Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 515: go deep in community, plus missionaries with shotguns

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Com­pound Inter­est in an Atten­tion Econ­o­my (Austin Car­ty, Front Porch Repub­lic): “The pre­vail­ing log­ic of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, in and of itself, a nec­es­sary form of cap­i­tal with­out which one is ipso fac­to barred from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing a rich life. But my own expe­ri­ence, cor­rob­o­rat­ed by many of the peo­ple I’ve talked with, sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, just as often as not, the cause of our despair not the cure; for to keep shift­ing atten­tion from one thing to the next is almost always to drain one’s spir­i­tu­al and men­tal and emo­tion­al bank account, not to deliv­er a mean­ing­ful return. Mean­while, con­tra pop­u­lar opin­ion, there is some­thing life-giv­ing about root­ing one­self in a sin­gle community—about invest­ing our­selves in a mutu­al fund, so to speak—and watch­ing the invest­ment slow­ly grow at com­pound inter­est.”
  2. ‘A com­put­er, a radio, a drone and a shot­gun’: how mis­sion­ar­ies are reach­ing out to Brazil’s iso­lat­ed peo­ples (John Reid and Daniel Biaset­to, The Guardian): “Mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty now threat­ens 13 of the 29 iso­lat­ed peo­ples that Brazil offi­cial­ly recog­nis­es as defin­i­tive­ly con­firmed, accord­ing to the fed­er­al prosecutor’s office.”
    • This was actu­al­ly a pret­ty encour­ag­ing arti­cle over­all, despite the use of lan­guage like “threat­ens.”
  3. Trend­ing thoughts about Gaza:
    • The Price of Flour Shows the Hunger Cri­sis in Gaza (Amit Segal, The Free Press): “Dis­cussing these find­ings, The Free Press’s Haviv Ret­tig Gur high­light­ed Spitzer’s key chal­lenge in con­vinc­ing Israelis that Gaza is indeed fac­ing a hunger cri­sis: ‘It’s hard to con­vince Israelis of that because lit­er­al­ly every­thing said to them for 22 months on this top­ic has been a fic­tion.’ ”
    • Is Gaza Starv­ing? Search­ing for the Truth in an Infor­ma­tion War. (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Free Press): “Over the years, Israelis have been accused of fake mas­sacres and rapes. The country’s actions are lied about almost dai­ly by peo­ple describ­ing them­selves as jour­nal­ists, ana­lysts, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed Nations, often using sta­tis­tics that are them­selves untrue. For peo­ple here in Israel, the con­stant bar­rage of libel—like the more lit­er­al bar­rages of rockets—is sim­ply a fact of life. After years of this, aver­age Israelis do what peo­ple do when con­front­ed with lunatics on the New York sub­way: They tune it out.… a senior fig­ure in the Israeli mil­i­tary told one of my col­leagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass star­va­tion as claimed by pro-Hamas pro­pa­gan­da, Gaza real­ly is on the brink this time.”
    • How Israel’s War Became Unjust (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…Israel has made a strate­gic choice, try­ing to sep­a­rate food dis­tri­b­u­tion from a sys­tem that it argues Hamas was exploit­ing for its own pur­pos­es. But if your strate­gic choice leads to chil­dren dying of star­va­tion when the food is avail­able to feed them, then a civ­i­lized nation has to make a dif­fer­ent choice — even if that makes things eas­i­er for its ene­mies to some degree.”
  4. Till Words Do Us Part (Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dis­patch): “Clas­si­cal­ly, the mar­riage vows are not about the par­tic­u­lar cou­ple stand­ing at the altar—they’re about the insti­tu­tion the cou­ple is choos­ing to enter. Clas­si­cal vows (for bet­ter, for worse, etc) have last­ed with only minor revi­sions for a thou­sand years. They are intend­ed to suit every cou­ple, uncus­tomized, and they enu­mer­ate the promis­es that must be kept for a mar­riage to be a mar­riage. But cus­tomized vows fre­quent­ly min­gle seri­ous promis­es with ones that can­not or should not be kept.”
  5. The Nat­ur­al Law Is Not Enough. The Nat­ur­al Law Is All We Have. (Andrew T. Walk­er, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…any attempt to con­struct a moral and polit­i­cal order must grap­ple with two com­pet­ing truths: the ima­go Dei makes moral rea­son­ing pos­si­ble, but orig­i­nal sin ensures that moral rea­son­ing will often be con­test­ed, sup­pressed, cor­rupt­ed, or ignored. This is the para­dox of our moment. The nat­ur­al law is writ­ten on every heart (Romans 2:15), but hearts are wound­ed and rea­son cloud­ed. We have access to moral truth, but not con­sen­sus. Hence, the nat­ur­al law is not enough. But it is still the best we have.”
  6. Desider­a­ta for a Protes­tant The­ol­o­gy of the Body (Sub­stack): “But I think there are, in fact, dis­tinc­tive­ly Protes­tant ways to approach the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty and repro­duc­tion- and I sus­pect some of the dearth of con­ver­sa­tion about these top­ics reflects a cer­tain Protes­tant sen­si­bil­i­ty. It also reflects the bound­aries of what might be pos­si­ble with a Protes­tant view. So here are a few ‘desider­a­ta’- a fan­cy way of say­ing ‘things we ought to con­sid­er’, in order to build a Protes­tant the­ol­o­gy of the body.”
    • The author is a the­olo­gian at Gor­don-Con­well.
  7. How the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing Helped Make Amer­i­ca (Thomas Kidd, The Dis­patch): “Amer­i­cans might assume that the height of their nation’s reli­gious com­mit­ment was around its Found­ing. Some like­wise fig­ure that spir­i­tu­al­ly, it’s been going down­hill ever since. But in many ways, Amer­i­ca became increas­ing­ly reli­gious through the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry.”
    • Kidd is one of the great­est liv­ing evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ri­ans.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 514: Jephthah, Europe, and the Enchanted Broccoli Forest

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Jesus Is the Key to All Scrip­ture (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): “We’re incred­u­lous. ‘All things’ in Scrip­ture are ful­filled in him? Real­ly? Every­thing? Ehud thrust­ing a sword into obese Eglon? Jael crack­ing Sisera’s skull with a tent peg? David clip­ping and heap­ing up two hun­dred Philis­tine fore­skins? Jehu glee­ful­ly slaugh­ter­ing sons of Ahab? We dodge and backpedal, pro­tect­ing Jesus from his hermeneu­ti­cal excess. ‘Every episode and per­son con­tributes to the sto­ry of Jesus,’ we say. ‘But not every sin­gle per­son or event is direct­ly about Jesus.’ There’s some­thing to that, but it’s often a cop-out. And it keeps us from grasp­ing the height and depth of Jesus’s glo­ry. Jeph­thah is a test case.”
    • An engag­ing arti­cle with strong insights about Jeph­thah’s sto­ry.
  2. I Once Thought Euro­peans Lived as Well as Amer­i­cans. Not Any­more. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “I was shocked recent­ly to learn that more Euro­peans die of heat death—largely due to lack of air-conditioning—than Amer­i­cans die from gun­shot wounds. I’m not say­ing Amer­i­ca isn’t more dan­ger­ous in cer­tain ways: We have high­er non-gun mur­der rates and per­ilous weath­er pat­terns, among oth­er prob­lems. But it turns out Euro­pean bureau­cra­cy is lit­er­al­ly dead­ly.… Cir­ca 2025, my sub­jec­tive judg­ment is that Amer­i­can liv­ing stan­dards are 20 to 30 per­cent high­er than those in West­ern Europe. That dif­fer­ence is like­ly to grow.”
  3. Uni­ver­si­ty sus­pends EBF, Kairos after Title VI inves­ti­ga­tions (Francesca Pin­ney, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Fol­low­ing stu­dent com­plaints to Stanford’s Title VI Office, the Uni­ver­si­ty deter­mined that both hous­es vio­lat­ed Title VI, the fed­er­al law that pro­hibits harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, col­or or nation­al ori­gin in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions.”
    • The details are kind of wild and may shock you if you’re not used to Stan­ford rhetoric. One stu­dent com­ment­ed, “Tbh, that’s what most of NSO and my first quar­ter at Stan­ford felt like, and I was def­i­nite­ly told sim­i­lar things by folks in my dorm, etc.”
  4. Some reflec­tions on exer­cise:
    • Don’t Skip Leg Day or the Lord’s Day (Sean DeMars, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Exer­cise pre­vents me from falling into two seri­ous sins: sloth and idol­a­try. When I stop car­ing about my body, I drift toward pas­siv­i­ty and excuse-mak­ing, and I become sloth­ful. When I over­pri­or­i­tize fit­ness, I start build­ing my iden­ti­ty around per­for­mance or image, which is a form of idol­a­try. But when fit­ness is teth­ered to call­ing and is viewed as fuel for long-term min­istry, exer­cise finds its right­ful place. It’s not ulti­mate, but it’s impor­tant. The heart­beat of this lit­tle the­ol­o­gy of exer­cise is that redeemed bod­ies should be used in the ser­vice of joy, love, and mis­sion.”
    • How Exer­cise Fights Anx­i­ety and Depres­sion (Erik Vance, New York Times): “Decades of research have estab­lished that exer­cise has a pos­i­tive effect on men­tal health. In stud­ies of patients with mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion, for exam­ple, a wide range of exer­cise reg­i­mens has been shown to be as effec­tive as med­ica­tions like SSRIs (though the best results gen­er­al­ly involve a com­bi­na­tion of the two).”
  5. Inclu­siv­i­ty In Health­care Should Not Be Val­ued Above Our Para­mount Man­date: First, Do No Harm (Jan­havi Nilekani, Sub­stack): “In the spring of 2022, a 50-year-old grand­fa­ther in North Car­oli­na decid­ed that he want­ed his daughter’s new­born to suck­le at his nip­ple.… Because this par­tic­u­lar man iden­ti­fied as a trans­gen­der woman, doc­tors and aca­d­e­mics from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed his ‘unique desire’. Indeed, they pub­lished a research paper in Breast­feed­ing Med­i­cine, pro­vid­ing details of the cock­tail of hor­mones and drugs they used. With these, he was able to pro­duce secre­tions, that were admin­is­tered to his grand­child. The paper does not have a sin­gle sen­tence about the poten­tial impact on the grand­child. It is an unimag­in­able breach of ethics. An adult male’s desire to be affirmed as a woman should nev­er be met by feed­ing an exper­i­men­tal drug-infused sub­stance to new­borns with no capac­i­ty to con­sent.… Such exper­i­ments are pos­si­ble only because med­i­cine, in the push towards inclu­siv­i­ty, is for­get­ting our own core val­ue: first, do no harm.”
    • Shar­ing most­ly for the shock­ing intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry. The entire thing is long and prob­a­bly does not cov­er new ground for reg­u­lar read­ers. It is well-argued, though.
  6. The Per­verse Eco­nom­ics of Assist­ed Sui­cide (Louise Per­ry, New York Times): “There is a very clear prob­lem with assist­ed sui­cide in its new guise: The state, with its almighty pow­er, is tasked with both pay­ing for the sup­port of the old and dis­abled and reg­u­lat­ing their dying.… organs of the state that are tasked with solv­ing an impos­si­ble finan­cial prob­lem — how to pay for more old peo­ple with less mon­ey — will be inex­orably tugged toward what looks to a mind­less bureau­cra­cy like a ‘solu­tion.’ ”
  7. Rea­son, Rev­e­la­tion, and Rev­o­lu­tion (Joseph Locon­te, The Dis­patch): “Colo­nial assump­tions about nat­ur­al rights, human equal­i­ty, reli­gious lib­er­ty, gov­ern­ment by con­sent, the right of rev­o­lu­tion: Each drew heav­i­ly from Locke’s writ­ings, which were con­sid­ered manda­to­ry read­ing for edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans. As we’ll see, the colonists were heirs of the Lock­ean tra­di­tion. As a result, free­dom, rea­son, and rev­e­la­tion formed a con­cep­tu­al trin­i­ty in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. The pow­er­ful alliance of these ideas helps to explain the aston­ish­ing and endur­ing influ­ence of the Amer­i­can exam­ple. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, non­sense talk about the mean­ing and legit­i­ma­cy of the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment is almost as ingrained in the New Right as in the pro­gres­sive left.”
    • A strong defense of Locke against his crit­ics on the right. The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor and a Chris­t­ian pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al.

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 513: elite colleges, pathologizing personality, and the fastest woman in the world

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Elite Col­leges Have Found a New Virtue for Appli­cants to Fake (Alex Bronzi­ni-Vender, New York Times): “[There is] a new ques­tion: ‘Tell us about a moment when you engaged in a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion or encoun­tered some­one with an opin­ion or per­spec­tive that was dif­fer­ent from your own. How did you find com­mon ground?’ It’s known as the dis­agree­ment ques­tion, and since the stu­dent encamp­ments of spring 2024 and the Amer­i­can right’s attacks on uni­ver­si­ties, a grow­ing num­ber of elite col­leges have added it to their appli­ca­tions. Car­o­line Kop­pel­man, a pri­vate admis­sions con­sul­tant, has called it the ‘hot new it girl’ of col­lege essays. There’s no evi­dence that civil­i­ty mania will improve cam­pus dis­course, but it seems poised to widen the inequal­i­ties that already plague hyper­s­e­lec­tive col­lege admis­sions. The trou­ble is that the dis­agree­ment ques­tion — like much of the appli­ca­tion process — isn’t built for hon­esty.”
  2. Nobody Has a Per­son­al­i­ty Any­more (Freya India, The Free Press): “Today, every per­son­al­i­ty trait is seen as a prob­lem to be solved. Any­thing too human—every habit, every eccen­tric­i­ty, every feel­ing that’s too strong—has to be labeled and explained. Ther­a­py-speak has tak­en over our lan­guage. It is ruin­ing how we talk about romance and rela­tion­ships, nar­row­ing how we think about hurt and suf­fer­ing, and now, we are los­ing the words for who we are. Nobody has a per­son­al­i­ty any­more.… This is part of a deep­er instinct in mod­ern life to explain everything—psychologically, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly. Every­thing about us is caused, cat­e­go­rized, and can be cor­rect­ed. We talk in the­o­ries, frame­works, sys­tems, struc­tures, dri­ves, moti­va­tions, and mech­a­nisms. But in exchange for expla­na­tion, we lost mys­tery, romance, and late­ly, our­selves.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Huck­abee threat­ens to declare Israel does not wel­come Chris­tians, as visa row blows open (Lazar Berman, Times of Israel): “Giv­en Huckabee’s long­stand­ing sup­port for Israel and close ties with the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in par­tic­u­lar, the rhetoric in his let­ter rep­re­sent­ed a shock­ing­ly quick dete­ri­o­ra­tion. But the issue at hand — the abil­i­ty of Chris­t­ian groups to tour Israel — is close to Huckabee’s heart, giv­en that he has led count­less such trips as an evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor over the past half a cen­tu­ry.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent. Quite inter­est­ing.
  4. My health and my pol­i­tics walk into a doctor’s office… (Kim Fell­ner, New York Times): “The vision of a diverse, equi­table and inclu­sive democ­ra­cy that seems the best of Amer­i­ca to me and my com­mu­ni­ty is locked in an exis­ten­tial bat­tle with a MAGA counter-vision that ele­vates White­ness and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, and that seems to be col­o­niz­ing insti­tu­tions and cul­ture at warp speed. I did not antic­i­pate, how­ev­er, that the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal would col­lide in my doctor’s office.… Over a series of writ­ten and in-per­son con­ver­sa­tions, we have been shar­ing some of the tenets of our respec­tive faiths and the impli­ca­tions for how we nav­i­gate the world. She and I have sharply diver­gent views about when life begins and what hap­pens after we die. She believes that the only true sal­va­tion lies in accept­ing Jesus as one’s sav­ior.”
  5. A Stark Reminder That Sex Dif­fer­ences Mat­ter in Elite Sport (James Smoli­ga, Per­sua­sion): “The goal was for Kipye­gon to become the first woman ever to run a sub‑4 minute mile. Nike set her up with the very best con­di­tions that any ath­lete could ever expect. Kipye­gon ran a mile in 4:06—a remark­able per­for­mance by any mea­sure, and a per­son­al best, but well short of the sub‑4 minute goal. While Kipye­gon wasn’t direct­ly rac­ing her pac­ers, they were there to pull her to a time that hun­dreds of male ath­letes have already achieved. Rather than charg­ing down the final straight­away alone, leav­ing the best women in her wake, as she so often does, we saw Kipye­gon strain­ing to hang on behind a group of male run­ners who weren’t even near their lim­it, as they turned around to cheer her on. This race mat­ters because it offered some­thing exceed­ing­ly rare: an hon­est, direct com­par­i­son of male and female per­for­mance at the high­est lev­el.”
  6. Israeli Researcher Says Stan­ford Shunned and Sab­o­taged Him After Hamas Attack (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “[For­mer IDF offi­cer] Laps alleges that the research assis­tant in the Dan­ny Chou Lab told Laps dur­ing their first inter­ac­tion on his first day nev­er to speak to her. She alleged­ly delayed his orders for lab equip­ment, made him sit else­where at lunch, and reas­signed her cus­to­di­al duties to him. Col­leagues fol­lowed her lead, ostra­ciz­ing him from the lab com­mu­ni­ty, the suit claims. The most explo­sive alle­ga­tion is that the same research assis­tant, Ter­ra Lin, tam­pered with Laps’s research.”
  7. What YouTube Can’t Teach Stu­dents About Jesus (Dylan Muss­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Who (or what) has shaped your faith the most?’ As a cam­pus min­is­ter, I have asked this ques­tion to many col­lege stu­dents over the years. Late­ly, I have noticed a shift in their answers.  This past fall, I sat across from Luke—a fresh­man at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. We were chat­ting over tacos when I posed the ques­tion. I watched the gears spin in his head. Would it be a church from back home? A great book? An old­er men­tor who dis­ci­pled him? Maybe his par­ents? He leaned back. ‘Youtube.’ I stared blankly, try­ing my best not to show my sur­prise.”
    • The author leads the Nav­i­ga­tors at Van­der­bilt.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The Joy of Cook­ing Your Sprite (Jenée Desmond-Har­ris, Slate): “After a day walk­ing around the dusty grounds, rid­ing a giant swing, and dress­ing up for old-timey pho­tos, we made it back to the car exhaust­ed and thirsty. And in the back seat (I don’t know if it had been pur­chased as part of post-out­ing lunch or was just rolling around back there) was a six-pack of Sprite that had been, well, cook­ing all day. We each cracked one open, and that’s when I real­ized some­thing impor­tant was hap­pen­ing. It was so good! The soda was hot but some­how still refresh­ing. The sweet­ness was soft­ened and the bub­bles felt big­ger and more luxurious—not like the sharp, sneeze-trig­ger­ing ones you get when it’s cold. We locked eyes and smiled mis­chie­vous­ly. It felt rebel­lious (look, we were very shel­tered kids) and wild­ly inno­v­a­tive. ‘Cooked Sprite’ was born.” 
  • What Is ‘Aura Farm­ing’? This Tween Will Show You. (Ben­jamin Hoff­man, New York Times): “On Tues­day, the gov­ern­ment in Riau, cit­ing the impact of the video and the fact that he had been ‘inspir­ing local kids to embrace and pre­serve their tra­di­tions,’ named Dika as a tourism ambas­sador for the province, and its gov­er­nor, Abdul Wahid, award­ed him a schol­ar­ship for 20 mil­lion rupi­ah (around $1,200) for his edu­ca­tion. Dika also per­formed a ren­di­tion of his dance along with Gov­er­nor Wahid and oth­er offi­cials.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

The Four Loves: Affection

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

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

I have writ­ten about this chap­ter once before, back in 2018. My remarks here are fresh (although the open­ing sec­tion is very sim­i­lar).

YouTube has some­thing amaz­ing in rela­tion to this week’s read­ing: a 1957 record­ing of C. S. Lewis him­self giv­ing the lec­ture upon which this chap­ter is based. I’ve embed­ded the video, and you can read the tran­script as well. You should at least lis­ten to a few min­utes if you’ve nev­er heard the voice of Lewis before.

The chan­nel host­ing this video is worth check­ing out. It’s called CSLewis­Doo­dle and it “doo­dles select­ed essays by C.S. Lewis in order to make them eas­i­er to under­stand.” It’s got doo­dled treat­ments of Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Screw­tape Let­ters, and more. Con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing to it.

On to affec­tion. Lewis is dis­cussing the type of love described by the Greek word storge (στοργή), a love which we describe using the words affec­tion or fond­ness.

The word storge does not appear direct­ly in the New Tes­ta­ment, although it does appear as a root of oth­er words. In both Romans 1:31 and 2nd Tim­o­thy 3:3 the word astor­gos (ἄστοργος) is ren­dered by var­i­ous trans­la­tions as “heart­less” or “unlov­ing” or “with­out nat­ur­al affec­tion.” And in Romans 12:10 we find the word philostor­gos (φιλόστοργος) which means “devot­ed”.

I pro­vide this lin­guis­tic data mere­ly by way of back­ground. It does­n’t affect Lewis’ dis­cus­sion of affec­tion except to explain why he’s not quot­ing a bunch of Bible vers­es.

There is one sec­tion in this chap­ter that always strikes me:

If peo­ple are already unlov­able a con­tin­u­al demand on their part (as of right) to be loved—their man­i­fest sense of injury, their reproach­es, whether loud and clam­orous or mere­ly implic­it in every look and ges­ture of resent­ful self-pity—produce in us a sense of guilt (they are intend­ed to do so) for a fault we could not have avoid­ed and can­not cease to com­mit. They seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty. If ever, at some favoured moment, any germ of Affec­tion for them stirs in us, their demand for more and still more pet­ri­fies us again.

What an arrest­ing phrase: “they seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

I once had a cat who became so obese that he could no longer lick him­self clean. And so for a sea­son he stank. Wher­ev­er he went, the smell of an out­house fol­lowed him. And yet he was des­per­ate for affec­tion. He would approach peo­ple to receive pats and his stench would dri­ve them away.

And here is where the sto­ry becomes fas­ci­nat­ing: in his sad­ness he devel­oped the habit of sleep­ing in his lit­ter box. I was amazed: the poor crea­ture had found a way to make his stench even worse. His habits made his desires unat­tain­able.

I am pleased to report that even­tu­al­ly his behav­ior changed, he lost weight, his stench decreased, and he received affec­tion. He became much hap­pi­er.

I have met peo­ple who do the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in their lit­ter box. They live odi­ous lives. In the most extreme cas­es they under­mine their friend­ships and are baf­fled that they find them­selves alone. In the pas­sage excerpt­ed above Lewis talks about peo­ple who are so needy it is repel­lent, and that is one way we can car­ry a stench around with us but it is hard­ly the only one. There are many milder cas­es. Con­sid­er a young woman who is unwill­ing to be vul­ner­a­ble beyond a cer­tain point and is sur­prised that her friend­ships lack depth. Or con­sid­er a young man unwill­ing to risk rejec­tion who is then dis­ap­point­ed that his friend­ships nev­er blos­som into romance. Or pic­ture some­one who comes late to church and leaves ear­ly and is frus­trat­ed that they lack com­mu­ni­ty. In each case, they “seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

Take a moment to eval­u­ate your rela­tion­ships. Is there an absence of affec­tion or cama­raderie which frus­trates you? It may sim­ply be that you haven’t found your peo­ple yet (and Lewis will talk more about friend­ship in the next chap­ter). But it is also pos­si­ble that you are doing the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in your lit­ter box.

If you are frus­trat­ed that you are not expe­ri­enc­ing the affec­tion you desire, spend some time in prayer­ful con­tem­pla­tion and ask God to reveal any self-lim­it­ing habits you have devel­oped and to guide you into bet­ter habits. Your now is not your for­ev­er — my cat changed and so can we.

And if you haven’t already, read the “affec­tion” chap­ter in The Four Loves and watch the Lewis doo­dle video above — they may pro­vide you with some insight.

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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



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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Thoughts on This Fourth of July

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

The Four Loves: Introduction

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

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

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

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

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

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

gen­er­a­tive AI has entered the chat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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