Author: Glen

Can­dy is a good thing. Can­dy is joy giv­en caloric expres­sion. Can­dy is, to twist an old say­ing, proof that God loves us and wants us to be hap­py.

I do not think my wife believes this in her heart. She is a mom, and there is a lot of pres­sure on moms to believe that can­dy is bad. In the land of moms, can­dy is a con­trolled sub­stance. One, inci­den­tal­ly, for which med­ical pre­scrip­tions are not forth­com­ing.

And so as we were going to bed on Hal­loween I told her, “There’s some­thing impor­tant we need to estab­lish before we go to sleep tonight. The pres­ence of left­over can­dy in our house is not a prob­lem to be solved, it is a joy to be cel­e­brat­ed. We don’t have to give it away, throw it away, or find some cre­ative use for it. Eat­ing it will be suf­fi­cient.”

I felt like a Mor­mon knock­ing on Richard Dawkins’ door, but some­times a dad has to step up. Edi­ble joy is a rare thing and worth defend­ing.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, NCAA is an ini­tial­ism rather than an acronym — but you know what I mean.

I have long been irked at the way the col­lege sports com­plex abus­es stu­dents, but I was absolute­ly floored by some of the details Tay­lor Branch shared in “The Shame of Col­lege Sports” (pub­lished in The Atlantic).

Two snip­pets to whet your appetite:

“Why,” asked Bryce Jor­dan, the pres­i­dent emer­i­tus of Penn State, “should a uni­ver­si­ty be an adver­tis­ing medi­um for your indus­try?”

Vac­caro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to con­tin­ue sell­ing them. You can be very moral and right­eous in ask­ing me that ques­tion, sir,” Vac­caro added with irre­press­ible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our mon­ey. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

And lat­er:

But after an inquiry that took me into lock­er rooms and ivory tow­ers across the coun­try, I have come to believe that sen­ti­ment blinds us to what’s before our eyes. Big-time col­lege sports are ful­ly com­mer­cial­ized. Bil­lions of dol­lars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes mon­ey, and enables uni­ver­si­ties and cor­po­ra­tions to make mon­ey, from the unpaid labor of young ath­letes.

Slav­ery analo­gies should be used care­ful­ly. Col­lege ath­letes are not slaves. Yet to sur­vey the scene—corporations and uni­ver­si­ties enrich­ing them­selves on the backs of uncom­pen­sat­ed young men, whose sta­tus as “stu­dent-ath­letes” deprives them of the right to due process guar­an­teed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmis­tak­able whiff of the plan­ta­tion. Per­haps a more apt metaphor is colo­nial­ism: col­lege sports, as over­seen by the NCAA, is a sys­tem imposed by well-mean­ing pater­nal­ists and ratio­nal­ized with hoary sen­ti­ments about car­ing for the well-being of the col­o­nized. But it is, nonethe­less, unjust. The NCAA, in its zeal­ous defense of bogus prin­ci­ples, some­times destroys the dreams of inno­cent young ath­letes.

The whole thing is worth read­ing, so zip over to The Atlantic and read “The Shame of Col­lege Sports” now.

I recent­ly lis­tened to a Research on Reli­gion pod­cast about house church­es in Chi­na and learned four things.

First, I’ve known for years that the state-run Protes­tant church in Chi­na is called the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment in Chi­na, but I nev­er real­ized where the name came from. Here’s a hint: think mis­si­ol­o­gy. That’s right — the three selves in the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment are “self-sup­port­ing, self-gov­ern­ing, self-prop­a­gat­ing.” I am an idiot for nev­er mak­ing that con­nec­tion. I bet there’s a good sto­ry behind it.

Sec­ond, one of the unreg­is­tered church­es in Chi­na (com­mon­ly called house church­es) has grown to around 500,000 mem­bers. That is not a typo — this one “house church” has half a mil­lion mem­bers. Wow. That blows my mind.

Third, the unreg­is­tered rur­al church­es are almost entire­ly Pentecostal/charismatic and the unreg­is­tered urban church­es are more sedate­ly evan­gel­i­cal. The unreg­is­tered urban church­es tend to be led by uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors and oth­er intel­lec­tu­als. Inter­est­ing.

Fourth, Chi­na has large­ly stopped send­ing pas­tors of unreg­is­tered church­es to labor camps because the pas­tors were too effec­tive at plant­i­ng church­es in prison. Now the state uses indi­rect pres­sure to thwart church­es, so that the Com­mu­nist par­ty pres­sures land­lords to can­cel leas­es and employ­ers to has­sle employ­ees.

After lis­ten­ing to the pod­cast and reflect­ing on it for a while I real­ized that there’s an inter­est­ing con­trast between the chal­lenges faced by the church in Chi­na and those faced by the church in Amer­i­ca. Amer­i­ca seeks to seduce the Church into com­pla­cen­cy, where­as Chi­na seeks to intim­i­date the Church into com­pli­ance.

These chal­lenges cor­re­spond to the strate­gies Satan deploys against the Church in the book of Rev­e­la­tion: Baby­lon (seduc­tion) and the Beast (intim­i­da­tion).

No, I did not just say that Chi­na is the Beast nor did I say that Amer­i­ca is the Great Har­lot called Baby­lon. I mere­ly said that Chi­na and Amer­i­ca resem­ble them in cer­tain ways.

If this intrigues you check out the free online book The Return­ing King by Vern Poythress. It’s one of the best intro­duc­tions to the book of Rev­e­la­tion that I know.

All in all that was one of the more stim­u­lat­ing pod­casts I’ve heard late­ly.