Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 2

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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.

To that end, I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). I’m think­ing I’ll send these rough­ly once a week. May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

  1. From the depress­ing depart­ment: Hot Girls Want­ed (Ken­neth More­field, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): a sober­ing review of a Net­flix doc­u­men­tary (from Sun­dance) about the “amateur” porn indus­try. Read it if you have a hard time explain­ing why pornog­ra­phy is a bad thing. Pre­pare to be bummed.

  2. From the faith and pol­i­tics depart­ment: Is Oba­ma Real­ly a Chris­t­ian? (David French, Nation­al Review): this is the most detailed arti­cle I have read about Pres­i­dent Obama’s faith.

  3. From the high­er edu­ca­tion depart­ment: I’m a Lib­er­al Pro­fes­sor, and My Lib­er­al Stu­dents Ter­ri­fy Me (Edward Schloss­er, Vox): the arti­cle is bet­ter than you might expect from the click­bait title. It’s a cri­tique of the cur­rent prac­tice of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics at Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties by some­one sym­pa­thet­ic to iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics.

  4. From the learn­ing to think clear­ly depart­ment: The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire): this essay teas­es out the impli­ca­tions of this insight: “Thinking can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” Warn­ing: the for­mat­ting is hor­rid. It is worth read­ing any­way. Either use the Read­abil­i­ty book­marklet, an app like Pock­et, or just cut and paste it into a text doc­u­ment on your com­put­er.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and 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 will 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 1

[this was an email I sent to the stu­dents in Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford]

In the time of King David, the Bible says that the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). That’s a wor­thy goal — to under­stand our times and know how to live wise­ly in them. We need to learn how our faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, I’m going to try some­thing: for the next few weeks I’ll send out three to five articles/resources I have found help­ful in think­ing about nation­al, glob­al and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). My hope is these read­ings nudge you into con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of Issachar. If these emails are well-received then they may become an ongo­ing thing.

So here’s the first batch:

  1. The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts.

  2. What ISIS Real­ly Wants (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic): the key to under­stand­ing ISIS is under­stand­ing their faith, par­tic­u­lar­ly their escha­tol­ogy. A take­away for Chris­tians — your escha­tol­ogy mat­ters (so get it right).

  3. Evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants Are The Biggest Win­ners When­ev­er Peo­ple Change Faiths (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): this is the most inter­est­ing take I’ve seen on the Pew Forum study that filled the news recent­ly. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue until they reach an equi­lib­ri­um point, then evan­gel­i­cal­ism will become the largest reli­gious iden­ti­ty in Amer­i­ca (fol­lowed by either the reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed or the Mor­mons depend­ing on whether fer­til­i­ty is fac­tored in).

  4. God’s For­ev­er Fam­i­ly: The Jesus Peo­ple Move­ment in Amer­i­ca (Lar­ry Eskridge, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press): a schol­ar­ly his­to­ry of an oft-over­looked Great Awak­en­ing — the Jesus Peo­ple revival among the hip­pies. It is full of delight­ful anec­dotes, includ­ing this charmer: one cou­ple “began to talk to their friends about Jesus and even went so far as to name their dog ‘Repent’ so they could stand in the city’s parks and shout the canine’s name and their mes­sage at the top of their lungs.”  (p 148). The book is avail­able online through Stan­ford’s library sys­tem — the link will take you right there.

Sug­ges­tions for a bet­ter title / arti­cles to con­sid­er / best day to send the email on / etc. are wel­come, as is feed­back on the idea as a whole.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read stuff (and may there­fore share stuff) from all over the ide­o­log­i­cal map. I read wide­ly in part because I aspire to pass an ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and more gen­er­al­ly because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I understand.” I encour­age you to adopt a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive.

Also, for the first few install­ments I’ll prob­a­bly reach far­ther back than nor­mal for some arti­cles that stand out in my mem­o­ry. As time goes on I imag­ine the links will become more and more recent.

Do You Geek Out When There’s A New Episode Of Radiolab? Thoughtful Christian Podcasts

Podcast BearI love pod­casts. I lis­ten to them every day as I bike to and from cam­pus. I lis­ten to them in the gym as I work out. I lis­ten to them when­ev­er I dri­ve some­where and there is no one else in the car.
There are a ton of Chris­t­ian pod­casts out there, but most of them are ser­mon­ic. Noth­ing against ser­mons — I preach a lot of them and lis­ten to even more. I even pod­cast my ser­mons. But there are so many ser­mons pod­cast­ed that it can be hard to find some of the oth­er Chris­t­ian gems that are out there.
So if you’re into pod­casts and are into Jesus, here are a few to con­sid­er adding to your list.
Think­ing In Pub­lic with Al Mohler
http://www.albertmohler.com/cat­e­go­ry/­think­ing-in-pub­lic/
Dr. Mohler is the pres­i­dent of The South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. In this pod­cast, he inter­views inter­est­ing peo­ple about the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues.
Unbe­liev­able?
This week­ly radio show from the UK fea­tures Chris­tians and non-Chris­tians in dia­log. They usu­al­ly bring in amaz­ing peo­ple and the host is good at help­ing each per­son put their argu­ments for­ward effec­tive­ly. The episodes feel long to me, but I still come back to it over and over again.
The Andy Stan­ley Lead­er­ship Pod­cast
This one is more min­istry relat­ed. High­ly suc­cess­ful pas­tor Andy Stan­ley explains prin­ci­ples of lead­er­ship in a help­ful way. This is one of my favorites.
This is a round­table dis­cus­sion about the­o­log­i­cal top­ics with intel­li­gent and well-informed peo­ple. Some­times it gets a lit­tle con­fus­ing because their voic­es are hard to tell apart, but it is nonethe­less worth­while.
Research On Reli­gion with Antho­ny Gill
Dr. Gill is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. This pod­cast is pret­ty aca­d­e­m­ic and can be dry at times, but the best episodes are fas­ci­nat­ing. Two good ones to start with:

Race and Grace in a Broken World

UPDATE 12/4/2014: Last night was our first Chi Alpha gath­er­ing since the Fer­gu­son non-indict­ment — the same day as the NYC non-indict­ment. As a pre­lude to the ser­mon, I gave a more com­pre­hen­sive take on race and the gospel. If you’re inter­est­ed, check out the first few min­utes of xastanford.org/sermons?sermon_id=52

I emailed this to the stu­dents in my min­istry ear­li­er today and they seemed to find it help­ful. I share it in the hope that it will also prove use­ful to you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I know many of us are reflect­ing on racism and jus­tice this week. As a fol­low­er of Jesus, I encour­age you to remem­ber that the jour­ney Chris­tians are on is a jour­ney along­side “a great mul­ti­tude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, peo­ple and lan­guage.”

Why should we remem­ber that fact? Because it reminds us that racial uni­ty is one of the out­comes of the gospel. Christ brings peo­ple togeth­er by draw­ing them to Him­self.

So I urge you to think in a Chris­t­ian way about these issues. Here are some resources to stim­u­late you.

IF YOU WANT TO ENGAGE WITH SOMETHING BRIEF

If you are won­der­ing where the church has been in the midst of all of this, the answer is front and center. I men­tion this because it is fre­quent­ly over­looked:
http://www.getreligion.org/getre­li­gion/2014/11/25/what-role-did-cler­gy-play-dur­ing-fer­gu­son-chaos-if-you-looked-for-them-they-were-there

Thabiti Anyab­wile has some use­ful things to say in this eight minute video. He is speak­ing before the grand jury’s deci­sion was revealed. If you want to read more of him, he blogs at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/.

White Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar will find Ed Stet­zer’s thoughts help­ful —  http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/november/deci­sion-in-fer­gu­son-how-should-evan­gel­i­cals-respond.html

IF YOU WANT TO DIG DEEP

If you have more time this Thanks­giv­ing break and want to go beyond read­ing an arti­cle or two, pick one of these books and dive in:

  • Blood­lines: Race, Cross, and the Chris­t­ian (John Piper) [like many (all?) of Piper’s books it is free on his web­site as a PDF ‑ http://www.desiringgod.org/books/bloodlines )
  • From Every Peo­ple and Nation: A Bib­li­cal The­ol­o­gy of Race (J. Daniel Hays)
  • Divid­ed by Faith: Evan­gel­i­cal Reli­gion and the Prob­lem of Race in Amer­i­ca (Emer­son and Smith) [this book is quite crit­i­cal of the church — it is painful but help­ful read­ing]

May you have a blessed Thanks­giv­ing, and may the Lord con­tin­ue to heal this bro­ken world.

 

…

This is the best sum­ma­ry of the issue I’ve seen yet.

Pas­tor Dis­in­vit­ed from Giv­ing Inau­gur­al Prayer Because of Ser­mon on Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty

The mes­sage of reli­gious intol­er­ance being deliv­ered by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, his staff, and many of his sup­port­ers is unmis­tak­able: If you do not affirm homo­sex­u­al­i­ty then you can­not be fair-mind­ed. The m…

…

The sec­ond quote is the one to focus on. If you are squea­mish, be cau­tious when order­ing cal­i­mari. For the record, I don’t think this would affect my will­ing­ness to eat arti­fi­cial cal­i­mari.

Fred Armisen hosts This Amer­i­can Life as Ira Glass

This week’s episode of This Amer­i­can Life is about dop­pel­gangers, so they decid­ed to have SNL’s Fred Armisen come on the show and

…

Then my kids will receive excel­lent grades. 🙂

Don’t pay for all of your kid­s’ col­lege edu­ca­tion

…a new study…found that the more mon­ey (in total and as a share of total col­lege costs) that par­ents pro­vide for high­er edu­ca­tion, the low­er the grades their chil­dren earn. The find­ings — par­tic­u­lar­ly…

…

Rat — the voice of a gen­er­a­tion.

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, Jan­u­ary 17, 2013 Via @GoComics

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the com­ic strip tale of two friends: an arro­gant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-wit­ted Pig who does­n’t know any bet­ter. Togeth­er, this pair offers caust…

…

This is sol­id. Which, you know, is what you ought to expect from D.A. Car­son.

You Asked: How Do We Know if God Is Dis­ci­plin­ing Us?

Easy, for­mu­la­ic answers to ques­tions of suf­fer­ing are invari­ably reduc­tion­is­tic — and they make bad the­ol­o­gy, too.Easy, for­mu­la­ic answers to ques­tions of suf­fer­ing are invari­ably reduc­tion­is­tic — and …

…

This is actu­al­ly help­ful to me.

Pen­ny Arcade — Sportz

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