Tag: abuse

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 516: God in history & confused physicists

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 Did God Favor France? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[Joan of Arc’s] sto­ry is one of the most exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of a mirac­u­lous-seem­ing inter­ven­tion into sec­u­lar his­to­ry, cal­cu­lat­ed to baf­fle, fas­ci­nate and even charm like almost noth­ing else in West­ern his­to­ry. Every­thing in the sto­ry sounds like a pious leg­end con­fab­u­lat­ed cen­turies after the fact. A peas­ant girl with zero polit­i­cal or mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shows up at a roy­al court, announces a divine mis­sion and makes a series of prophe­cies about what God wants for France that she con­sis­tent­ly ful­fills — a ful­fill­ment that requires not mere­ly some for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, but her tak­ing com­mand of a medieval army and win­ning an imme­di­ate series of vic­to­ries over an intim­i­dat­ing adver­sary with Alexan­drine or Napoleon­ic skill.”
    • Worth a pon­der.
  2. Physi­cists dis­agree wild­ly on what quan­tum mechan­ics says about real­i­ty, Nature sur­vey shows (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “Nature asked researchers what they thought was the best inter­pre­ta­tion of quan­tum phe­nom­e­na and inter­ac­tions — that is, their favourite of the var­i­ous attempts sci­en­tists have made to relate the math­e­mat­ics of the the­o­ry to the real world. The largest chunk of respons­es, 36%, favoured the Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion — a prac­ti­cal and often-taught approach. But the sur­vey also showed that sev­er­al, more rad­i­cal, view­points have a healthy fol­low­ing. Asked about their con­fi­dence in their answer, only 24% of respon­dents thought their favoured inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect; oth­ers con­sid­ered it mere­ly ade­quate or a use­ful tool in some cir­cum­stances. What’s more, some sci­en­tists who seemed to be in the same camp didn’t give the same answers to fol­low-up ques­tions, sug­gest­ing incon­sis­tent or dis­parate under­stand­ings of the inter­pre­ta­tion they chose.”
  3. How a Chris­t­ian col­lege min­istry glo­ri­fied a sex offend­er and enabled him to keep abus­ing stu­dents (Mike Hix­en­baugh, NBC News): “The pas­tors who shep­herd­ed hun­dreds of high school and col­lege stu­dents to Savala’s home were part of Chi Alpha, a Chris­t­ian min­istry that evan­ge­lizes on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. Stu­dents seek out Chi Alpha to con­nect with God and each oth­er, through small Bible stud­ies and rol­lick­ing wor­ship ser­vices — and, for more than 30 years, through Savala. Gen­er­a­tions of Chi Alpha lead­ers hailed him as a spir­i­tu­al savant who could answer life’s deep­est mys­ter­ies.”
    • Heart­break­ing. I’ve post­ed about this scan­dal in Texas before (in oth­er words, this is the same scan­dal from a few years ago with addi­tion­al report­ing). Now that it is being cov­ered on NBC the high­er-qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism is uncov­er­ing even more trag­ic details.
  4. Put Down the Sho­far (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You’re like­ly famil­iar with sho­fars blown in pub­lic, Seder meals for Passover, and cir­cum­ci­sion for baby boys. But as com­mon and well-intend­ed as these may be, I want to explain why I told my stu­dent that, yes, his house church was wrong—or at least, mis­guid­ed.”
    • A the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich arti­cle.
  5. The Sim­ple Truth About the War in Gaza (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “Amid these devel­op­ments, it may seem car­toon­ish, even obscene, to say that in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the good guy. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth that’s incred­i­bly easy to for­get amid the day-to-day cov­er­age of this ter­ri­ble war.… Israel’s goal is to live in peace with its neigh­bors. Through­out its 77-year his­to­ry, it has agreed to half a dozen peace deals with the Pales­tini­ans. It vol­un­tar­i­ly left Gaza in 2005. If it had any inter­est in wip­ing Gaza off the map, it could have done so any time in the last sev­er­al decades.”
  6. How the Elite Changed Its Mind on Chris­tian­i­ty (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “As the decline in reli­gious atten­dance has slowed, the past few years have also seen a clear rise in the sta­tus of reli­gion. It’s becom­ing more and more social­ly accept­able to be reli­gious in elite intel­lec­tu­al spaces—something that could have a real impact on how reli­gion is per­ceived by every­one else.… Reli­gion became cool again among the edu­cat­ed elite once it gained an asso­ci­a­tion with good aes­thet­ics, high art, and sacred music—not Bush-era Repub­li­can soft theoc­ra­cy.  Today, one can belong to the ideas-mak­ing class—an aspir­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al or artist—and still be reli­gious, so long as one steers clear of evan­gel­i­cal kitsch. Whether or not a real reli­gious revival is under­way in Amer­i­can pub­lic life, one thing is clear: The cool kids aren’t the smug, stri­dent athe­ists anymore—they’re the Chris­tians.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing, although it reminds me I need to write that essay I’ve been mulling over defend­ing low-church Protes­tantism as the best and most authen­tic expres­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty.
  7. Influ­encer Mis­sion­ar­ies (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “Church­es are turn­ing to the inter­net to reach new audi­ences. Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors are bring­ing their famous­ly high-pro­duc­tion ser­mons into ver­ti­cal video. The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints is pre­sent­ing a diverse, younger image to its 1.4 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers.”
    • A short arti­cle, not super-infor­ma­tive. Most­ly inter­est­ing because of the trend reach­ing the point that the Times is tak­ing note of it. Also because of some of the small vignettes: “Per­haps that explains the celebri­ty of Father Rafael Capo, 57, a body­build­ing priest in Mia­mi who fus­es fit­ness with faith for his 112,000 Insta­gram fol­low­ers. He often posts pho­tos of him­self lift­ing weights and con­se­crat­ing com­mu­nion.”

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 458



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 458, a num­ber with very few fac­tors. 458 = 229 · 2.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. America’s Top Export May Be Anx­i­ety (Derek Thomp­son, The Atlantic): “We’re see­ing the inter­na­tion­al trans­mis­sion of a nov­el West­ern the­o­ry of men­tal health. It’s the glob­al­iza­tion of Western—and, just maybe, Amer­i­can—despair.… Accord­ing to the pod­cast search engine Lis­ten Notes, more than 5,500 pod­casts have the word trau­ma in their title. In celebri­ty media, men­tal-health tes­ti­mo­ni­als are so com­mon that they’ve spawned a sub­genre of sum­maries of celebri­ty men­tal-health tes­ti­mo­ni­als, includ­ing ’39 Celebri­ties Who Have Opened Up About Men­tal Health,’ ‘What 22 Celebri­ties Have Said About Hav­ing Depres­sion,’ and ’12 Times Famous Men Got Real About Men­tal Health.’ ”
    • Poly­math Tyler Cowen called this “one of the best and most impor­tant pieces of the year.” Unlocked.
  2. How to get 7th graders to smoke (Adam Mas­troian­ni, Sub­stack): “Nobody thinks they can whip up an iPhone in their garage over the week­end, but most peo­ple think they know how to save the chil­dren, fix the schools, reform the pris­ons, over­haul health­care, repair pol­i­tics, restore civil­i­ty, and bring about world peace. Per­haps that’s why we have iPhones and we don’t have any of those oth­er things.”
    • This is a hum­bling essay.
  3. Chat­G­PT is bull­shit (Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries & Joe Slater, Ethics and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy): “The machines are not try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing they believe or per­ceive. Their inac­cu­ra­cy is not due to mis­per­cep­tion or hal­lu­ci­na­tion. As we have point­ed out, they are not try­ing to con­vey infor­ma­tion at all. They are bull­shit­ting.”
    • The authors are at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow. Apolo­gies for the lan­guage, but the lan­guage is at the heart of the point the authors are mak­ing.
  4. No Longer Pitiable (Jared Hay­den, Mere Ortho­doxy): “For Paul, what makes sin­gle­ness ‘bet­ter’ is not the absence of sex as such, for nei­ther sex nor mar­riage is a sin, as he is at pains to show. Rather, sin­gle­ness is the ‘hap­pi­er’ state because it pro­vides believ­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be ‘anx­ious about the things of the Lord’ rather than ‘world­ly things’ because the ‘appoint­ed time has grown very short.’ For Paul, all sin­gles should live devot­ed to the Lord… one either lever­ages sin­gle­ness for the Lord, like Paul; or one lever­ages it for world­ly or sin­ful pur­pos­es, like idle wid­ows (1 Tim 5:13).”
    • A the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich essay about sin­gle­ness.
  5. Evo­lu­tion May Be Pur­pose­ful And It’s Freak­ing Sci­en­tists Out (Andrea Mor­ris, Forbes): “Noble is neu­tral on reli­gious mat­ters. Yet he sees com­pelling evi­dence that pur­pose may be fun­da­men­tal to life. He’s deter­mined to debunk the cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic par­a­digm and replace the ele­vat­ed impor­tance of genes with some­thing much more con­tro­ver­sial. His efforts have enraged many of his peers but gained sup­port from the next gen­er­a­tion of ori­gins-of-life researchers work­ing to top­ple the reign of gene-cen­trism.”
  6. Some arti­cles about the war in Gaza:
    • Israelis Are Not Watch­ing the Same War You Are (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “We got used to Israel’s calmest decade, in terms of secu­ri­ty and casu­al­ties. And all of a sud­den, peo­ple under­stand that this was not fea­si­ble for the long run. That is to say that we will prob­a­bly have to see more sol­diers fight­ing in the north and in the south for the com­ing years, maybe decades. And there will be a death toll. It’s not going to be a per­ma­nent war but maybe a per­ma­nent state of ongo­ing oper­a­tions.”
      • A fas­ci­nat­ing (albeit a tad long) inter­view with an Israeli intel­lec­tu­al.
    • Get­ting Aid Into Gaza (Ger­man Lopez, New York Times): “Israel has enforced opaque rules that turn back trucks meant for Gaza, cit­ing secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Egypt has blocked aid to protest Israel’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. Hamas has stolen, or tried to steal, aid ship­ments for its own use.”
      • A rea­son­ably fair-mind­ed arti­cle. Exam­ines mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives.
  7. Abused by the badge (Jes­si­ca Con­tr­era, Jenn Abel­son, John D. Hard­en, Hay­den God­frey & Nate Jones, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A Wash­ing­ton Post inves­ti­ga­tion has found that over the past two decades, hun­dreds of law enforce­ment offi­cers in the Unit­ed States have sex­u­al­ly abused chil­dren while offi­cials at every lev­el of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have failed to pro­tect kids, pun­ish abusers and pre­vent addi­tion­al crimes… The Post iden­ti­fied at least 1,800 state and local law enforce­ment offi­cers who were charged with crimes involv­ing child sex­u­al abuse from 2005 through 2022.”
    • I have long said that the peo­ple throw­ing stones at the Roman Catholic Church for their sex­u­al abuse cri­sis would be stunned with the far worse num­bers on child sex­u­al abuse in the pub­lic school sys­tem (and I stand by that). But I did not fore­see this one and I should have. There is author­i­ty, there­fore there is abuse of author­i­ty.
    • Unlocked.

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 405

a bunch of depress­ing 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 405, which is 43 + 53 + 63

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. That Hel­lo Spir­it (Leopold van den Daele & Mat­teo Per­p­er, The Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The admin­is­tra­tion has as its goal the total re-cre­ation of cam­pus social life, a rather mut­ed con­cep­tion of the Spir­it of Stan­ford, from the top-down. They will throw mon­ey at the prob­lem, estab­lish more offices, and more advi­so­ry boards. They will change the fine print of the rules and reg­u­la­tions for throw­ing par­ties, and they will bom­bard you with facts that demon­stra­bly prove all is swell. But we believe that a thriv­ing cam­pus social life emerges nat­u­ral­ly when every­one feels like they belong to one fam­i­ly; it can­not be bought. It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring about the change we want to see, from the bot­tom-up, one inter­ac­tion at a time: Say­ing hel­lo is the heart of com­mu­ni­ty.”
  2. How Con­gress Gets Rich from Insid­er Trad­ing (YouTube): thir­ty well-done min­utes about a bipar­ti­san prob­lem. I’ve read a lot of the arti­cles ref­er­enced before, but this is an excel­lent com­pi­la­tion with impec­ca­ble pre­sen­ta­tion. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. No One Is Immune (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “We went from Chris­t­ian pub­lic fig­ures warn­ing about the social and legal dan­gers of LGBTQ ‘civ­il rights’ to Chris­t­ian pub­lic fig­ures cham­pi­oning LGBTQ ‘civ­il rights’ in just two decades. And in some cas­es, they are the exact same per­son.”
    • A sol­id essay that makes an impor­tant point. Any time your the­ol­o­gy leads you to con­clude that some of God’s laws in the Old Tes­ta­ment are sin­ful (as opposed to mere­ly not bind­ing upon us), your the­ol­o­gy is wrong. This is a wide-rang­ing prin­ci­ple which, when con­sis­tent­ly fol­lowed, will make peo­ple annoyed with you. It is nonethe­less cor­rect. “The Law of the Lord is per­fect” (Psalm 19:7) and “the law is holy, and the com­mand­ment is holy, right­eous and good” (Romans 7:12).
  4. How evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian writer Jemar Tis­by became a radioac­tive sym­bol of ‘wok­e­ness’ (Bob Smi­etana, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Lerone Mar­tin, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Research and Edu­ca­tion Insti­tute at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, said that evan­gel­i­cals have long found it eas­i­er to label Black lead­ers as left­ists or Marx­ists rather than to deal with the real­i­ty of racism.”
  5. The ‘I’ in BIPOC (Sher­man Alex­ie, Per­sua­sion): “And here I must stress that Indi­ans, whether con­ser­v­a­tive, cen­trist, or lib­er­al, have a unique place in the Unit­ed States that BIPOC doesn’t even begin to address. BIPOC is an acronym that’s too plain to accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent Indi­an people’s com­plex rela­tion­ship with our coun­try.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Chi Alpha ‘Men­tor’ Daniel Savala Arrest­ed on Sex Abuse Charges (Josh Shep­herd, The Roys Report): “On Fri­day morn­ing, Savala, 67, was arrest­ed by the U.S. Mar­shals Lone Star Fugi­tive Task Force at his res­i­dence in down­town Hous­ton and booked at the Fort Bend Coun­ty Jail in Rich­mond, Texas. He was charged with con­tin­u­ous sex­u­al abuse of a child under age 14.… On May 23, Chris Hundl, for­mer leader of the Chi Alpha chap­ter at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty and pas­tor of Moun­tain Val­ley Fel­low­ship in Waco, was arrest­ed on iden­ti­cal charges in Waco.… the North Texas Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God (AoG) said its inves­ti­ga­tion of Hundl and oth­ers linked to Savala prompt­ed Hundl’s removal from his pas­toral duties and Chi Alpha lead­er­ship as of May 4. AoG dis­trict offi­cials said they also noti­fied child pro­tec­tive ser­vices in Texas and have rec­om­mend­ed that Hundl be dis­missed as an AoG min­is­ter.”
    • Read­ing this was like get­ting punched in the gut.
  7. Defin­ing Reli­gion in the Court (Mark Movs­esian, First Things): “…a focus on [reli­gion expressed in] com­mu­ni­ty accords with an impor­tant goal of reli­gious free­dom: the pro­mo­tion of pri­vate asso­ci­a­tions that encour­age coop­er­a­tive projects and check state pow­er. As Toc­queville explained, the despot­ic state desires noth­ing more than for indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens to feel iso­lat­ed from and indif­fer­ent to oth­ers, so that it can divide and dom­i­nate them all. By encour­ag­ing peo­ple to iden­ti­fy with and look out for one anoth­er, pri­vate asso­ci­a­tions mil­i­tate against self-cen­tered­ness and social iso­la­tion and help keep the state in check. Reli­gious groups per­form this func­tion espe­cial­ly well. No asso­ci­a­tions have been bet­ter, his­tor­i­cal­ly, at pro­mot­ing coop­er­a­tive social projects and defy­ing state oppression—as dic­ta­tors down the cen­turies have learned.”

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 We Need a New Media Sys­tem (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “The flaw in the sys­tem is that even the biggest news com­pa­nies now oper­ate under the assump­tion that at least half their poten­tial audi­ence isn’t lis­ten­ing. This leads to all sorts of prob­lems, and the fact that the eas­i­est way to keep your own demo­graph­ic is to feed it neg­a­tive sto­ries about oth­ers is only the most obvi­ous. On all sides, we now lean into inflam­ma­to­ry car­i­ca­tures, because the finan­cial incen­tives encour­age it.” From vol­ume 284.

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 387

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 387, which I learned today is the low­est num­ber with a sort-then-add per­sis­tence of 10, which is a real­ly weird con­cept. Take 387 and add it to 378 (the dig­its sort­ed) and you get 765. Take 765 and add it to 567 to get 1332. Then sort that to add 1233. Keep doing that until you get an answer whose dig­its are already sort­ed (appear in increas­ing order). It takes 10 iter­a­tions to get there. Some­one dis­cov­ered this. Math­e­mati­cians are both won­der­ful and weird.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Under Munic­i­pal Reg­u­la­tions, UK Abor­tion Clin­ics ‘Safe’ From Silent Prayer (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Adam Smith-Con­nor prayed silent­ly on a pub­lic street in Bournemouth, Eng­land, ear­li­er this month, his back to an abor­tion clin­ic. When com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty offi­cers asked what he was doing, he told them he was ‘pray­ing for [his] son, who is deceased.’ The offi­cers expressed con­do­lences but then said Smith-Con­nor, a 49-year-old phys­i­cal ther­a­pist and British army vet­er­an, was ‘in breach’ of a Pub­lic Space Pro­tec­tion Order (PSPO), accord­ing to a video of the inci­dent. Lat­er he was fined.”
    • I’ve been fol­low­ing these sto­ries on social media, this is the first decent write­up of them that I’ve seen. It blew my mind when I first saw it and I assumed some cops mis­un­der­stood a pol­i­cy. Nope. Insane and demon­ic. I’ve long known that you don’t have the right to free speech in the U.K. I did­n’t real­ize you also lacked the right to free silence.
  2. AI Stuff
    • OY, A.I. (Jaron Lanier, Tablet): “The prob­lem wasn’t that Israelites want­ed to craft a calf, but that they wor­shipped it, even though it was a thing they had just made. The calf was social nar­cis­sism and amne­sia. Jews have always had a prob­lem of get­ting bored, of not get­ting enough of a charge from what­ev­er is going on. The Israelites wait­ing for Moses to come back down were bored enough to go nuts. We peo­ple, not just Jews, still make gold­en calves all the time. Adam Smith’s invis­i­ble hand, cor­po­ra­tions-as-per­sons, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, Wikipedia, the lat­est AI pro­grams. All the same. All a bunch of peo­ple being sub­sumed to cre­ate an imag­i­nary super­hero.” An inter­est­ing the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tion on AI by a guy I don’t remem­ber hear­ing of before but clear­ly should have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier
    • What if you could talk to the Bible? (Andrew Gao, Twit­ter): See biblegpt.org
    • AI Ser­mon Out­line Gen­er­a­tor (John Dyer, Open­Bible): “To start, please enter up to 5 Bible pas­sages. The AI will then gen­er­ate 4 ser­mon the­sis state­ments, or main argu­ments, based on the pas­sages. After you choose a the­sis state­ment you like, it will gen­er­ate an out­line for you.”
    • Put Not Your Trust in Chat­G­PT, for Now (Emi­ly Belz, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Here is a sys­tem that will turn my head: You take an emp­ty sys­tem, and it has the capa­bil­i­ty of learn­ing lan­guage at the speed of a child. The way kids acquire lan­guage is tru­ly mind-blow­ing. And not just lan­guage, but even if you go open the cup­board door—they see some­thing once, and they fig­ure out how to do it. The sys­tem that this Google engi­neer was talk­ing about, it was giv­en tril­lions of exam­ples in order to get some sense of intel­li­gence out of it. It con­sumed ridicu­lous amounts of ener­gy, where­as a lit­tle kid’s brain requires the pow­er of a flash­light, and it’s able to learn lan­guage. We’re not any­where close to that kind of gen­er­al AI.” The inter­vie­wee has a PhD in physics and works in AI -https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkehler
    • Five Days in Class with Chat­G­PT (Thomas Rid, The Alper­ovitch Insti­tute): “Last week brought two relat­ed fea­tures of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in edu­ca­tion into sharp relief: the first is that all that talk about pla­gia­rism and cheat­ing and abuse is unin­spir­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Yes, some unam­bi­tious stu­dents will use this new tool to cov­er sub­par per­for­mance, and yes, we could talk about how to detect or dis­in­cen­tivize such behav­ior. The far more inspir­ing con­ver­sa­tion is a dif­fer­ent one: how can the most cre­ative, the most ambi­tious, and the most bril­liant stu­dents achieve even bet­ter results faster?” An engag­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing case study.
  3. Five Rules for an Aging World (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “There are two kinds of peo­ple in the world: Those who believe the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry will be cli­mate change, and those who know that it will be the birth dearth, the pop­u­la­tion bust, the old age of the world.”
  4. What­ev­er Hap­pened to Light Verse? (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “Part of this seems to be due to what has late­ly been termed ‘elite over­pro­duc­tion.’ In pre­vi­ous eras, much of America’s jour­nal­ism, poet­ry, and fic­tion were writ­ten by peo­ple who not only lacked an elite col­lege edu­ca­tion, many of them lacked any col­lege edu­ca­tion at all. Nei­ther Ogden Nash nor Dorothy Park­er earned a col­lege degree (nor, for that mat­ter, did Emi­ly Dick­in­son, H.D., Robert Frost, and any num­ber of oth­er ‘seri­ous’ poets of pre­vi­ous eras). But for half a cen­tu­ry now, most of America’s most promi­nent jour­nal­ists, poets, and nov­el­ists have been grad­u­ates of elite uni­ver­si­ties. And, because the lec­ture is a pri­ma­ry method of deliv­er­ing edu­ca­tion at schools like Har­vard and Yale and Stan­ford, much con­tem­po­rary jour­nal­ism, poet­ry, and fic­tion reads like a lec­ture.”
  5. Has Church Abuse Activism Tak­en a Wrong Turn? (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “So why do so few peo­ple want to say ‘evil’ and so many more seem to say ‘tox­ic’? Because the word ‘evil’ evokes moral absolutes, where­as the word ‘tox­ic’ is impres­sion-cod­ed. An evil regime mer­its oppo­si­tion, even sac­ri­fi­cial oppo­si­tion. A tox­ic cul­ture mer­its qui­et quit­ting and self-care after­wards.”
  6. A clus­ter of LGBT-relat­ed arti­cles I stum­bled upon this week:
    • The first of two reac­tions to an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion about LGBT issues: L’Esprit d’Escalier, Dish­cast Edi­tion (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I did not give an argu­ment about why the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic is good. I real­ize that it’s because for me, it’s total­ly a mat­ter of obe­di­ence. As I’ve explained many times, and did again on Andrew’s show, once I under­stood that my own sex­u­al activ­i­ty was the only bar­ri­er to accept­ing Christ, and once I saw what a mess I was mak­ing of my life by stand­ing firm for what I believed was my sex­u­al free­dom, I knew that I had a choice to make: I could have my sex­u­al free­dom, or I could have Christ. Any­thing short of mak­ing that sac­ri­fice was dis­hon­est.”
    • The oth­er guy’s per­spec­tive (along with fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary from lis­ten­ers): Rod Dreher On His Crises Of Faith And Fam­i­ly (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “He’s cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book about bring­ing the enchant­ment back to Chris­tian­i­ty in a time of grow­ing sec­u­lar­ism. He was enchant­ed him­self after tak­ing LSD in col­lege, putting him on the path to Chris­tian­i­ty — some­thing he hasn’t talked about in pub­lic until now. We’ve been spar­ring online for a cou­ple of decades, while remain­ing friends.”
    • ‘Isla Bryson’ and the mad­ness of Scotland’s gen­der bill (Alex Massie, The Spec­ta­tor): “More­over, some 50 per cent of Scot­tish inmates only dis­cov­ered their new gen­der iden­ti­ty after they were charged by police. Bryson now adds to this num­ber. This seems dubi­ous­ly con­ve­nient to the point of being sus­pi­cious and it can­not sen­si­bly be thought ‘trans­pho­bic’ to think so. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing here, even if it is con­sid­ered indeco­rous to spec­u­late on pre­cise­ly what is occur­ring.… Ulti­mate­ly, this is a dis­agree­ment between fan­ta­sists and real­ists and it is deplorable to realise that the major­i­ty of Scot­tish par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are signed-up mem­bers of the fan­ta­sy club.”
    • Ivan Provorov jer­seys sell out days after NHL play­er refus­es to wear LGBT pride jer­sey (Luke Gen­tile, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Jer­seys for Philadel­phia Fly­ers defense­man Ivan Provorov have sold out online days after the 26-year-old refused to wear a gay pride-themed jer­sey for reli­gious rea­sons. Both NHL Shop and Fanat­ics have list­ed Provorov’s jer­seys as ‘almost gone,’ and there are no longer any men’s jer­seys with his name and num­ber avail­able. On Fanat­ics, the defense­man is list­ed as hav­ing the most pop­u­lar men’s jer­sey, wom­en’s jer­sey, and sweat­shirt, and his Brand­ed Backer shirt is being adver­tised as the most pop­u­lar sell­er relat­ed to the Philadel­phia Fly­ers, accord­ing to the online store.”
    • The Myth of “Reli­able Research” in Pedi­atric Gen­der Med­i­cine: A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the Dutch Studies—and research that has fol­lowed (Abbruzzese, Levine & Mason, Jour­nal of Sex & Mar­i­tal Ther­a­py): “Our analy­sis of the Dutch pro­to­col has been writ­ten with three goals in mind. First, we want­ed to defin­i­tive­ly refute the claims that the foun­da­tion­al Dutch research rep­re­sents ‘sol­id prospec­tive research’ that pro­vides reli­able evi­dence of net ben­e­fits of youth gen­der tran­si­tion. In fact, it is much bet­ter described as case series—one of the low­est lev­els of evi­dence avail­able (Dekkers et al., 2012, Math­es & Pieper, 2017). Sec­ond, we aimed to demon­strate that the type of non-com­par­a­tive, short-term research that the gen­der med­i­cine estab­lish­ment con­tin­ues to pur­sue is inca­pable of gen­er­at­ing reli­able infor­ma­tion. And third and most impor­tant­ly, we want­ed to remind the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty that med­i­cine is a dou­ble-edged sword capa­ble of both much good and much harm. The bur­den of proof—demonstrating that a treat­ment does more good than harm—is on those pro­mot­ing the inter­ven­tion, not on those con­cerned about the harms.” I am sure there will be arti­cles cri­tiquing this in com­ing days, but wow. The authors did not come to play.
    • You Don’t Want A Pure­ly Bio­log­i­cal, Apo­lit­i­cal Tax­on­o­my Of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten):  “The peo­ple ask­ing for apo­lit­i­cal tax­onomies want an inco­her­ent thing. They want some­thing which doesn’t think about pol­i­tics at all, and which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly is more polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect than any oth­er tax­on­o­my. Or if ‘polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness’ sounds too dis­mis­sive, we can rephrase it as: ‘they want some­thing that doesn’t think about ethics and prac­ti­cal­i­ty at all, but which is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more eth­i­cal­ly cor­rect and prag­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect than oth­er tax­onomies’.” Super spicy, short, and says things out loud which most peo­ple avoid.
  7. Who’s More Irra­tional — The Reli­gious or the Irre­li­gious? (Den­nis Prager, syn­di­cat­ed col­umn): “The truth is that today the sec­u­lar have a vir­tu­al monop­oly on irra­tional beliefs. One proof is that col­leges have become the most irra­tional insti­tu­tions in the coun­try. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, they are also the most sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions in our soci­ety. In fact, the for­mer is a result of the lat­ter.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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 Church Forests of Ethiopia (YouTube): nine min­utes. This com­men­tary by Rod Dreher was what brought the video to my atten­tion. Watch the video before you read the com­men­tary. These forests are a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the way the Church bless­es the world around it, and what the Church must do to thrive in the envi­ron­ment we find our­selves in. From vol­ume 262.

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 352

a heart­break­ing 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 352, which is (I am informed) the num­ber of ways to place 9 queens on a 9×9 chess­board so that they can­not attack each oth­er.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The South­ern Bap­tist abuse cri­sis:
    • South­ern Bap­tists Refused to Act on Abuse, Despite Secret List of Pas­tors (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Guide­post Solu­tions, the third-par­ty inves­tiga­tive firm, wants the 13-mil­lion-mem­ber denom­i­na­tion to cre­ate an online data­base of abusers, offer com­pen­sa­tion for sur­vivors, sharply lim­it non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments, and estab­lish a new enti­ty ded­i­cat­ed to respond­ing to abuse. The direc­tives in the 288-page report will sound famil­iar for sur­vivors and advo­cates, who have been call­ing for those mea­sures all along.”
    • This Is the South­ern Bap­tist Apoc­a­lypse (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Indeed, the very ones who rebuked me and oth­ers for using the word cri­sis in ref­er­ence to South­ern Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse not only knew that there was such a cri­sis but were qui­et­ly doc­u­ment­ing it, even as they told those fight­ing for reform that such crimes rarely hap­pened among “peo­ple like us.” When I read the back-and-forth between some of these pres­i­dents, high-rank­ing staff, and their lawyers, I can­not help but won­der what else this can be called but a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy.”
    • No Athe­ist Has Done This Much Dam­age to the Chris­t­ian Faith (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to over­state how much dam­age these new revelations—these nec­es­sary and long-over­due revelations—are doing to the Chris­t­ian wit­ness. No athe­ist, no sec­u­lar­ists or mate­ri­al­ists, could inflict near­ly as much dam­age to the Chris­t­ian faith as these lead­ers with­in the Chris­t­ian Church have done.“This is a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple: skep­tics rarely hurt the Church. Chris­tians, though, hurt the Church all the time.
    • Avoid­ing Finan­cial And Gov­er­nance Dis­as­ters (War­ren Cole Smith, Min­istry Watch): “…in some very impor­tant ways, sex­u­al abuse and sex­u­al harass­ment in the church are effects. They are con­se­quences. They are fruits, not the root, of the problem.So what’s the cause? It’s pret­ty un-glam­orous. It doesn’t gen­er­ate as many head­lines, and when it does gen­er­ate a head­line, that head­line tends to be ignored, or quick­ly for­got­ten. And that cause is mon­ey. More specif­i­cal­ly, the love of mon­ey.… So, at a min­i­mum, I think we evan­gel­i­cals should be spend­ing as much time under­stand­ing and uncov­er­ing finan­cial fraud as we spend on sex­u­al abuse and tox­ic lead­er­ship.”
    • How the ‘Apoc­a­lyp­tic’ South­ern Bap­tist Report Almost Didn’t Hap­pen (Bob Smi­etana, Min­istry­Watch): “In oth­er words, the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would be put in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing itself. Then-Pres­i­dent J.D. Greear was ready to move on when Benkert stood up at a micro­phone with a motion of his own, based on anoth­er sec­tion of bylaw 29. ‘I would like the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a motion to over­rule the Com­mit­tee on Order of Busi­ness at the appro­pri­ate time,’ he said. Benkert’s motion was met with applause. Then a sec­ond, and then almost all of the 15,000 local church del­e­gates, known as mes­sen­gers, raised their yel­low vot­ing cards in the air—far more than the two-thirds major­i­ty need­ed to over­rule the com­mit­tee.”
    • In ref­er­ence to the imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing arti­cle: know­ing how the sys­tem works is real­ly impor­tant. I’ve seen shady stuff hap­pen at some meet­ings but was­n’t quick enough to get to the floor or was­n’t sure enough of the rules to inter­vene. In a busi­ness meet­ing knowl­edge tru­ly is pow­er.
    • In ref­er­ence to the larg­er sto­ry, there are so many things hap­pen­ing here:
    • This is an occa­sion for lamen­ta­tion. I have long said that the Protes­tant sex­u­al abuse cri­sis will dwarf the Catholic Church’s (because we tend to have less control/screening of min­is­ters) and that both will be dwarfed by the pub­lic school cri­sis (which is yet to ful­ly reveal itself but I believe will be far worse).
    • The South­ern Bap­tist exec­u­tives gen­uine­ly had less con­trol over the situation(s) than some of their crit­ics allege, but they had far more con­trol than they pre­tend­ed and when they did act it was often to con­ceal wicked things.
    • The fact that the SBC com­mis­sioned this report and made it pub­lic is very much to their cred­it and over time will loom larg­er in the remem­brance of this.
    • The scope of the abuse, while broad, appears to be less than I feared.
    •  The SBC legal team and the for­mer exec­u­tives come off look­ing like evil reli­gious lead­ers writ­ten by a lazy hack writer. It’s stag­ger­ing­ly bad.
    • This entire deba­cle is ger­mane to the Tim Keller/winsomeness debate: do we oper­ate accord­ing to the stan­dards of our cul­ture or the stan­dards of the King­dom? Christ demands anoth­er way, and if that opens us up to neg­a­tive cul­tur­al con­se­quences (whether elec­toral defeats or ruinous law­suits) then so be it.
  2. The school shoot­ing:
    • A fourth-grad­er who sur­vived the shoot­ing says she smeared friend’s blood on her­self to appear dead (Nora Neus, CNN): “Miah said she was scared the gun­man would come back to kill her and a few oth­er sur­viv­ing friends. So, she put her hands in her friend’s blood, who laid next to her— and already looked dead—and then smeared it all over her­self to appear dead.… She says after­wards, she over­heard talk of police wait­ing out­side the school. Recount­ing this dur­ing the inter­view, she start­ed cry­ing, say­ing she just didn’t under­stand why they didn’t come inside and get them.” Heart­break­ing. Details are still com­ing out, and none of them are good.
    • Texas school shoot­er Sal­vador Ramos once cut up his face with knives ‘just for fun,’ friends say (Yaron Stein­buch, New York Post): “The gun­man who slaugh­tered 19 kids and two teach­ers at a Texas ele­men­tary school report­ed­ly exhib­it­ed increas­ing­ly bizarre behav­ior lead­ing up to the ram­page – includ­ing cut­ting up his face with knives just ‘for fun,’ friends said.”
    • Pass and Enforce Red Flag Laws. Now. (David French, The Dis­patch): “Mass killings are their own thing. Mass shoot­ers are fre­quent­ly law-abid­ing, right up until the moment when they com­mit mass mur­der. Mass shoot­ings are often metic­u­lous­ly planned, which means that they can cir­cum­vent com­mon gun con­trol laws. For exam­ple, the Buf­fa­lo shoot­er legal­ly pur­chased the weapon he used and then ille­gal­ly mod­i­fied it to make it more lethal. So when we talk about com­mon gun con­trol pro­pos­als after mass shootings—whether we’re refer­ring to expand­ed back­ground checks, assault weapons bans, or lim­its on mag­a­zine capacity—the gen­er­al rule is that none of those mea­sures, even if imple­ment­ed, would have actu­al­ly pre­vent­ed any recent mass shoot­ing.” This is a thought­ful piece with a spe­cif­ic and con­struc­tive pol­i­cy sug­ges­tion.
    • The Chil­dren Who Kill Chil­dren (Samuel D. James, First Things): “There are some who sneer at peo­ple, like me, who offer prayers in times like these. Prayer, they say, is non-action: an inef­fec­tive, mean­ing­less piety meant to main­tain the sta­tus quo on gun con­trol. Yet it’s these same scoffers who instinc­tive­ly piv­ot to the top­ic of gun con­trol when­ev­er a child takes the lives of oth­er chil­dren, and their polit­i­cal rage is no less a reli­gious recita­tion sim­ply because they con­fuse Con­gress for God. An inabil­i­ty to talk about any­thing oth­er than gun con­trol threat­ens to dead­en our lament and neu­tral­ize a vital con­ver­sa­tion about why so many of our country’s most lost, most hate­ful peo­ple are boys with their whole lives ahead of them.” This is a strong arti­cle.
    • ‘The Onion’ has repub­lished a grim head­line about mass shoot­ings 21 times since 2014 (Rachel Treis­man, NPR): “There are a cou­ple of inevitable respons­es to a mass shoot­ing in Amer­i­ca: funer­als and fundrais­ers, prayers from politi­cians and the resur­fac­ing of one par­tic­u­lar arti­cle from satir­i­cal site The Onion. ‘No Way To Pre­vent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Reg­u­lar­ly Hap­pens’ has been repub­lished 21 times in almost exact­ly eight years.” The rep­e­ti­tion of this head­line has prob­a­bly shift­ed more hearts than any oth­er argu­ment I am aware of.
  3. Covid was liberalism’s endgame (Matthew B. Craw­ford, Unherd): “The inno­va­tion achieved here is in the way gov­ern­ment con­ceives its sub­jects: not as cit­i­zens whose con­sid­ered con­sent must be secured, but as par­ti­cles to be steered through a sci­ence of behav­iour man­age­ment that relies on our pre-reflec­tive cog­ni­tive bias­es.”
  4. A Com­mit­ment to Kind­ness Does Not Mean Sur­ren­der­ing Your Con­vic­tions (David French, The Dis­patch): “Time and again I read about how bad things are now, how vile the left has become, and how a com­mit­ment to ‘win­some­ness’ or kind­ness is sim­ply inad­e­quate to the moment. Even worse, it’s some­times seen as evi­dence of weak­ness or fear—an effort cur­ry favor with peo­ple who hate you.  But the con­ver­sa­tion con­sis­tent­ly mis­con­strues what com­mit­ments to civil­i­ty and decen­cy do and don’t mean—that civil­i­ty is some­how a short­hand for sur­ren­der on mat­ters of deep con­vic­tion. It is not. Or that a com­mit­ment to civil­i­ty implies an aver­sion to con­flict and a timid­i­ty in the face of oppo­si­tion. It does not.”
  5. The LGBT­sQew­ing of Amer­i­ca (Alexan­der Zuba­tov, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “We have strong­ly sug­ges­tive evi­dence, more­over, that social cues can play causal roles in sway­ing impres­sion­able teens to adopt new sex­u­al iden­ti­ties.… The sim­ple mes­sage such research con­veys is some­thing that those of us who have not lost touch with our child­hood and our awk­ward teen years will find unsur­pris­ing, and indeed, even obvi­ous: Most kids and teens are works in progress and unde­cid­ed and con­fused about many key aspects of their lives.”
  6. In Par­tial, Grudg­ing Defense Of The Hear­ing Voic­es Move­ment (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I still remem­ber a patient who asked me if I could cure his anx­i­ety with­in a week. I told him absolute­ly not — med­ica­tions take a few weeks to even kick in, and man­ag­ing anx­i­ety can be a life­long process — and why did he need a cure in a week any­way? He said he was an inspi­ra­tional speak­er on the top­ic ‘How I Over­came My Anx­i­ety’, and he had a speech sched­uled next week, but was too anx­ious to work on it. I think about this per­son often.” Inter­est­ing through­out and the anec­dote I excerpt­ed is actu­al­ly tan­gen­tial to the main point.
  7. Why This Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Says All Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Should “Die in a Fire” (Nathan Robin­son inter­view­ing Nicholas Weaver, Cur­rent Affairs): “Is it accu­rate to sum­ma­rize what you were say­ing before as, essen­tial­ly: There is no prob­lem that cryp­tocur­ren­cy solves, and to the extent that it is func­tion­al, it does things worse than we can already do them with exist­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tems. To the extent it has advan­tages, the advan­tage is doing crimes. And every oth­er claim made for the supe­ri­or­i­ty of cryp­tocur­ren­cy as cur­ren­cy falls apart if you scru­ti­nize it.” This spicy meat­ball comes rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  8. Glob­al reli­gious per­se­cu­tion:
    • The faces from China’s Uyghur deten­tion camps (John Sud­worth, BBC): “The doc­u­ments pro­vide some of the strongest evi­dence to date for a pol­i­cy tar­get­ing almost any expres­sion of Uyghur iden­ti­ty, cul­ture or Islam­ic faith — and of a chain of com­mand run­ning all the way up to the Chi­nese leader, Xi Jin­ping.”
    • Niger­ian Chris­tians Protest Deborah’s Death (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two weeks ago, in Nigeria’s north­west­ern-most state of Soko­to, Deb­o­rah Samuel was beat­en to death and set on fire by fel­low stu­dents at She­hu Sha­gari Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion. Offi­cials and police inter­vened in vain.”

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 Con­ser­v­a­tives Clash on the Goal of Gov­ern­ment (Jonathan Lee­man, Prov­i­dence): “There is no neu­tral­i­ty. The pub­lic square is a bat­tle­ground of gods. Our cul­ture wars are wars of reli­gion. For the time being, lib­er­al­ism keeps us from pick­ing up sixteenth-century swords for those wars, which is no small achieve­ment. But don’t assume it won’t con­trol us with the sub­tler tools of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry legal total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Insight­ful reflec­tions on how Chris­tians should form their polit­i­cal posi­tions. First shared in vol­ume 218.

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.