowledge, is the transfer portal. In the bad old days, athletes couldn’t transfer without losing a year of eligibility—even if the coach who had recruited them left for greener pastures. But when players switch two or three times in the course of their college career, that creates a whole other set of problems. Smaller schools, in particular, have a difficult time holding on to their best players because the major sports schools pick them off with NIL offers. (Prediction: There will be fewer upsets in this year’s tournament than there used to be.) College athletes have become free agents rather than college students. One astounding statistic: In the Southeastern Conference, only one basketball player spent four years at the same school. One!” 
  4. Sex is not a symbol (Kristen Sanders, Substack): “But there are a few threads in some of the conversations swirling about fertility that I think we might pull on. For one, marriage, and not sex, is the metaphor for union between God and humans. This matters quite a bit! .…What I object to, most strongly, is a view of God and his workings in the world that relies on a ‘hidden’ order or structure that it is our job to discover. God is present in the world without hiding behind every tree or bush. In saying that sex is a gift, we are saying all that we need to say about it. Making it sacred, for me, actually impedes the kind of divisions being made in Leviticus between the holy and the profane. The profane is simply that which is good, but not good for use in the order of revealed knowledge of God. It is good for its own sake. For it, we can return thanks, joyfully, relishing its gifts- of communion and hospitality, of sexuality and its nourishments, of children if they are granted to us. None of these need to be made holy to be good. That is how we receive the world as gift.” 
  5. The mysterious Redditor who’s changing the way we do laundry (Alex Abad-Santos, Vox): “He has singlehandedly changed the way people do laundry. He is the reason the word ‘lipase’ has become a topic of conversation across elder millennial group chats. He can move the market. His adherents clamor for their faceless champion to give them advice. They praise him for a 12-hour process called ‘spa day’ and post their disgusting but satisfying results for the world to see.… Most of the world uses powdered laundry detergent, which allows for more enzyme flexibility; Americans generally prefer liquid, which doesn’t always contain these precious enzymes.”
  6. Scripture, Creation, and Accommodation (Michael Horton, Substack): “[I]n 1896 Andrew Dickson White introduced the fiction that, through its promotion by Bertrand Russell and many other prominent thinkers, has proved influential. White says, ‘Calvin took the lead (against Copernicanism) in his Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third psalm, and asked, ‘Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’’ However, Calvin never mentions Copernicus, here or anywhere else, and he does not condemn heliocentrists. As [Margaret] Osler notes, ‘Few astronomers adopted Copernican astronomy during the first fifty years following the publication of De revolutionibus.’ This included Bacon, of course, so it would not be surprising if Calvin was not even aware of Copernicus. More egregious is White’s spurious quotation, put into circulation by F. W. Farrar a decade earlier and, through White, passed on by Bertrand Russell and many others. Instead, what Calvin says is that scripture is accommodated discourse. Regarding Genesis 1 he cautioned, ‘The Holy Spirit had no intention to teach astronomy.’ ” 
    • I consider myself well-informed in this area, and Horton has got some good info here I don’t recall running across before.
  7. American Diner Gothic (Robert Mariani, The New Atlantis): “You’re in a small town in Wisconsin, the heart of Normal America. The transgender assistant manager at CVS has a septum piercing, a wolf cut, and a nametag that reads ‘Finn.’ A block away, the 4channer construction worker in the Sam Hyde shooter shirt listens to Bladee and plots his impending virality. At Target, the anime section has metastasized from one shelf to an entire aisle. These aren’t random weirdos and they aren’t teenagers in a phase. Walk through any office park and you’ll find the same aesthetic bleeding through the cubicles: anime stickers on laptops, Discord running on second monitors. They’re a new American type, young but trans-generational, as distinctive as the organization man or the valley girl once were. I call them dinergoths: what you get when economic mobility dies, suburbs become psychic deserts, and Discord becomes more real than your cul-de-sac.”

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.

TGFI, Volume 546: atheists who believe in souls & why bad code leads to evil

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. Isaiah Identified in Archaeology (Titus Kennedy, Substack): “Despite fulfilling the role of prophet for more than 50 years, serving under multiple kings, and encountering the Assyrians, until recently there was no archaeology directly attesting to the renowned Isaiah, and at present, there is no archaeological confirmation for the prophets Hosea, Nahum, and Micah, who were contemporary with Isaiah. This all changed when excavations of an Iron Age II layer of the 8th to 7th century BC at the Ophel area in Jerusalem unearthed a seal impression. This discovery was a clay bulla about 1.3 cm in diameter impressed by a seal with the name ‘Isaiah’ and the title ‘prophet’ in the paleo-Hebrew script.… Excavations in this area also discovered a bulla of one of the kings Isaiah served under, Hezekiah of Judah, along with 32 other Hebrew bullae with various names. It was found outside what has been called the ‘royal bakery,’ where royal officials and other dignitaries may have discarded old letters and the clay seals attached to those documents.”
  2. Some thoughts on AI 
    • Why I Don’t Want My Pastor to Use AI (Leah, Substack): “If my pastor won’t wrestle with God through writing a sermon, I begin to question: will he wrestle with Him in prayer? Will he be bothered to wrestle with God over the state of my soul, to plead on my behalf when I am tempted and suffering? …God called you to be my pastor. I want you to be my pastor.”
    • Who Uses AI in Congress? (Nicholas Decker, Substack): “Adoption has been substantial. In the past three months of the 119th Congress, fully 25% of documents in the Congressional Record are AI-generated.… However, mere adoption is an uninteresting topic. Of course they are going to adopt the tools available. What would be much more interesting is if AI tools were having an actual effect on the policy positions or the rhetorical emphasis. Unfortunately, we can pretty conclusively rule those out.” — The author is a PhD student in econ at George Mason.
  3. The Afterlife Isn’t Going Away (Ryan Burge, Substack): “In the full sample, 88% of folks said that they did believe that each being possesses both a soul and a physical body. I look at survey data all day, and here’s what I know: it’s hard to get 88% of Americans to agree on anything, really. If you tried to pull together a battery of ten public policy proposals, it’s very unlikely that any of them would get 88% support. But the data tells this story clearly: almost all Americans believe that there’s something happening beyond our physical bodies.… Among the non-religious, there’s also a huge divide on this question. Among nothing in particulars, 80% believe in a soul. That’s just a few clicks away from the national average. Agnostics score 11 points lower than nothing in particulars. But then take a look at atheists—just one-third of them believe ‘in a soul or spirit in addition to their physical bodies.’ ” 
    • He kinda buried the lede here: 1/3 of atheists believe in a soul. That’s remarkable!
  4. Some thoughts on the war 
    • The Trump Administration Goes to War, by Any Memes Necessary (James Poniewozik, New York Times): “For Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, war was hell. But as represented by the Trump White House’s social feeds, war is LOL.” 
      • Recommended by a student and quite interesting.
    • America’s Conflict in Iran Is Not a Just War (Ed Feser, Public Discourse): “Many who have commented on the war on social media appear to think that as long as some aim for which a war is fought is in itself a good aim—such as deposing tyrants or preventing them from getting hold of weapons of mass destruction—then the war has met the just-cause condition of just war doctrine. That is not the case. This is merely a necessary condition for having a just cause for war, not a sufficient condition.… It is clear that the attack on Iran was not in fact a ‘preemptive war’ in the sense of a military action taken in order to head off an imminent attack. Rather, it is a ‘preventive war,’ in the sense of a military action carried out against a country that does not pose an imminent threat but _could_ do so in the future. But while preemptive war can be justifiable in light of the just war criteria developed in the natural law tradition, preventive war cannot be.” 
      • Feser is a Catholic philosopher.
    • Why I Changed My Mind on Bible Prophecy and Politics (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “My doctoral dissertation was about how viewpoints on last things shaped evangelical Christian attitudes toward social and political engagement.… The kingdom of God—present already but not yet fulfilled—tells us what to care about (justice, peace, the poor, the vulnerable) while also shielding us from the disillusionment or bloodthirstiness that can come with expecting to have to bring the fullness of that kingdom on our own. As embodied in Jesus, the kingdom concerns us not just with outcomes but with ways and means, even as it prompts humility on how to get to those common goals. I have no idea what will happen in Iran. I have no idea what will happen in the modern state of Israel. I have no idea whether we have 5 more minutes or 45 million more years before the Apocalypse. Jesus said, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority’ (Acts 1:7). Who needs a prophecy chart when we already have the Way?”
  5. Some thoughts on a Texas politician: 
    • James Talarico Is a Christian X‑Ray (David French, New York Times): “For too long we’ve evaluated Christians in politics primarily through their policy positions. Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Do you support same-sex marriage? What’s your position on immigration enforcement? Yet this is exactly backward. If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you should notice is that the Bible contains remarkably few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy. But the next thing you’ll notice is that there is an immense amount of guidance describing how Christians should behave. Indeed, in the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul says that the fruit of the spirit is a set of virtues — ‘love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ Absent from that list is a single theological or ideological proposition. That’s not to say that theology or ideology are unimportant. It does really matter whether a politician is pro-life or pro-choice, but there is no spiritual or political scenario where you can abandon Christian virtue for the sake of the alleged greater good, and if a Christian politician abandons Christian virtue, then Christian believers should abandon him or her.” 
      • FYI, this one has been super-divisive on social media. Some have said it is evidence of French’s apostasy and others have said it is self-evidently true. Judge for yourself.
    • The Christianism Of The Left (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “…the fusion of Christianity and politics isn’t exclusively right-wing. You can invoke God to defend anything, after all. And a new left-Christianism has emerged in the 21st century that is a mirror image of the right’s. Left-Christians have come to adorn their churches with transqueer and BLM flags, treat NPR as the Holy Office, adopt language — ‘white supremacy,’ ‘cis-heterosexism,’ ‘patriarchy’ — directly from critical theory, and interpret Scripture to mandate higher taxes, DEI, abortion on demand, and open borders. I find that Christianism just as toxic to faith and politics. Which brings me to James Talarico, the Christianist running for Senate in Texas.”
  6. China’s Long-Promised Consumer Boom Is a Mirage (Anne Stevenson-Yang, New York Times): “China’s people, perhaps more than at any time in the last few decades, are in no mood to go out and splurge. Many have been airing growing anxiety online about falling incomes and scarce jobs. The average income was just over $500 a month in 2025. Unemployment is high.… China’s people, perhaps more than at any time in the last few decades, are in no mood to go out and splurge. Many have been airing growing anxiety online about falling incomes and scarce jobs. The average income was just over $500 a month in 2025. Unemployment is high.… These are hardly the foundations of a vibrant consumer economy, and the future looks no better.” — I have been a consistent skeptic of China’s economy ever since I first heard about ghost cities over a decade ago. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Google it. Do some digging and you’ll be surprised.
  7. This A.I. Experiment Reopened an Ancient Argument About Vice (Dan Kagan-Kans, New York Times): “[A] paper published in Nature in January demonstrates that in machines corruption can metastasize — that in them, something imprudent or a bit bad, like writing insecure code, is not so different from something wicked like praising Hitler. This doesn’t prove virtue ethicists right about humanity’s moral nature. But it suggests they’re onto something, and that the ancients weren’t as naïve or strangely ideological as they can sometimes seem.” 
    • One of the more fascinating things I’ve read in a while.

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.

TGFI, Volume 545: holistic ministry and cringe evangelicals

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a similar way, we need to become wise people whose faith interacts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may continue the tradition of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey’s agenda and we are not about the elephant’s agenda — we are about the Lamb’s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ideological Turing test and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say “I agree” or “I disagree” until I can say “I understand”) and may at times share articles that have a strong partisan bias simply because I find the article stimulating. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with everything an author says in an article I mention, much less things the author has said in other articles (although if I strongly disagree with something in the article I’ll usually mention it). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. Also, remember that I’m not reporting news — I’m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s not making an appearance here because I haven’t found stimulating articles written about it. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 544: Outworking Your Fork and the Olympics

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. You Can’t Outwork Your Fork (Mike Glenn, Substack): “More and more people are recognizing we’re living in Babylon. How do we live in Babylon? By taking responsibility for our spiritual nutrition. Remember what Daniel did in the first chapter of his book? He refused to eat from the king’s table. Remember, he was a captive. He had no control over his life and yet, he took responsibility for what he ate. Likewise, as Christ followers, we have to take control over the things that enter our minds and hearts. We have to be responsible for our spiritual nutrition. We have to be intentional about what we read, what we watch, what we talk about and what we think about.… You’re in control of your mind and your heart. Feed them well. After all, you can’t outwork your fork.”
  2. Olympic thoughts:
    • Alysa Liu completes incredible comeback to win gold in figure skating (Les Carpenter, Washington Post): “Later, as she stood in a room beneath the stands, Liu recounted her wait through Sakamoto and Nakai’s performances, telling how much she enjoys watching them skate and was hoping they would skate really well before the world. She was asked if she wanted the gold at that point. ‘I don’t need this,’ she said, looking down at the medal around her neck, which matched the new gold dress she ordered for the Olympic free skate. ‘What I needed was the stage, and I got that, so I was all good. No matter what happened, you would have been fine. If that was a problem, if I fell on every jump, I would still be wearing this dress.’ .…it was hard to know whether the reality would ever hit her. It might not matter. She was thrilled she had skated well; she was thrilled she had two new dresses for the Olympics and a third for Saturday night’s Olympic gala; she was thrilled her family got to watch her skate.… Winning an Olympic gold medal seemed very far down the list of what was important to her at that point.” 
      • Wholesome, commendable, and encouraging. Plus look at the sheer joy on her face in the second photo of the piece (the top-down one).
    • What Eileen Gu Has Done is Totally Ordinary, Usually Invites Zero Controversy, and Has Routinely Benefitted the United States (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “What’s striking is how selective the concern is. When foreign-born athletes become Americans in time to compete for Team USA, we don’t suddenly become textual literalists about nationality statutes, we just celebrate the medal haul. Only when affiliation flows the other way do we discover a newfound reverence for purity in citizenship law. The practice of athletes competing for countries other than their birthplace isn’t a scandal; it’s a cornerstone of modern Olympic sports!”
  3. A Chinese official’s use of ChatGPT accidentally revealed a global intimidation operation (Sean Lyngaas, CNN): “The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident’s social media account taken down.”
  4. “Help! All the Kids are Becoming Catholic/Orthodox” (Austin Suggs, Substack): “Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy don’t just offer a way of _seeing_ the world, they offer a _culture to immerse yourself in_ that so many people feel devoid of. I take it as no coincidence that the rise of interest in traditional Christianity coincided with the rise of interest in sites like ancestry.com or growing nationalism—both of which, in their own way, are trying to offer people a sense of shared, communal identity rooted in the past. To focus on doctrine to the exclusion of communal identity when investigating why people convert would be folly. Protestants must have an answer to this if they want to keep people.”
  5. Against witchcraft (Aria Schrecker, Substack): “Overall, using your intuition is massively overrated in romance. You’ve been trained on a lot of bad data and it’s made you go haywire. You’re better off courting like you’re arranging your own marriage, not like you’re starring in a rom com.” 
    • Much sensible (albeit non-Christian) wisdom in this article. Although the first four paragraphs are kinda unhinged.
    • I decided to look up the other entries in this series. AMAZING. 9/10 recommend with the exception of her second article which I skipped for being less relevant to likely readers of this sentence.
    • How to find a husband (and why you should want one) (Aria Schrecker, Substack): “So I got married recently. I’ve decided to take his name, so this blog is going to be now under the name Aria Schrecker.… Finding a spouse should be the number one priority in your life. The right partner will make every other goal in your life easier to achieve. If your priority is your career, you will probably be more successful with a well-chosen spouse. In some cases this will be a partner in a similar field and you guys can pass each other networks and gossip. In some cases you may prefer someone who is willing to put their career on the backburner and support you by taking care of everything else in your life. If you’re aiming for success in politics, or the arts, or you work tirelessly for a really important altruistic cause, then marrying someone with a steady income will make you able to take the risks you need to.”
    • The wall is real but not for the reasons you think (Aria Schrecker, Substack): “Every day that passes, eligible bachelors in your age range start dating the women they are going to marry. Men get spit back out onto the apps for three main reasons. (1) There’s something wrong with him/ (2) There’s something wrong with her. (3) Bad luck. As you get older the men who are attractive, want to get married, and don’t have ruinous personality problems get snapped up. What’s left are the men who can’t get girlfriends, aren’t interested in serious dating, and/or have been serially rejected by women after getting into relationships with them. Obviously lots of single older men are still marriage-worthy. Maybe they’ve had a bit of a glow up, matured over the years, or just had some unfortunate sources of incompatibility. But the more time passes, the less likely this becomes.”
  6. It’s Not His Fault He Used the N‑Word (Kat Rosenfield, The Free Press): “As controversies go, this one was immaculate. Unlike previous incidents of this type, there was no risk that the alleged hate speech would turn out to be an accidental malapropism, or an outright fabrication, or, as in one memorable case from 2021, a man who was misheard while trying to get the attention of the mascot for the Colorado Rockies, a purple polka-dotted triceratops named Dinger. This was an actual utterance of the actual no-no word, caught on actual camera and broadcast on the actual BBC. If ever there was an ironclad case for cancellation—! Ah, but wait: Remember, John Davidson has Tourette’s syndrome, which also makes this an actual case of the phenomenon colloquially known as the Oppression Olympics.” 
    • The twist at the end is stunning. I won’t spoil it. In a tweet about it, the author said, “When I learned why Davidson was in the audience my soul left my body.”
    • On a personal note: one of my good friends in college had Tourette’s like this. I can attest that bro did highly offensive stuff on the regular that I guarantee he had absolutely zero control over nor any poor intention behind. 
  7. Bigger is not always better (Will Gibbs, Stanford Daily): “She lived an ordinary life. Had kids, divorced, worked, retired, babysat and eventually passed away. But, her impact was anything but ordinary. She ran one of the few preschools in my hometown for twenty years. She delivered donations every Monday of the month to the local food pantry. She traveled with my church’s youth group to rehouse roofs and build ADA accessible housing for less fortunate people in our area.… When she passed away, my pastor started getting stopped in the streets. Everybody everywhere — even people he had walked by for years without a conversation — wanted to personally give their sympathies and express how big of an impact she had on them.” 
    • 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.

TGFI, Volume 543: artificial humanities and a wise wager

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Humanities Are About to Be Automated (Yascha Mounk, Substack): “…I decided to see whether the newest AI models would be capable of writing a competent academic paper in my field of study, political theory. The result both elated and depressed me.… The human feedback involved in this process certainly drew on my training in the field, but it was very minimal. Including the time it took Claude to generate the text, and the rather longer time it took me to read what Claude had written, it took less than two hours from when I had the idea to run this experiment to when the draft was finished. The draft could certainly be improved in a few respects. There are certainly a few places in the argument where reviewers could come up with clever objections.… Had a fellow student submitted it to my department’s graduate student workshop when I was doing my PhD, my respect for them would have gone up rather than down.” 
    • Includes the paper, which the author (a professor at Johns Hopkins) says “could, with minor revisions, be published by a serious journal.”
  2. Your Understanding of Calling Is About to Change Radically (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “We must always seek God’s will. But what we meant by this for most of our lives is about to change dramatically. It’s not God or his will that’s changing but the world as we’ve known it—and with it, the outmoded way we’ve thought about ‘career.’ .…We have thought of vocation as a definite thing. That mindset may even be behind a lot of the angst we have about discerning God’s will for a career. We think once it’s decided, then the map is set, and now we just set out on it.”
  3. You Don’t Get Pascal’s Wager (Patrick Koroly, Substack): “Pascal isn’t trying to tell random atheists to be Christians. He’s trying to ask uncertain and indifferent Christians whether their choices make any sense. Clearly, it contradicts the heart, since they believe in God yet ignore the practice. Clearly, it contradicts reason, since a cunning Christian would be vying for heaven. Your actions are nonsense—if you hold these beliefs, you’re making a bet that will always lose! I lack the power to stop the endless tide of Wager misinterpretations. But I hope that you now understand Pascal’s _actual_ meaning: not that we ought to live as mercenaries in service of God, but that our heart and mind demand two very different things. The Wager calms the mind so that the heart may contend with God as it must.”
  4. Unlocked: Christians Against Empathy Aren’t Who They Think They Are (David French, New York Times): “I never thought it would be Christians who led the attack on fundamental Christian values, but here we are. The Book of Hebrews says, ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.’ In Christian theology, Christ engaged in the ultimate act of empathy. He didn’t imagine what it would be like to live as a man — he became one.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  5. Will We Regret the Release of the Epstein Files? (Robby Soave, The Free Press): “It’s been just days since the majority of the files were released, and a vast campaign is already underway to embarrass, harass, or smear anyone tangentially associated with Epstein—a serial sexual predator—no matter how slight or incidental the connection.… Take the smearing of Glenn Dubin, a hedge fund manager. In the files is an image of him, arm-in-arm with three underage kids, whose faces are obscured by the Epstein files’ characteristic black boxes. The implication is clear. But the identities of the children are known. They aren’t victims. They are his own kids.”
    • Epstein’s Ties With Academics Show the Seedy Side of College Fund-Raising (Alan Blinder, New York Times): “Mr. Epstein, who in 2019 died by suicide in the jail where he was being held on sex trafficking charges, gave money, or simply dangled the prospect of it, before people on a range of campuses, including Harvard, M.I.T., Stanford, Bard College and Columbia.… It was not always clear how much administrators knew about Mr. Epstein’s contacts with their schools. Most due diligence policies, industry officials said, are usually built around gift acceptance, not solicitation.”
  6. This Ash Wednesday, choose compassion over optimization (Ariana Duduna, Stanford Daily): “This practice of self-sacrifice may seem foreign, but it cultivates something our culture has lost: the capacity for genuine compassion. Compassion literally means ‘to suffer with’ — not to feel sorry for someone from a distance, but to join their discomfort. You can’t optimize your way into compassion because compassion requires precisely what optimization seeks to eliminate: voluntary, unproductive suffering.… Instead of treating my anxieties about schoolwork, summer internships and career plans as mere problems to solve, I have begun to view them as opportunities for communion with others navigating the same struggles.” 
    • Recommended by a student
  7. Rented Virtue (Will Manidis & Nabeel S. Qureshi, Substack): “Every secular constraint eventually faces the question: why maintain this when it is costly? The only thing that has ever held a constraint in place across generations, through pressure, through loss, through the slow grinding temptation of day after day to simply stop, is the conviction that the constraint was not chosen but received. That it comes from something outside the self that the self cannot renegotiate. That it is owed to God and to creation itself.… If you asked why the constraint was there, and kept asking, you arrived at God. You always arrived at God.… There is no secular alternative. There has never been one.”

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.