Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 313

a dis­turbing­ly high num­ber of pan­dem­ic-relat­ed arti­cles

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.

313 is the 65th prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pan­dem­ic relat­ed
    • How the Pan­dem­ic Now Ends (Ed Yong, The Atlantic): “Here, then, is the cur­rent pan­dem­ic dilem­ma: Vac­cines remain the best way for indi­vid­u­als to pro­tect them­selves, but soci­eties can­not treat vac­cines as their only defense.”
      • First, this is a free arti­cle that won’t use up a pay­wall click. Sec­ond, this is dis­cour­ag­ing to read and makes me think Stan­ford is going to be way more restric­tive than I was hop­ing come fall.
    • What We Lose When We Livestream Church (Collin Hansen, New York Times): “The very word we trans­late from Greek as ‘church’ in the New Tes­ta­ment sug­gests we must assem­ble in per­son. The church wasn’t just a bridge of 2,000 years until human­i­ty reached Peak Zoom. It’s essen­tial for the reli­gion where God took on flesh and dwelt among us. It’s essen­tial in a faith that believes Jesus phys­i­cal­ly rose from the dead and then sat down to enjoy a meal with his stunned friends.”
    • Covid incom­pe­tence (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “Delta is the fourth wave of covid, and amaz­ing­ly the US pol­i­cy response is even more irres­olute than the first time around. Our gov­ern­ment is like a child, sent next door to get a cup of sug­ar, who gets as far as the front stoop and then wan­ders off fol­low­ing a pup­py.”
      • The author is a senior fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
    • “What Do Full Hos­pi­tals Real­ly Tell Us About COVID?” (Eugene Volokh, Rea­son): “The pub­lic argu­ment for spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals is more exper­tise and low­er costs because of effi­cien­cy. The real mod­el was no emer­gency room, and thus no way for un- and under-insured peo­ple to get into the hos­pi­tal. All of the finan­cial ben­e­fits of being a hos­pi­tal with­out any of the respon­si­bil­i­ties. So we get wom­en’s hos­pi­tals, ortho­pe­dic hos­pi­tals, etc., suck­ing the prof­itable work from com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tals, with­out tak­ing any of the bur­den of com­mu­ni­ty care for the indi­gent.… The hos­pi­tals in Louisiana which take indi­gent patients and patients though the ER—pretty much all COVID patients—are slammed. The spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals have lots of staff and lots of beds and don’t have much in the way of COVID patients, if there are any at all.”
      • I did not know any of that. Real­ly inter­est­ing. Writ­ten a law prof at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Porn­dem­ic? A Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study of Pornog­ra­phy Use Before and Dur­ing the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic in a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Amer­i­cans (Grubbs et al, Archives of Sex­u­al Behav­ior): “In gen­er­al, pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward over the pan­dem­ic, for both men and women. Prob­lem­at­ic pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward for men and remained low and unchanged in women.”
      • The excerpt is from the abstract. It’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing but also I think peo­ple are less like­ly to watch porn with their fam­i­lies around, which hap­pened a lot dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. I do won­der how their find­ings cross-check with traf­fic stats from porn web­sites. It seems like an obvi­ous way to do a sim­ple check on their find­ings.
  2. The Gap Between Law and Moral­i­ty (Helen Dale, Law & Lib­er­ty): “The planet’s two great legal sys­tems devel­oped in two Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tions, Rome and Eng­land. Their wide prove­nance is not only due to both peo­ples con­quer­ing great empires. It’s also because they worked: they did things no oth­er legal regime did before them, and those oth­ers are still inca­pable of doing now.… Incred­i­bly, these devel­oped inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er. The Eng­lish com­mon law did not bor­row from Rome: when it first emerged, Roman law was lost.”
    • This is sur­pris­ing­ly engross­ing. In the words of an alum­nus, “This one was a sleep­er hit. Start­ed slow, blew me away by the end.”
  3. Why a Mas­cu­line Min­istry Rose and Fell (David French, The Dis­patch): “When coun­ter­ing a cul­ture that often attacks tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent vice, the answer isn’t to indulge tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent virtue.… Driscoll, in all his tough­ness and swag­ger, tried to make men out of Chris­tians. The church, how­ev­er, should make Chris­tians out of men.”
  4. Cor­nel West on Why the Left Needs Jesus (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When I was in Char­lottesville, look­ing at these sick white broth­ers in neo-Nazi par­ties and the Klan spit­ting and cussing and car­ry­ing on, I could see the hounds of hell rag­ing on the bat­tle­field of their souls. But I also know that there’s greed in me. There’s hatred in me. Peo­ple say, ‘Oh, you’re so qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent than those gang­sters.’ I say, ‘No, I’ve got gang­ster in me. I was a gang­ster before I met Jesus. Now I’m a redeemed sin­ner with gang­ster pro­cliv­i­ties.’ It is a very dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at things than many of my sec­u­lar com­rades.”
  5. Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Reform­ers Chose the Wrong Slo­gan (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Before the pub­lic sours on crim­i­nal-jus­tice reform more broadly—as it may amid ris­ing fears about crime and dis­or­der in cities—a new focus and ral­ly­ing cry are need­ed. And giv­en the spike in homi­cides that has afflict­ed the Unit­ed States dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killing Black peo­ple, there’s an espe­cial­ly strong case for this over­due slo­gan: Solve All Mur­ders. Pre­cise­ly because Black lives mat­ter, peo­ple who take Black lives shouldn’t get away with it.”
  6. Assem­blies of God Grow­ing with Pen­te­costal Per­sis­tence (Ryan P. Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s dif­fi­cult to pin­point exact­ly why the Assem­blies of God has con­tin­ued to increase over the past 15 years. Research shows that mem­ber­ship of the Assem­blies of God has become more polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and more reli­gious­ly active today than just a decade ago, but its own num­bers indi­cate that it has achieved incred­i­ble racial diversity—44 per­cent of mem­bers in the Unit­ed States are eth­nic minori­ties.”
    • Since the Assem­blies of God is the group with which I am ordained and is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Chi Alpha, file under “arti­cles that make me hap­py.”
  7. We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess (Eli Doura­do, New York Times): “How did the most dynam­ic coun­try on the plan­et become so scle­rot­ic? We did it to our­selves. We enact­ed laws that priv­i­lege the sta­tus quo at the expense of change and progress. We lib­er­al­ly passed out veto rights to any­one with the mon­ey and where­with­al to hire a lawyer. If we want to reverse the dam­age and cre­ate a more pros­per­ous future, we must make it easy to build.”
    • The author is an econ­o­mist at Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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 312

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.

312 is an idoneal num­ber (which appar­ent­ly there are only 65, 66 or 67 of — it’s wild how in math you can prove things that seem total­ly impos­si­ble to prove).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bere­ans Had No Bibles: Re-envi­sion­ing Acts 17 (Grif­fin Gulledge, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The Bere­ans had no Bibles. It was rare for aver­age folks in the ear­ly church to have an indi­vid­ual copy of the Scrip­tures. Indeed, it wasn’t until the Ref­or­ma­tion era that mass pro­duc­tion of God’s Word was even pos­si­ble. What they had instead was a community—in this case the synagogue—which had a col­lec­tion of writ­ings we know as the Old Tes­ta­ment.”
  2. How Big Tech Tar­gets Faith Groups for Cen­sor­ship (Joshua D. Hold­en­ried, Real Clear Reli­gion): “Most tech com­pa­nies’ user agree­ments ban con­tent that dis­crim­i­nates on the basis of reli­gion, yet their poli­cies enable them to engage in such dis­crim­i­na­tion them­selves.”
    • That is a very suc­cinct way to express the hypocrisy. Put that sen­tence in your pock­et — you will have occa­sion to use it more than you’d like in the future.
  3. Becer­ra and Biden Betray Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als Being Forced to Assist in Abor­tions (Roger Sev­eri­no, Nation­al Review):  “The facts were stun­ning in their clar­i­ty, the vic­tim was extreme­ly cred­i­ble and sym­pa­thet­ic, and the vio­la­tor remained entire­ly cal­lous and unre­pen­tant. The UVMMC mat­ter was the most open and shut con­science case in over a decade. I say was, because on Fri­day, the DOJ qui­et­ly, and vol­un­tar­i­ly, dis­missed the case. No admis­sion of guilt, no injunc­tion, no cor­rec­tive action, no set­tle­ment, no noth­ing.”
  4. Relat­ed to health care:
    • Mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty lands man in Hawaii men­tal hos­pi­tal (Jen­nifer Sin­co Kelle­her, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Instead, against Spriestersbach’s protests that he wasn’t Castle­ber­ry, he was even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted to the Hawaii State Hos­pi­tal. ‘Yet, the more Mr. Spriesters­bach vocal­ized his inno­cence by assert­ing that he is not Mr. Castle­ber­ry, the more he was declared delu­sion­al and psy­chot­ic by the H.S.H. staff and doc­tors and heav­i­ly med­icat­ed… despite his con­tin­u­al denial of being Mr. Castle­ber­ry and pro­vid­ing all of his rel­e­vant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and places where he was locat­ed dur­ing Mr. Castleberry’s court appear­ances, no one would believe him or take any mean­ing­ful steps to ver­i­fy his iden­ti­ty and deter­mine that what Mr. Spriesters­bach was telling the truth – he was not Mr. Castle­ber­ry.’ No one believed him — not even his var­i­ous pub­lic defend­ers — until a hos­pi­tal psy­chi­a­trist final­ly lis­tened.”
    • Dance Till We Die (Ari Schul­man, The New Atlantis): “Covid secu­ri­ty the­ater is when we claim our actions are aimed at fight­ing Covid, but actu­al­ly part of our moti­va­tion is just to give the impres­sion that we’re fight­ing Covid. Gen­uine­ly fight­ing Covid may or may not be one of our goals too, but what makes the­ater the­ater is that per­for­mance is one of our goals.”
      • Pro­vides an inter­est­ing defense of wise secu­ri­ty the­ater while also absolute­ly slam­ming what we got in its place.
    • Adum­bra­tions Of Adu­canum­ab (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I wor­ry that peo­ple are going to come away from this with some con­clu­sion like ‘wow, the FDA seemed real­ly unpre­pared to han­dle COVID.’ No. It’s not that spe­cif­ic. Every sin­gle thing the FDA does is like this. Every sin­gle hour of every sin­gle day the FDA does things exact­ly this stu­pid and destruc­tive, and the only rea­son you nev­er hear about the oth­ers is because they’re about some dis­ease with a name like Schmoe’s Syn­drome and a few hun­dred cas­es nation­wide instead of some­thing big and media-wor­thy like coro­n­avirus. I am a doc­tor and some­times I have to deal with the Schmoe’s Syn­dromes of the world and every f@$king time there is some sto­ry about the FDA doing some­thing exact­ly this awful and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.”
    • We Walk Among You (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “I do not want my men­tal ill­ness to be accept­ed by strangers. I hate it and I hate myself for hav­ing it. Men­tal ill­ness is not an expres­sion of the beau­ty of every indi­vid­ual who has it but the most ugly ele­ment of their most ugly selves.… The worst part of this car­i­ca­ture of kind­ness towards the men­tal­ly ill may seem con­tra­dic­to­ry: it extin­guish­es the capac­i­ty for mer­cy. For only the guilty can be shown mer­cy; that is the most essen­tial qual­i­ty of mer­cy, its only mean­ing. And I am guilty. Many of us who suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness are. Per­haps some­day our cul­ture will mature enough to under­stand that what we need is not to be absolved, nor to be exon­er­at­ed, nor to be excused, but to be for­giv­en.”
  5. Anato­my of a Bad Idea: Affir­ma­tive Con­sent (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “So you get this huge pol­i­cy change at hun­dreds of uni­ver­si­ties that does effec­tive­ly noth­ing to stop sex­u­al assault, infringes on the rights of the accused, and func­tions as a make-work pro­gram for over­paid ‘con­sul­tants’ and lib­er­al writ­ers, all while most peo­ple qui­et­ly rec­og­nize that nobody fol­lows it, and sup­port for that emp­ty pol­i­cy is enforced with mis­sion­ary zeal not by true believ­ers but almost entire­ly by peo­ple who are too scared to ask whether any of it makes any sense.”
    • My hot take? “No means no” and “yes means yes” are both pale imi­ta­tions of “I do means I do” — and until we move back from con­sent to covenant we’re going to have lots of need­less suf­fer­ing.
  6. On Hun­gary
    1. Hun­gary is No Mod­el for the Amer­i­can Right (David French, The Dis­patch): “If you’ve been a con­ser­v­a­tive for any length of time, you’ve like­ly had what I like to call the ‘Swe­den con­ver­sa­tion,’ or per­haps the ‘Den­mark debate.’ A social­ist-lean­ing pro­gres­sive friend will wax elo­quent about the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries that com­bine high stan­dards of liv­ing with gen­er­ous wel­fare states and ask, ‘Why not here?‘ .… Well, Hun­gary is the new right’s Den­mark. Except that Hun­gary is a much worse place to live than Den­mark.”
    2. “My favorite things Hun­gary” — my revi­sion­ist take (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Way back in 2011, when I was vis­it­ing Hun­gary, I did a post in typ­i­cal MR style: My Favorite Things Hungary. I had no par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal point in mind, and indeed the cur­rent dis­putes over Hun­gary did not quite exist back then. Nonethe­less, if you sur­vey the list, just about every one of my favorites list­ed end­ed up leav­ing Hun­gary. The one excep­tion, as far as I can tell, is film direc­tor Béla Tarr, but he is a crit­ic of both nation­al­ism and Orban. All the rest left Hun­gary.”
    3. Unpa­tri­ot­ic Con­ser­v­a­tivesTM 2021 (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I can’t think of any­thing in recent mem­o­ry that has been more reveal­ing of where we Amer­i­cans actu­al­ly stand polit­i­cal­ly than Tuck­er Carlson’s vis­it to Hungary. As I wrote in The Spec­ta­tor a cou­ple of days ago, Hun­gary is a coun­try with lots of trou­bles, includ­ing corruption. I won’t go once again into list­ing all the rea­sons why it’s impor­tant for West­ern right-of-cen­ter peo­ple to come here and learn from the Hun­gar­i­ans — I’ve been blog­ging about that all sum­mer; I invite you to go through the archives here — so I’m going to try to boil it down.”
      • Dreher has a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than most Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors, and I include him because his argu­ment is inter­est­ing. I tru­ly know almost noth­ing about Orban or Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics — but I am intrigued by how divi­sive Orban is in Amer­i­ca.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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 311

wide-rang­ing links with a focus on the pan­dem­ic

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (although I skipped last week because I was on vaca­tion and it was glo­ri­ous). 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.

This is the 311th install­ment. 311 is some­thing called a per­mutable prime (aka absolute prime), which means that it is prime no mat­ter how you reorder the dig­its. In oth­er words because 311, 113, and 131 are all primes they are per­mutable primes. Nifty!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The New Moral Code of America’s Elite (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, The Atlantic): “…it’s decent, if you have a prob­lem with some­one, to take it up with them before run­ning it up the near­est flag­pole. But this is some­thing peo­ple with the right views and the best degrees, it seems, sim­ply do not do; just as the dis­tinc­tion between tat­tling and whistleblowing—resting, as it does, on a sober eval­u­a­tion of one’s own motives and the stakes at hand—is one they often fail to make.” THIS IS WILD and 100% worth using up a pay­wall view on.
  2. The Ger­man Exper­i­ment That Placed Fos­ter Chil­dren with Pedophiles (Rachel Aviv, New York­er): “Per­haps the politi­cians were recep­tive because the project seemed to be the oppo­site of the Nazis’ repro­duc­tive exper­i­ments, with their rigid empha­sis on prop­a­gat­ing cer­tain kinds of fam­i­lies, or per­haps they were uncon­cerned because, in their opin­ion, the boys were already lost.” Actu­al­ly insane.
  3. “These Bas­tards Will Nev­er See Our Tears”: How Yulia Naval­naya Became Russia’s Real First Lady (Julia Ioffe, Van­i­ty Fair): “She said, ‘I think there is no chance that they will let him out. He will be in jail for a long time,’ ” Grozev recalls. “You must under­stand how shock­ing this con­ver­sa­tion was. She’s this wide-eyed, earnest, hon­est per­son. She says these things like they’re the most obvi­ous things on earth, but she’s say­ing very nonob­vi­ous things. You have to process what she says before you real­ize that it’s obvi­ous only in a cer­tain universe.” That uni­verse was the imag­ined future in which Rus­sia is free and hap­py.
    • What an absolute­ly astound­ing lady. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  4. Call it Racism, Not ‘White Suprema­cy’ (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “ ‘White­ness is a sys­tem, not white skin’ is a per­fect­ly plau­si­ble real­i­ty, but it has the laws of ordi­nary lan­guage work­ing against it, and that’s not going to change any­time soon. My sense is that you can have the lan­guage of white­ness or you can have an audi­ence that under­stands what you’re say­ing, but you can’t have both.”
  5. A whole pas­sel of pan­dem­ic-relat­ed arti­cles, all of which are extreme­ly worth­while.
    • The Noble Lies of COVID-19 (Ker­ring­ton Pow­ell & Vinay Prasad, Slate): “Pub­lic health mes­sag­ing is pred­i­cat­ed on trust, which over­comes the enor­mous com­plex­i­ty of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­cate ini­tia­tives effec­tive­ly. Still, vio­la­tion of this trust ren­ders the com­mu­ni­ca­tion unre­li­able. When trust is shat­tered, mes­sag­ing is no longer clear and straight­for­ward, and instead results in the audi­ence try­ing to reverse-engi­neer the state­ment based on their view of the speaker’s intent.”
    • The Myth of Pan­ic (Tan­ner Greer, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “This is the great les­son of the 2020 coro­n­avirus: We should have been allowed to fear. Alas, our lead­ers feared our fear more than they feared our deaths. ” The lat­ter half (about the moti­va­tions of the rul­ing class) is par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • ‘I’m sor­ry, but it’s too late’ Alaba­ma doc­tor on treat­ing unvac­ci­nat­ed, dying COVID patients (Den­nis Pil­lion, AL.com): “You kind of go into it think­ing, ‘Okay, I’m not going to feel bad for this per­son, because they make their own choice,’” Cobia said. “But then you actu­al­ly see them, you see them face to face, and it real­ly changes your whole per­spec­tive, because they’re still just a per­son that thinks that they made the best deci­sion that they could with the infor­ma­tion that they have, and all the mis­in­for­ma­tion that’s out there. And now all you real­ly see is their fear and their regret. And even though I may walk into the room think­ing, ‘Okay, this is your fault, you did this to yourself,’ when I leave the room, I just see a per­son that’s real­ly suf­fer­ing, and that is so regret­ful for the choice that they made.” Sober­ing.
    • Let’s get more peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “Now if I went around tweet­ing all day ‘don’t take the vac­cines unless you’re high­ly vul­ner­a­ble, they’re exper­i­men­tal treat­ments the FDA hasn’t approved because they say they don’t have enough safe­ty data yet’ peo­ple would (right­ly) get very mad at me. Spread­ing that mes­sage would (right­ly) be con­sid­ered an anti-social and chaot­ic thing to be doing. But the mes­sage is true, and a good way to cut down on its spread would be to make it not be true, rather than try­ing to infor­mal­ly stig­ma­tize say­ing it.”
    • The New COVID Pan­ic (Susan Matthews, Slate): “The most impor­tant thing to real­ize is that break­through cas­es are going to con­tin­ue to sur­face in our lives. ‘The goal was nev­er to erad­i­cate COVID from being annoying—it was to erad­i­cate it from being a killer,’ said Dara Kass, an emer­gency med­i­cine physi­cian in New York. (She empha­sized, again, that the vac­cines are very good at doing the lat­ter.) And so even while you have like­ly heard that break­through cas­es are ‘rare,’ that’s a sub­jec­tive assess­ment that is prob­a­bly worth adjust­ing upward.”
    • Are COVID Restric­tions the New TSA? (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “It’s like God was design­ing the eas­i­est moral and util­i­tar­i­an ques­tion pos­si­ble. Here we have a sit­u­a­tion where a dis­ease 1) Spares chil­dren 2) Spares those who behave respon­si­bly; and 3) There­fore has a bur­den that falls almost exclu­sive­ly on those who behave irre­spon­si­bly.” This is an uneven essay but on the whole quite strong.
    • Good morn­ing. Covid is more mys­te­ri­ous than we often admit. (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “Social dis­tanc­ing and espe­cial­ly vac­ci­na­tion can save lives. But much of the ebb and flow of a pan­dem­ic can­not be explained by changes in human behav­ior. That was true with influen­za a cen­tu­ry ago, and it is true with Covid now. An out­break often fiz­zles mys­te­ri­ous­ly, like a for­est fire that fails to jump from one patch of trees to anoth­er.” Super inter­est­ing!
  6. Inside a KKK mur­der plot: Grab him up, take him to the riv­er (Jason Dearen, AP News): “A con­fi­den­tial infor­mant had infil­trat­ed the group, and his record­ings pro­vide a rare, detailed look at the inner work­ings of a mod­ern klan cell and a domes­tic ter­ror­ism probe. That inves­ti­ga­tion would unearth anoth­er secret: An unknown num­ber of klans­men were work­ing inside the Flori­da Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions, with sig­nif­i­cant pow­er over inmates, Black and white.” Odd cap­i­tal­iza­tion deci­sions aside, a worth­while sto­ry.
  7. The Illu­sion of Porn “Literacy” (Samuel D. James, First Things): “Edu­ca­tion is about dis­cern­ment, yes, but it is also moral for­ma­tion. No teacher or admin­is­tra­tor inter­est­ed in keep­ing her career would advo­cate a cur­ricu­lum that treat­ed racism the way porn lit­er­a­cy treats smut, as a sub­stance with which to become bet­ter acquaint­ed and a more informed con­sumer. Like­wise, any teacher who invit­ed a CEO of Big Tobac­co to give a lec­ture on why his career is sat­is­fy­ing would be sharply rebuked. What we as a soci­ety deem harm­ful and unjust is taught as such.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Aliens and Pro­nouns (Dil­bert): I am gen­uine­ly curi­ous what the pop­u­lar reac­tion to this strip will be. I wish I had access to his ana­lyt­ics! He’s going to learn some inter­est­ing things about our cul­ture. Peo­ple on Twit­ter will lose their minds… but Adams must be gam­bling that most peo­ple will find it fun­ny.
  • Shark Fish­ing (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine min­utes.
  • Strange Ways Air­lines Cut Costs (QI, YouTube): four min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Congratulations. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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 310

short and sweet this week

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.

This is vol­ume 310 — which in base 6 is ren­dered as the much cool­er vol­ume 1234.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Can Sil­i­con Val­ley Find God? (Lin­da Kin­stler, New York Times): “Over the course of my report­ing, I often thought back to the expe­ri­ence of Rob Bar­rett, who worked as a researcher at IBM in the ’90s. One day, he was out­lin­ing the default pri­va­cy set­tings for an ear­ly web brows­er fea­ture. His boss, he said, gave him only one instruc­tion: ‘Do the right thing.’ It was up to Mr. Bar­rett to decide what the “right thing” was. That was when it dawned on him: ‘I don’t know enough the­ol­o­gy to be a good engi­neer,’ he told his boss. He request­ed a leave of absence so he could study the Old Tes­ta­ment, and even­tu­al­ly he left the indus­try.” One of the inter­vie­wees, Sherol Chen, used to serve on our wor­ship team. Inter­est­ing arti­cle!
  2. A horn-wear­ing ‘shaman.’ A cow­boy evan­ge­list. For some, the Capi­tol attack was a kind of Chris­t­ian revolt. (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “For many, their reli­gious beliefs were not tied to any spe­cif­ic church or denom­i­na­tion — lead­ers of major denom­i­na­tions and megachurch­es, and even Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s faith advis­ers, were absent that day. For such peo­ple, their faith is indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, large­ly free of struc­tures, rules or the approval of cler­gy.… part of the mix, say experts on Amer­i­can reli­gion, is the fact that the coun­try is in a peri­od when insti­tu­tion­al reli­gion is break­ing apart, becom­ing more indi­vid­u­al­ized and more dis­con­nect­ed from denom­i­na­tions, the­o­log­i­cal cre­den­tials and over­sight.”
    • You may have heard me say it before: “If you think orga­nized reli­gion is bad, wait until you catch a glimpse of dis­or­ga­nized reli­gion.”
  3. I tried to report sci­en­tif­ic mis­con­duct. How did it go? (Joe Hil­gard, per­son­al blog): “I was curi­ous to see how the self-cor­rect­ing mech­a­nisms of sci­ence would respond to what seemed to me a rather obvi­ous case of unre­li­able data and pos­si­ble research mis­con­duct. It turns out Brandolini’s Law still holds: ‘The amount of ener­gy need­ed to refute bull­shit is an order of mag­ni­tude larg­er than to pro­duce it.’ How­ev­er, I was not pre­pared to be resist­ed and hin­dered by the self-cor­rect­ing insti­tu­tions of sci­ence itself.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The author is a psych prof at Illi­nois State.
  4. Anti-Racism is an Inter-White Strug­gle (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­Stack): “Anti-racism has become a kind of high-stakes pok­er game for edu­cat­ed white peo­ple: you risk los­ing your shirt at any time, but those who have the savvy and the guts to bluff their way to the top reap social and pro­fes­sion­al rewards.”
  5. Book Review: Crazy Like Us (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “…does nam­ing and point­ing to a men­tal health prob­lem make it worse? This was clear­est in Hong Kong, where a seem­ing­ly very low base rate of anorex­ia explod­ed as soon as peo­ple start­ed launch­ing men­tal health aware­ness cam­paigns say­ing that it was a com­mon and impor­tant dis­ease (as had appar­ent­ly hap­pened before in Vic­to­ri­an Europe and 70s/80s Amer­i­ca). But it also showed up in the sec­tion on how increas­ing aware­ness of PTSD seems to be asso­ci­at­ed with more PTSD, and how debrief­ing trau­ma vic­tims about how they might get PTSD makes them more like­ly to get it.”
  6. Can the Black Rifle Cof­fee Com­pa­ny Become the Star­bucks of the Right? (Jason Zenger­le, New York Times): “Some­times it seems as if Hafer and his part­ners invent jobs at Black Rifle for vet­er­ans to do. A for­mer Green Beret medic helps Black Rifle with events and out­reach and was recent­ly made the direc­tor of its new­ly formed char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion. Four years ago, Black Rifle received a Face­book mes­sage from an Afghan Army vet­er­an with whom Hafer once served; he wrote that he was now work­ing at a gas sta­tion and liv­ing with his fam­i­ly in pub­lic hous­ing in Char­lottesville. ‘We hon­est­ly assumed he was dead,’ Hafer says. Black Rifle found a home for the man and his fam­i­ly in Utah, and he now does build­ing and grounds main­te­nance at the company’s Salt Lake City offices. At those offices, I met a qui­et, haunt­ed-seem­ing man who had been a C.I.A.-contractor col­league of Hafer’s and who, for a time, lived in a trail­er he parked on the office grounds. Lat­er, I asked Hafer what, exact­ly, the man did for Black Rifle. ‘He just gets bet­ter,’ Hafer replied. ‘He gets bet­ter.’ ”
    • This was WAY more inter­est­ing than I expect­ed.
  7. The His­to­ry of Canada’s Res­i­den­tial Schools (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things): “How could this be? Who is respon­si­ble? Are the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions who oper­at­ed the res­i­den­tial schools the real cul­prits, as many sup­pose? A care­ful exam­i­na­tion shows that sup­po­si­tion to be flawed. The tragedy, and the crimes it involved—crimes some are false­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing as genocide—began with gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed vio­la­tion of parental rights, an error gain­ing cur­ren­cy again today.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of the­ol­o­gy and ethics at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peasants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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 309

in which I pro­vide my views on ser­mon orig­i­nal­i­ty

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.

TIL that the num­ber 309 is is the small­est num­ber whose 5th pow­er con­tains every dig­it at least once. 3095=2,817,036,000,549. I’m real­ly stunned that some­one fig­ured that out.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘Sermongate’ Prompts a Quandary: Should Pas­tors Bor­row Words From One Anoth­er? (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Ben­jamin Franklin wrote of his admi­ra­tion of a young Pres­by­ter­ian preach­er much respect­ed for his preach­ing, which was appar­ent­ly deliv­ered extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly. When a doc­tri­nal dis­pute erupt­ed in the con­gre­ga­tion, how­ev­er, an adver­sary rec­og­nized that a pas­sage deliv­ered by the preach­er had been lift­ed from an uncred­it­ed source. Franklin stuck by the pla­gia­rist. ‘I rather approved his giv­ing us good ser­mons com­posed by oth­ers,’ he wrote, ‘than bad ones of his own man­u­fac­ture.’ ”
    • The appro­pri­ate prin­ci­ples seem so obvi­ous to me:
    • Nev­er present some­one else’s per­son­al sto­ries as though they hap­pened to you. It’s hard to call that any­thing oth­er than lying.
    • If you gain an insight from some­one else, why would you deprive your hear­ers of that good insight? USE IT. Cred­it it in the way that seems most appro­pri­ate, but a ser­mon is not a writ­ten resource peo­ple are going to cite nor one that peo­ple are going to track down your ref­er­ences on. I don’t even think pla­gia­rism is the right term in this con­ver­sa­tion: there’s no stan­dard way to cite oth­er ser­mons nor should there be. Peo­ple who get a bee in their bon­net about this seem so odd to me.
    • In fact, you should always assume that the mes­sages I deliv­er have been enriched by insights from oth­ers. I love God’s Word and I love my stu­dents too much to just give them my own lim­it­ed obser­va­tions. My own prac­tice: I copy and paste the text into a Word doc­u­ment. Then I begin typ­ing my insights and con­struct­ing a rough out­line. Then I con­sult schol­ar­ly and ser­mon­ic resources and revise my outline/notes when I real­ize I’ve mis­un­der­stood some­thing or that I missed an impor­tant point. Typ­i­cal­ly that means I read two or three com­men­taries and will some­times skim one or two ser­mons from preach­ers I respect. If some­one’s phras­ing is so good I adopt it, I usu­al­ly add, “I heard a pas­tor say” or “an aca­d­e­m­ic com­men­tary real­ly helped me out on this point” and some­times will even give the pre­cise source. But not always. Some­times cit­ing some­thing ver­bal­ly breaks up the flow too much. Some­times after an espe­cial­ly fact-laden mes­sage I will send out an email roundup of the most impor­tant sources (that tends to hap­pen after apolo­getic ser­mons when I’m appeal­ing to extrascrip­tur­al facts).
    • It gets com­pli­cat­ed with insights I gleaned years ago and have preached mul­ti­ple times since. Some­times I don’t even remem­ber that it was­n’t orig­i­nal to me (whether clever phras­ing or an entire ser­mon out­line). That’s how learn­ing works! I’m not try­ing to deceive any­one, but I am 100% con­fi­dent that I word some things a cer­tain way because some­one else word­ed it that way to me and I thought, “that’s per­fect” and now that I’ve said it 70 times I just know that’s how I think about the sub­ject.
    • If you ever want to know if some­thing I said is orig­i­nal to me, just ask. If I quot­ed some­one else (and remem­ber that I have), I’ll be thrilled to point you to a resource that helped me!
  2. What Makes a Cult a Cult? (Zoë Heller, New York­er): “The good news is that ratio­nal objec­tions to flaws in cult doc­trine or to hypocrisies on the part of a cult leader do have a pow­er­ful impact if and when they occur to the cult mem­bers them­selves. The ana­lyt­i­cal mind may be qui­etened by cult-think, but it is rarely dead­ened alto­geth­er. Espe­cial­ly if cult life is prov­ing unpleas­ant, the capac­i­ty for crit­i­cal thought can reassert itself.” The focus here is on way-out-there cults. Inter­est­ing nonethe­less, even giv­en the author’s blind spots (I think it would have been a stronger arti­cle if she had men­tioned a few sec­u­lar beliefs as par­al­lels).
  3. Our Unequal Polyg­a­mous Past (Conn Car­roll, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “This brief his­to­ry of human sex­u­al rela­tions shows us three things: 1) we are hard­wired to form monog­a­mous pair bonds; 2) the priv­i­leged among us will always try to monop­o­lize more mates; and 3) we can check the priv­i­lege of the pow­er­ful by enforc­ing monog­a­mous cul­tur­al norms.”
  4. Wok­e­ness:
    • As a Gay Child in a Chris­t­ian Cult, I Was Taught to Hate Myself. Then I Joined the Church of Social Justice—and Noth­ing Changed (Ben Appel, Quil­lette): “For years, I feared homo­pho­bic right-wing evan­gel­i­cals. But these days, I’m equal­ly wary of the pro­gres­sive activists who push a dis­tinct­ly homo­pho­bic agen­da that denies the bio­log­i­cal real­i­ty of sex—and who claim that what we are attract­ed to isn’t male or female bod­ies per se, but rather male or female gen­der iden­ti­ties. This out­look effec­tive­ly imag­ines away the exis­tence of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, which, in the real world, is of course root­ed in phys­i­cal attrac­tion based on bio­log­i­cal attrib­ut­es.”
    • If you hate the cul­ture wars, blame lib­er­als (Kevin Drum, per­son­al blog): “It is not con­ser­v­a­tives who have turned Amer­i­can pol­i­tics into a cul­ture war bat­tle. It is lib­er­als. And this should­n’t come as a sur­prise since pro­gres­sives have been brag­ging pub­licly about push­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty left­ward since at least 2004. Now, I’m per­son­al­ly hap­py about most of this. But that does­n’t blind me to the fact that “per­son­al­ly hap­py” means noth­ing in pol­i­tics. What mat­ters is what the medi­an vot­er feels, and Democ­rats have been mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from the medi­an vot­er for years:” Inter­est­ing and very dif­fer­ent from the mes­sage I usu­al­ly hear, which blames polar­iza­tion on con­ser­v­a­tives who are said to have moved much more to the right than lib­er­als have moved to the left.
    • Cul­ture Wars are Long Wars (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Cul­tur­al insur­gents win few con­verts in their own cohort. They can, how­ev­er, build up a sys­tem of ideas and insti­tu­tions which will pre­serve and refine the ideals they hope their com­mu­ni­ty will adopt in the future. The real tar­get of these ideas are not their con­tem­po­raries, but their con­tem­po­raries’ chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. Cul­ture wars are fought for the hearts of the unborn. Future gen­er­a­tions will be open to val­ues the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion rejects out­right. This will not be appar­ent at first. Beneath the offi­cial com­ings and goings of the cohorts above, a new con­sen­sus forms in in the cohorts below. Ideas will fes­ter among the young, but their impact will be hid­den by the inabil­i­ty and inex­pe­ri­ence of youth. But the youth do not stay young. Even­tu­al­ly a tran­si­tion point arrives.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
    • What Hap­pened To You? (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “[We have wit­nessed a] sud­den, rapid, stun­ning shift in the belief sys­tem of the Amer­i­can elites. It has sent the whole soci­ety into a pro­found cul­tur­al dis­lo­ca­tion. It is, in essence, an ongo­ing moral pan­ic against the specter of ‘white suprema­cy,’ which is now bizarrely regard­ed as an accu­rate descrip­tion of the largest, freest, most suc­cess­ful mul­tira­cial democ­ra­cy in human his­to­ry.”
    • The West’s cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion is over (Ed West, UnHerd): “Life of Bri­an couldn’t be made 20 years ear­li­er, and nei­ther could it be made now; its satire of Jesus, a prophet of Islam, would risk upset­ting Mus­lim sen­si­bil­i­ties, which it’s fair to say peo­ple have become slight­ly wary of doing. At the very least it would need to cut out the scene point­ing fun at a man who, absurd­ly to the film­mak­ers and audi­ences, iden­ti­fies as a woman; absurd in 1979, as it had been in 1879 and 1779 and in every year before that, but a sacred idea in 2021. It’s sacred in the sense that its believ­ers have cap­tured the moral citadel where the most pow­er­ful ideas are pro­tect­ed by taboo, achieved either by emo­tion­al argu­ment or intim­i­da­tion (and both can be effec­tive). This is not some dark new age of can­cel cul­ture, how­ev­er, it’s just a return to nor­mal­i­ty.”
  5. Pan­dem­ic-relat­ed
    • Why Did­n’t COVID-19 Kill the Con­sti­tu­tion? (Jacob Sul­lum. Rea­son): “COVID-19 did not kill the Con­sti­tu­tion. But the cri­sis made it vivid­ly clear that we can­not count on politi­cians or bureau­crats to wor­ry about lim­its on their author­i­ty, espe­cial­ly when they believe they are doing what is nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pub­lic from a dead­ly dan­ger. The task of enforc­ing those lim­its falls to judges who are will­ing to stick their necks out.”
    • What Are the Lim­its to Gov­ern­men­tal Author­i­ty over the Church? (Ben Edwards, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “Christians/churches must sub­mit to every gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion unless it would mean dis­obey­ing God (i.e., cause them to sin) or the gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to reg­u­late some­thing out­side its sphere of author­i­ty.”
  6. On Chi­na
    • Chi­na Won’t Bury Us, Either (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Gar­ry Kas­parov has a pithy way of sum­ming up the past 18 months of tribu­la­tion. ‘Chi­na gave us the virus,’ the chess and human-rights cham­pi­on told me over a recent break­fast. ‘And the free world gave us the vac­cines.’ ”
    • Why a Chi­nese inva­sion of Tai­wan would be a cat­a­stro­phe for Chi­na and the world (Jon Stokes, per­son­al blog): “The world’s largest, most valu­able tech com­pa­nies are depen­dent either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly on the steady out­put of TSMC’s fabs. If those fabs went offline or became unavail­able in the west because they were con­trolled by PRC, it would imme­di­ate­ly dev­as­tate the glob­al econ­o­my. An unknow­able num­ber of large com­pa­nies just wouldn’t be able to refill their inven­to­ries for an inde­ter­mi­nate­ly long time.” This is about com­put­er chips and how a Chi­nese inva­sion of Tai­wan will be dis­as­trous for that mar­ket (which touch­es on so many oth­ers) no mat­ter how the inva­sion plays out. Very thought­ful.
  7. Scripps Spelling Bee 2021: Zaila Avant-garde Wins (Mag­gie Astor and Maria Cramer, New York Times): “Zaila, who just fin­ished eighth grade in her home­town, Har­vey, La., showed a prowess for spelling at 10, when her father, who had been watch­ing finals of the Scripps Nation­al Spelling Bee on ESPN, asked her how to spell the win­ning word: maro­cain. Zaila spelled it per­fect­ly. Then he asked her to spell the win­ning words going back to 1999. She spelled near­ly all of them cor­rect­ly and was able to tell him the books where she had seen them.” Read the whole thing — this kid is amaz­ing at more than spelling! The inter­face is weird — you’ll have to click “Read more” just before the time­line.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

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 308

there are a few arti­cles touch­ing on faith in unex­pect­ed ways this week

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.

This is the 308th instal­la­tion of this series, and the num­ber 308 is a hep­tag­o­nal pyra­mi­dal num­ber. Pyra­mi­dal num­bers describe the num­ber of objects required to form a pyra­mid of a cer­tain height with a giv­en num­ber of sides (in this case, a sev­en lay­er pyra­mid with a hep­tag­o­nal base).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Acad­e­mia and faith:
    • Dr. Karin Öberg: Plan­e­tary For­ma­tion, Faith-Shap­ing Books, and the Beau­ty of an Intel­li­gi­ble Uni­verse (Raquel Sequeira, BioL­o­gos): “I feel like there are so many sto­ries of Chris­tians that have had a great strug­gle in acad­e­mia and for whom liv­ing out their faith has been prob­lem­at­ic in dif­fer­ent ways. While these peo­ple do exist and those strug­gles are real, I want peo­ple to know that this is not always the case. I have had a smooth and joy­ful jour­ney being very open about my faith at the very sec­u­lar place that Har­vard is.”
    • The turn­ing tide of intel­lec­tu­al athe­ism (Jonathon Van Maren, Mer­ca­tor­Net): “Not so long ago, the athe­ists who retreat­ed to their Dar­win­ian tow­ers and bricked them­selves up to fire arrows at the faith­ful want­ed to be there. Their intel­lec­tu­al silos were a refuge from faith because they didn’t want Chris­tian­i­ty to be true. They hat­ed it and thought we’d be bet­ter off with­out it.… [but v]iewing West­ern civil­i­sa­tion with its Chris­t­ian soul cut out, many are now will­ing to say: ‘We need Christ.’ What they are unable, thus far, to say, is: ‘I need Christ.’ But the polit­i­cal must become per­son­al. Peter­son appears to under­stand that—and is awestruck by the real­i­ty of it.“ 
  2. When the Aliens Come, Will Their Arrival Destroy Our Faith? (David French, The Dis­patch): “…a sur­pris­ing num­ber of the­olo­gians and Chris­t­ian thinkers have open­ly con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of alien intel­li­gence, includ­ing in book­s and essays. The good folks at Biol­o­gos have pon­dered the ques­tion. And sur­vey­ing the lit­er­a­ture, there is an inter­est­ing amount of con­sen­sus about both the key Chris­t­ian ques­tions and the Chris­t­ian con­clu­sions about alien life.” David French agrees with me, which is always a hap­py out­come.
  3. Where Did the Coro­n­avirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Trou­bling. (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “Near­ly every SARS case since the orig­i­nal epi­dem­ic has been due to lab leaks — six inci­dents in three coun­tries, includ­ing twice in a sin­gle month from a lab in Bei­jing.” This arti­cle is unlocked — you won’t use up your NYT arti­cles read­ing it.
  4. What Bari Weiss Won’t Tell You About Human Rights and Chi­na (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “Per­haps there could be greater trade bar­ri­ers between the Unit­ed States and Chi­na — but there’s a real risk that doing so could cause major dam­age to the inter­na­tion­al econ­o­my. And that’s pre­cise­ly the prob­lem, right? When the fight to treat­ing peo­ple with respect and dig­ni­ty by extend­ing them basic free­doms is such a chal­lenge to the world eco­nom­ic sys­tem, you have to acknowl­edge that there’s some­thing wrong with what that sys­tem defines as valu­able.”
  5. My Con­ver­sa­tion With Win­ston Mar­shall (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “One of the things that I have noticed is that an inor­di­nate num­ber of peo­ple who have been will­ing to tell the truth and stand up to the new illib­er­al­ism, are reli­gious. And I won­dered if you could just tell us a lit­tle bit more about how your faith guid­ed you through this deci­sion or maybe to put it anoth­er way, maybe it’s that your faith anchors you in val­ues that are so much big­ger and more eter­nal than the idiot winds that feel like they’re sweep­ing through our pol­i­tics every day.”
  6. A Schol­ar­ly Screw-Up of Bib­li­cal Pro­por­tions (Ariel Sabar, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “What should a jour­nal do after pub­lish­ing a block­buster paper marred by fraud­u­lent evi­dence, failed peer review, and undis­closed con­flicts of inter­est? If you’re Har­vard The­o­log­i­cal Review, the answer appears to be noth­ing.”
  7. Book Announce­ment: We Have Nev­er Been Woke (Musa al-Ghar­bi, per­son­al web­site): “…the Amer­i­cans who are the pri­ma­ry pro­duc­ers and con­sumers of con­tent on antiracism, social­ism, fem­i­nism, etc. also hap­pen to be among the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ries of gen­dered, racial­ized and oth­er forms of inequal­i­ty – and not pas­sive ben­e­fi­cia­ries. We are active par­tic­i­pants in exploit­ing and repro­duc­ing inequal­i­ties. And yet, it is dif­fi­cult for us to ‘see’ how we con­tribute to the prob­lem — pre­cise­ly because of our deeply felt com­mit­ments to social jus­tice. So we expro­pri­ate blame to oth­er­s… often peo­ple who ben­e­fit far less from the sys­tem than we do, and exert far less influ­ence over it.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Colum­bia, and this book looks like it will be straight fire.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Minimize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘principalities and powers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 Summer Reading Project: Listen

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through B.L.E.S.S. by Dave and Jon Fer­gu­son, I’ll post my thoughts here. They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2021. The sched­ule is online.

There are a bunch of cool graph­ics like this at https://www.bless-book.org/

This week is the L in B.L.E.S.S. — Lis­ten.

The chap­ter was good but unex­cep­tion­al. Lis­ten before you speak. Seek first to under­stand before you seek to be under­stood. God gave you two ears and one mouth — use them accord­ing­ly.

These are prin­ci­ples that we’ve all heard before. As in so many areas, the chal­lenge is less in the know­ing than in the doing. If we all lived accord­ing to what we knew, we’d be a lot buffer. Almost every­one knows how to live health­i­er than they are — they don’t need more infor­ma­tion, they just need to con­vert their knowl­edge into action.

Like­wise with lis­ten­ing — just do it. One way to force your­self to lis­ten is to ask ques­tions.

At Stan­ford the most com­mon ques­tions peo­ple ask are “What are you study­ing?” and “Where are you from?”

I like the sug­ges­tions that the broth­ers Fer­gu­son offer for addi­tion­al ques­tions:

  • His­to­ry: “Tell me your sto­ry.” “What’s dif­fer­ent between here and where you grew up?”
  • Heart: “What’s your favorite _____?” (food, team, place to trav­el)
  • Habits: “What are you into?” “What do you like to do with your free time?” “When you don’t have class­es any­more what do you look for­ward to doing?”
  • Hurts: “How are you doing with _____?”

So go forth with ques­tions, and lis­ten to the answers!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 307

my favorite arti­cle this week is about a guy who could quench flames by singing at them

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.

This is the 307th instal­la­tion, which I like because 307 is a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Endur­ing Les­son of the Galileo Myth (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “While I first heard the sto­ry of Galileo in ele­men­tary school, it wasn’t until about a decade after I had grad­u­at­ed from col­lege that I final­ly learned the truth. No doubt some peo­ple are just now hear­ing about it for the first time. How is that pos­si­ble?”
    • Unless you have done some read­ing on Galileo, you almost cer­tain­ly believe untrue things about what hap­pened.
  2. Social Media, Iden­ti­ty, and the Church (Tim Keller, Life In The Gospel): “While extrem­ists can only gain sta­tus and belong­ing on-line, mod­er­ates (right­ly) fear say­ing some­thing that will anger oth­ers and jeop­ar­dize their career or rela­tion­ships. And so, while extrem­ist­s’ frag­ile iden­ti­ties get a great deal of cov­er on the inter­net, mod­er­ates’ iden­ti­ties are threat­ened by it.”
  3. The Man Who Put Out Fires with Music (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “This exper­i­ment excit­ed such skep­ti­cism that Kel­logg was enlist­ed to repeat it for a team of Berke­ley sci­en­tists. The result­ing pub­lic test on Sep­tem­ber 6, broad­cast live over KGO, is one of the most remark­able events in the his­to­ry of radio.”
    • I’ve actu­al­ly heard (and used) the clos­ing sto­ry before in a ser­mon, but there were details I did­n’t know. It’s nice to have the full sto­ry. Com­ing once again to a ser­mon near you.
  4. Some arti­cles about self-cen­sor­ship and can­cel­la­tion:
    • Why I’m Leav­ing Mum­ford & Sons (Win­ston Mar­shall, Medi­um): “The truth is that report­ing on extrem­ism at the great risk of endan­ger­ing one­self is unques­tion­ably brave. I also feel that my pre­vi­ous apol­o­gy in a small way par­tic­i­pates in the lie that such extrem­ism does not exist, or worse, is a force for good.” Courage and class.
    • Meet the Cen­sored: Bret Wein­stein (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “This is a sig­nif­i­cant moment in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can media. If a show with the audi­ence that Wein­stein and Hey­ing have can be put out of busi­ness this eas­i­ly, it means that inde­pen­dent media going for­ward will either have to oper­ate out­side the major Inter­net plat­forms, or give up its tra­di­tion­al role as a chal­lenger of main­stream nar­ra­tives.”
    • The Ene­mies of the Open Soci­ety (Mar­tin Gur­ri, Dis­course Mag­a­zine): “In oth­er words, this was a cul­tur­al rather than a polit­i­cal event. It con­cerned our ideals, not our rights: and the ideals of a great many impor­tant Amer­i­cans appear at this time to be drift­ing away from the open soci­ety.”
    • The Books Are Already Burn­ing (Abi­gail Shri­er, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “But why do so few oppose the pres­sure, lies, and the cor­rupt­ing force of these bul­ly­ing cam­paigns? The silent sup­port­ers have each per­formed the same risk-ben­e­fit cal­cu­la­tion and arrived at the same con­clu­sion: Speak­ing up isn’t worth it.”
    • A Con­ver­sa­tion with Daniel Elder, the Choral Music Com­pos­er Who Was Can­celled for Oppos­ing Arson (Quil­lette): “The media prefers to focus on how hor­ri­ble this expe­ri­ence was for me, but an impor­tant facet eas­i­ly lost in this nar­ra­tive is how free I’ve felt since I made the choice.… I say this as an encour­age­ment to the silent major­i­ty all around us: If you’re will­ing to endure the painful tri­al of self, you will be bet­ter for it in the end. And, with enough of us, the world will be bet­ter, too.”
  5. Some arti­cles on sex­u­al­i­ty and sex­u­al ethics.
    • A Pecu­liar Dis­ap­proval of Gay Pride (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “When a per­son becomes a Chris­t­ian, he under­goes a trans­for­ma­tion not just of what he dis­ap­proves, but of how he dis­ap­proves. There is noth­ing pecu­liar­ly Chris­t­ian about the mere dis­ap­proval of any human behav­ior. There­fore, dis­ap­proval of sin­ful behav­iors is no evi­dence of sav­ing grace. Becom­ing a Chris­t­ian is far more pro­found than chang­ing what we dis­ap­prove of.”
    • How Should I Respond to a Colleague’s Same-Sex Wed­ding? (Char­lie Self, The Gospel Coali­tion): “But even with a hum­ble and lov­ing spir­it, pru­dent speech, and gen­uine love for the co-work­ers, there’s a risk of los­ing pro­mo­tions and even employ­ment. This is where faith must con­quer fear, and holy love tri­umph over com­pro­mise. As these deci­sions are dis­cerned, may they be bathed in bless­ing our co-work­ers with tear­ful inter­ces­sion.” Char­lie is a friend who has spo­ken at Chi Alpha before.
    • How Should I Address My Trans­gen­der Col­league? (Char­lie Self, The Gospel Coali­tion): “As Chris­tians, we want to tell the truth, and using the wrong pro­nouns isn’t truth-telling. On the oth­er hand, insist­ing on using cor­rect pro­nouns for a per­son who has asked you not to can come across as dis­re­spect­ful and antag­o­nis­tic.”
    • Homo­phobes don’t care about same-sex love. They object to the sex. (Bri­an Broome, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Love isn’t the prob­lem. I don’t believe that homo­phobes object to whether same-sex cou­ples love each oth­er. No, it’s not the love. It’s the sex.”
  6. The Great Awok­en­ing (anony­mous, Sub­stack): “This brings us ulti­mate­ly back to reli­gion. You can­not fight some­thing with noth­ing. You can­not fight a reli­gious war just by being against that reli­gion. You must fight it with a com­pet­ing reli­gion. And there is one that has deep roots here in Amer­i­ca. Evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tantism, in its var­i­ous iter­a­tions, is what found­ed the coun­try. The woke will even admit it (when it is use­ful to accuse the Chris­tians who built Amer­i­ca of geno­cide). It formed the reli­gious core of Amer­i­ca ages ago and if wok­e­ness will ever be com­bat­ed it will again.”
  7. This is an old­er (1992) arti­cle shared with me by a stu­dent: Research Sup­ports Bible’s Account of Red Sea Part­ing : Weath­er: Gulf of Suez’s geog­ra­phy would make it pos­si­ble, mete­o­rol­o­gist and oceanog­ra­ph­er say. (Thomas H. Maugh II, LA Times): “Because of the pecu­liar geog­ra­phy of the north­ern end of the Red Sea, researchers report Sun­day in the Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Soci­ety, a mod­er­ate wind blow­ing con­stant­ly for about 10 hours could have caused the sea to recede about a mile and the water lev­el to drop 10 feet, leav­ing dry land in the area where many bib­li­cal schol­ars believe the cross­ing occurred.” I have not looked into the under­ly­ing research, but quite inter­est­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selective pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools.… To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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 Summer Reading Project: Begin With Prayer

Chap­ter 3 of B.L.E.S.S. is the B — Begin with prayer.

I liked this chap­ter a lot — it was full of prac­ti­cal tips and inspir­ing sto­ries.

One nugget I espe­cial­ly appre­ci­at­ed:

I reached into my com­put­er bag and pulled out my jour­nal and Bible. After spend­ing some time read­ing and reflect­ing, my rou­tine was to first write the word “B.L.E.S.S.” and then list the peo­ple for whom I would sim­ply pray for a few min­utes.

Next, I drew a straight black line across the bot­tom of the page in my jour­nal, paused, and then lis­tened for God. This is how I’ve learned to pray every day. Draw­ing that hor­i­zon­tal line became a rit­u­al that tran­si­tioned my mind from talk­ing to God to lis­ten­ing to Him. Often when I lis­ten, noth­ing comes to mind–but if some­thing or some­one does I write it down.

Dave Fer­gu­son, B.L.E.S.S. pages 35–36

I love how sim­ple that habit is — just draw a line and lis­ten!

a sim­ple neigh­bor map — draw a tic-tac-toe grid, put your­self in the cen­ter, and write your neigh­bors’ names in the squares around you

Towards the end of the chap­ter, there is a sim­ple tool called the “Who Is My Neigh­bor?” map. Just draw a tic-tac-toe grid and put your­self at the cen­ter. Now iden­ti­fy the eight peo­ple who are clos­est to you in some con­text and write their names in the oth­er squares (you could do it for your dorm, for your lab­mates, or for your team­mates). Voila — you now have a prayer list.

So far I’m lov­ing this book. It is Bib­li­cal, prac­ti­cal, and easy to read!

Bonus: the chap­ter also con­tained this banger quote:

Do not have your con­cert first, and then tune your instru­ment after­wards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into har­mo­ny with Him.

Hud­son Tay­lor

👀 — that’s good!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 306

some real­ly out­stand­ing arti­cles this week

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.

This is vol­ume 306, which is an inter­est­ing num­ber because 306 = 71 + 73 + 79 + 83 and is there­fore the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­can Passover (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “June­teenth is a good thing for all Amer­i­cans, not just black Amer­i­cans, to cel­e­brate.… I’m at a loss to under­stand why cel­e­brat­ing the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good. In par­tic­u­lar, I’m at a loss to under­stand why see­ing white Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good.”
  2. What We Learned Doing Fast Grants (Patrick Col­li­son, Tyler Cowen, and Patrick Hsu, Future): “In our sur­vey of the sci­en­tists who received Fast Grants, 78% said that they would change their research pro­gram ‘a lot’ if their exist­ing fund­ing could be spent in an uncon­strained fash­ion. We find this num­ber to be far too high: the cur­rent grant fund­ing appa­ra­tus does not allow some of the best sci­en­tists in the world to pur­sue the research agen­das that they them­selves think are best. Sci­en­tists are in the para­dox­i­cal posi­tion of being deemed the very best peo­ple to fund in order to make impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies but not so trust­wor­thy that they should be able to decide what work would actu­al­ly make the most sense!” EXTREMELY worth read­ing.
  3. Why Has “Iver­mectin” Become a Dirty Word? (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnar­ing sci­ence. With the world des­per­ate for news about an unprece­dent­ed dis­as­ter, Sil­i­con Val­ley had essen­tial­ly decid­ed to dis­al­low dis­cus­sion of a poten­tial solu­tion — dis­al­low calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done.”
    • This is ridicu­lous. Dig into it your­self — it’s crazy­town. The pre­scient Lewis nailed it years ago: “Of all tyran­nies, a tyran­ny sin­cere­ly exer­cised for the good of its vic­tims may be the most oppres­sive. It would be bet­ter to live under rob­ber barons than under omnipo­tent moral busy­bod­ies. The rob­ber baron’s cru­el­ty may some­times sleep, his cupid­i­ty may at some point be sati­at­ed; but those who tor­ment us for our own good will tor­ment us with­out end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” (from the under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed God in the Dock: Essays on The­ol­o­gy and Ethics)
  4. Chris­tians, Beware the Blame Game (Carl True­man, First Things): “By all means, call out the moral fail­ings of Chris­tians, con­gre­ga­tions and denom­i­na­tions, left and right; but be spe­cif­ic, do so with­out slan­der and vit­ri­ol, and make a clear dis­tinc­tion between the church and the spe­cif­ic fail­ings to which you allude in order to pro­mote clear think­ing. And remember—if your cri­tique of Chris­tians is not bal­anced by a Pauline empha­sis on the church, the body of Christ, as the answer to the world’s prob­lems, you ulti­mate­ly offer no true Chris­t­ian com­men­tary on the con­tem­po­rary scene. For as soon as you see the church her­self as part of the prob­lem, you have lost the gospel and deprived your­self and your audi­ence of hope.”
  5. Some reli­gious free­dom news and com­men­tary:
    • Four Things You Need to Know After a Huge Day at SCOTUS (David French, The Dis­patch): “Very few com­ments about the Ful­ton case have empha­sized a crit­i­cal part of its ruling—that Philadel­phia has very lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to force city con­trac­tors to con­tract away their First Amend­ment rights.… When the gov­ern­ment expands—and gov­ern­ment con­tracts and gov­ern­ment funds touch more Amer­i­can lives and institutions—opposing par­ti­sans fre­quent­ly demand that those funds come with ide­o­log­i­cal strings attached.” Sad­ly pay­walled, but the best com­men­tary on the rul­ing I’ve read. If you’re an avid news con­sumer, The Dis­patch is well worth a sub­scrip­tion.
    • From the court, a vin­di­ca­tion of faith-based ser­vice. From Ali­to, a blue­print for the future. (Andrea Pic­ciot­ti-Bay­er, SCO­TUS­blog): “At the end of the day, Ful­ton is an impor­tant rebuke to overzeal­ous gov­ern­ment offi­cials who weaponize anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws against tra­di­tion­al reli­gious belief. Brace your­self for the response of dis­grun­tled pro­gres­sives.”
    • Supreme Court Backs Catholic Agency in Case on Gay Rights and Fos­ter Care (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The deci­sion, in the lat­est clash between antidis­crim­i­na­tion prin­ci­ples and claims of con­science, was a set­back for gay rights and fur­ther evi­dence that reli­gious groups almost always pre­vail in the cur­rent court.”
    • Jus­tice Depart­ment says it can defend reli­gious school­s’ exemp­tion from anti-LGBTQ dis­crim­i­na­tion laws (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “To oth­ers, includ­ing sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Biden, the admin­is­tra­tion had no oth­er option, since fed­er­al civ­il rights law regard­ing edu­ca­tion — called Title IX — exempts reli­gion. They not­ed the pur­pose of the department’s fil­ing, which was to block con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups from becom­ing par­ties to the law­suit, argu­ing the agency can defend the exemp­tion on its own.”
    • A frank analy­sis of the dynam­ics: No, the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Isn’t Betray­ing Its Sup­port for LGBTQ Rights (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate): “The best way to pre­vent the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry from adopt­ing CCCU’s extreme stance is to stop the orga­ni­za­tion from mak­ing it before a court in the first place. That is pre­sum­ably one rea­son why the Jus­tice Depart­ment strong­ly opposed the group’s request to inter­vene, insist­ing on Tues­day that the admin­is­tra­tion can defend the Title IX exemp­tion just fine by itself. The DOJ’s lat­est fil­ing does not imply that the agency is exceed­ing­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the exemp­tion, but rather that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion can be trust­ed to sup­port the law’s legal­i­ty in court.”
  6. The Per­il of Politi­ciz­ing Sci­ence (Anna I. Krylov, The Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry Let­ters): “The Cold War is a dis­tant mem­o­ry and the coun­try shown on my birth cer­tifi­cate and school and uni­ver­si­ty diplo­mas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. But I find myself expe­ri­enc­ing its lega­cy some thou­sands of miles to the west, as if I am liv­ing in an Orwellian twi­light zone. I wit­ness ever-increas­ing attempts to sub­ject sci­ence and edu­ca­tion to ide­o­log­i­cal con­trol and cen­sor­ship. Just as in Sovi­et times, the cen­sor­ship is being jus­ti­fied by the greater good.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at USC.
  7. Some Stan­ford news:
    • Stan­ford ther­a­pists allege ‘hostile cli­mate’ for Jews in the work­place (Gabe Stut­man, Jew­ish News of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia): “Two Jew­ish men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als at Stanford’s on-cam­pus coun­sel­ing clin­ic have filed work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints after what they call ‘severe and per­sis­tent’ anti-Jew­ish harass­ment from col­leagues. Dr. Ronald Albuch­er, a psy­chi­a­trist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the med­ical school, and Sheila Levin, a ther­a­pist spe­cial­iz­ing in eat­ing dis­or­ders, describe being pressed into join­ing a ‘white­ness’ affin­i­ty group by staffers with the Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion pro­gram, being told they were ‘priv­i­leged,’ and see­ing anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents down­played.”
    • When the medal­ists aren’t the mon­ey-mak­ers (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “If ath­let­ic direc­tors were reward­ed for Olympic sports every bit as much as for foot­ball and men’s bas­ket­ball, you would see dif­fer­ent behavior,” Hogshead-Makar said.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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.