Tag: apologetically interesting

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 108

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. Should Tyler Cowen Believe In God? (Ross Douthat, NYT): this is delight­ful. “There: I’ve prob­a­bly blas­phemed, weak­ened my Catholic cre­den­tials, endan­gered my soul, insult­ed my reli­gious brethren, picked point­less fights with Mus­lims and Calvin­ists, and betrayed a juve­nile under­stand­ing of sta­tis­tics.”
  2. Des­per­a­tion and Ser­vice in the Bail Indus­try (Joshua Page, Con­texts): “…indus­try advo­cates con­fi­dent­ly assert that bail com­pa­nies and agents are ser­vice providers help­ing needy peo­ple. As my research shows, this claim is based in real­i­ty. But it is a con­struct­ed real­i­ty. Polit­i­cal and legal deci­sions make the ser­vices nec­es­sary in the first place.”
  3. “High” Achiev­ers? Cannabis Access and Aca­d­e­m­ic Per­for­mance (Olivi­er Marie & Ulf Zölitz, The Review of Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies): The authors stud­ied “an excep­tion­al pol­i­cy intro­duced in the city of Maas­tricht in the Nether­lands that dis­crim­i­nat­ed access via licensed cannabis shops based on an individual’s nation­al­i­ty…. We find that the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of stu­dents who are no longer legal­ly per­mit­ted to buy cannabis sub­stan­tial­ly increas­es.” In oth­er news, water is wet. You can find a PDF of the full paper at SSRN)
  4. The Case Against Car­di­nal Pell (Julia Yost, First Things): this is fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­tress­ing and full of all sorts of indi­rect­ly-relat­ed asides, such as “the McMartin Preschool case gen­er­at­ed 321 charges from forty-one chil­dren. We now know that every charge was a lie and every child was a liar. Yet today, with the chil­dren now well into their thir­ties, many of them still insist that their charges were true.”
  5. Stranger In A Strange Land (Fran­cis J. Beck­with, Inside High­er Ed): “A lit­tle over four years ago, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado at Boul­der began a three-year pilot pro­gram that I believe has no prece­dent in Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion. With the help of pri­vate donors and the sup­port of the university’s board, pres­i­dent and chan­cel­lor, the school cre­at­ed the posi­tion of Vis­it­ing Schol­ar of Con­ser­v­a­tive Thought and Pol­i­cy.”
  6. I Am Not a ‘Paki,’ Not a Ter­ror­ist. I Am Nobody but Myself. (Omar Aziz, NY Times): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. “Here is the basic conun­drum the child of immi­grants faces as he goes through school. Until now, he has safe­ly assumed the iden­ti­ty pro­vid­ed to him by his fam­i­ly, but as he encoun­ters inno­cent white faces, he is con­front­ed with an inter­ro­ga­tion about who he real­ly is.”
  7. Would Your Dog Eat You if You Died? Get the Facts. (Eri­ka Engel­haupt, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “There’s no way to guar­an­tee that your pet won’t eat you if you die, apart from not hav­ing any pets. Even ham­sters and birds have been known to scav­enge on occa­sion.” Ham­sters? Real­ly? Who has ham­sters roam­ing freely through their house?

Things Glen Found Amusing

Something Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light a link I shared before which is still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  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. (first shared in vol­ume 2)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 105

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. Alvin Plantinga’s Mas­ter­ful Achieve­ment (William Doino, First Things): “In the 1950’s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher; by the 1990’s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
  2. The Man Behind Trump’s Reli­gious-Free­dom Agen­da for Health Care (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Sev­eri­no spent sev­en years in civ­il-rights enforce­ment at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice; before that, he lit­i­gat­ed reli­gious-lib­er­ty cas­es. He has expe­ri­ence. He just doesn’t share the ide­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions of many who work in his field.”
  3. Iraqi Chris­tians should not be deport­ed to become vic­tims of ISIS (Bawai Soro, The Hill): “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, for the first time ever, is about to deport to a coun­try under­go­ing an active geno­cide the very peo­ple tar­get­ed in that geno­cide.” See US Pre­pares to Deport Hun­dreds of Iraqi Chris­tians (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) for more details.
  4. There is no Thucy­dides Trap (Arthur Wal­dron, Supchi­na): “For the first time this year, my Chi­nese grad­u­ate stu­dents are mar­ry­ing one anoth­er and buy­ing hous­es here. This is a lead­ing indi­ca­tor. If it could be done, the com­ing tsuna­mi would bring 10 mil­lion high­ly qual­i­fied Chi­nese fam­i­lies to the U.S. in 10 years — along with flee­ing crooks, spies, and oth­er flot­sam and jet­sam. Even Xi’s first wife fled Chi­na; she lives in Eng­land.” The author is an IR pro­fes­sor at Penn.
  5. Can’t Believe You Think That (Cit­i­zen Of No Mean City): “Maybe next time before dis­miss­ing some­one for their views on this sub­ject we would do well to afford them the dig­ni­ty of hav­ing thought about their posi­tion, and to dig deep­er and ask ‘what has led them to think this way?’ or ‘can I learn from lis­ten­ing to them?’”
  6. Six Days and 50 Years of War (Bret Stephens, NY Times): “In June 1967 Arab lead­ers declared their inten­tion to anni­hi­late the Jew­ish state, and the Jews decid­ed they wouldn’t sit still for it. For the crime of self-preser­va­tion, Israel remains a nation unfor­giv­en.”
  7. Here are sev­er­al links about a dis­turb­ing moment on Capi­tol Hill:

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 86

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Here are the two arti­cles I allud­ed to in this week’s mes­sage: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly) and The Alco­hol Black­out (Sarah Hep­o­la, Texas Month­ly). The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. I have shared these both before (see vol­ume 18 and vol­ume 25).
  2. Who Is To Blame For The Great­est Myth In The His­to­ry Of Sci­ence And Reli­gion? These Two Guys (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “The so-called ‘war’ between faith and learn­ing, specif­i­cal­ly between ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence, was man­u­fac­tured…. It is a con­struct that was cre­at­ed for polem­i­cal pur­pos­es.”
  3. Home­less Find Rest In Faith-Based Shel­ters More Than Oth­ers (Adelle Banks, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “In a pre­lim­i­nary study of 11 U.S. cities, 58 per­cent of emer­gency beds for the home­less were at faith-based orga­ni­za­tions. That per­cent­age ranged wide­ly across the cities, with 90 per­cent of emer­gency beds in Oma­ha, Neb., pro­vid­ed by faith groups and 33 per­cent in Port­land, Ore.”
  4. How To Protest Bet­ter (Leah Sargeant, First Things): excel­lent sub­ti­tle, “light hearts, not trash cans, on fire.” Relat­ed per­spec­tive from the oppo­site side of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle: And Now It’s Time To Do The Real Work (Fred­erik deBoer). Also worth not­ing, Anar­chists, NOT Cal stu­dents, respon­si­ble for vio­lence in UC Berke­ley protests.
  5. The biggest news since last Friday’s email is Trump’s immi­gra­tion action. The two pieces I saw shared most by my thought­ful friends on social media are Malev­o­lence Tem­pered by Incom­pe­tence: Trump’s Hor­ri­fy­ing Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees and Visas (Ben­jamin Wittes, Law­fare) and Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees, Sep­a­rat­ing Fact from Hys­te­ria (David French, Nation­al Review). Two insight­ful fol­low-ups are What Con­ser­v­a­tives Get Wrong About Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Order (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic) and Tal­ly­ing Up Trump (Peter Lei­thart, First Things). George Wood, the leader of my denom­i­na­tion, penned a Response To The Exec­u­tive Order on Immi­gra­tion.
  6. An Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Defends Trump’s First Week In Office (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “I’m will­ing to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt thus far because I, and many Amer­i­cans, have been unfor­tu­nate­ly trained by the press in recent years not to take their side auto­mat­i­cal­ly any­more. They have tremen­dous­ly under­mined them­selves.” It’s inter­est­ing to read Fake News and Evan­gel­i­cals (Alex Wil­gus, Com­mon Vision) in con­junc­tion with this.
  7. Neil Gor­such belongs to a notably lib­er­al church — and would be the first Protes­tant on the Court in years (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): He is Epis­co­pal, yet many Epis­co­pals (espe­cial­ly cler­gy) are opposed to his nom­i­na­tion, where­as evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics are most­ly delight­ed. 

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 81

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pas­tor, Am I A Chris­t­ian? (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): Skep­ti­cal but inter­est­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al invites Tim Keller to answer his ques­tions about Chris­tian­i­ty and then pub­lish­es the con­ver­sa­tion. #goals  (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  2. Free Pas­tor Andrew: Chris­tians Ral­ly for Mis­sion­ary Jailed in Turkey (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) : “Turkey has accused mul­ti­ple pas­tors of being ‘a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’”
  3. China’s Great Leap Back­ward (James Fal­lows, The Atlantic): “This assess­ment implies that U.S. atten­tion should be focused on get­ting through an upcom­ing time of dif­fi­cul­ty, which could last years or decades, with­out pan­ick­ing that his­to­ry now seems to favor the repres­sive Chi­nese mod­el of gov­er­nance.” This is a long piece, but the issue is an impor­tant one and it is worth your time. For some sor­ta semi-relat­ed thoughts on Rus­sia, read The Russ­ian Ques­tion by Niall Fer­gu­son: “the Unit­ed States should be clos­er to each of Rus­sia and Chi­na than they are to one anoth­er.”
  4. How Out­ra­geous Are the New North Car­oli­na Laws? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion) is help­ful, and for some per­spec­tive read His­to­ry Can Teach Both Par­ties (John Hood, Car­oli­na Jour­nal). The most alarmist view I have seen is North Car­oli­na Is No Longer Clas­si­fied as a Democ­ra­cy, an op-ed by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at UNC. 
  5. Why the Catholic Church some­times turns to sci­ence to inves­ti­gate mir­a­cles (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): “The patient is still alive, pos­ing an ongo­ing chal­lenge to sci­en­tif­ic researchers. ‘I have zero expla­na­tion for why she’s alive. She does,’ Duf­fin said.”
  6. Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Mat­ters (Ravi Zacharias, Gospel Coali­tion): “There is an ulti­mate cry for jus­tice in every heart. Jus­tice counts on the truth. With­out those two real­i­ties, civ­i­liza­tion will die.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. The Impact of Holy Land Cru­sades on State For­ma­tion: War Mobi­liza­tion, Trade Inte­gra­tion, and Polit­i­cal Devel­op­ment in Medieval Europe (Lisa Blay­des and Christo­pher Paik, Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion): “Areas with high lev­els of cru­sad­er mobi­liza­tion wit­nessed more polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the cen­turies to fol­low. The causal mech­a­nism that we put for­ward is that the depar­ture of rel­a­tive­ly large num­bers of Euro­pean land­ed elites for the Holy Land reduced the absolute num­ber of elites who might serve as chal­lengers to the king.” File away under expla­na­tions I had nev­er con­sid­ered. Blay­des is a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford and Paik at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 76

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible — Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One — Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two — New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful.
  2. Struc­tur­al Racism (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “if your mind is Bible-sat­u­rat­ed, you would con­sid­er it absolute­ly aston­ish­ing if struc­tur­al racism were not per­va­sive wher­ev­er sin is per­va­sive. In oth­er words, Bible-shaped peo­ple should expect to see struc­tur­al racism almost every­where in a fall­en world.”
  3. How Methodists Invent­ed Your Kid’s Grape Juice Sug­ar High (Luke Har­ring­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): why many church­es use grape juice for com­mu­nion.
  4. More post-elec­tion thoughts:
    1. Why Can’t I Mourn? (Kyle James Howard, per­son­al blog): “For many, it appears that it is unac­cept­able for me to grieve racism and abor­tion equal­ly. That for many, a Chris­t­ian only has the capac­i­ty to grieve one or the oth­er but not both.”
    2. No, the Major­i­ty of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Did Not Vote for Trump (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): you may recall that I sug­gest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar in last week’s email — here’s a wide-rang­ing expla­na­tion. There is no doubt more to be said on this.
    3. You Are Still Cry­ing Wolf (Scott Alexan­der, Slat­eStar­Codex): “I real­ize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy per­son and put me com­plete­ly at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luck­i­ly, being a crazy per­son at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pret­ty good tick­et to pre­dic­tive accu­ra­cy late­ly, so what­ev­er.” This is a long and detailed argu­ment that Trump is not racist (or at least not more racist than lots of peo­ple). I was sur­prised at how well it held my inter­est. See also Ross Douthat’s insight­ful twit­ter cri­tique of the arti­cle. For a con­trary point of view (sort of — it’s less about Trump and more about what Trump sig­ni­fies), see Racism Prob­a­bly Is Get­ting Worse. (I Hope I’m Wrong.) (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View). If you read one, read all three.
    4. Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Search­ing (Michael Cieply, Dead­spin): “By and large, tal­ent­ed reporters scram­bled to match sto­ries with what inter­nal­ly was often called ‘the nar­ra­tive.’ We were occa­sion­al­ly asked to map a nar­ra­tive for our var­i­ous beats a year in advance, square the plan with edi­tors, then gen­er­ate sto­ries that fit the pre-des­ig­nat­ed line.” This piece is impor­tant and depress­ing.
    5. The coali­tion for diver­si­ty whose diver­si­ty did diver­si­ty just win? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): do not let the con­fus­ing title put you off. Cowen argues that the Repub­li­cans are in some sens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse than the Democ­rats.
    6. #Nev­erTrump And Pres­i­dent Trump (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The church’s great­est the­olo­gians have long said that a prop­er­ly Chris­t­ian com­mon­wealth will be con­cerned not with the greater good—the most good for the most people—or with the pri­vate good of Chris­tians alone, but with the com­mon good.”
    7. How cov­er­ing the Red­skins name debate pre­pared me for Don­ald Trump’s win (Dan Stein­berg, Washing­ton Post): “They told me that media Twit­ter wasn’t the real world, that it cre­at­ed a pho­ny idea of con­sen­sus for a stance that wasn’t actu­al­ly ascen­dant. And they argued that a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect onslaught from big-city elites would only strength­en their con­vic­tions.”
    8. Don­ald Trump can absolute­ly ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the US, with­out Con­gress (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “I [asked] sev­er­al experts on US immi­gra­tion law. Their answer was unan­i­mous: Trump would be able to imple­ment his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it eas­i­ly.” I didn’t know the pres­i­dent had this pow­er. Sur­pris­ing giv­en our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances.
    9. The Cul­ture That Cre­at­ed Don­ald Trump Was Lib­er­al Not Con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Lewis, The Inter­cept): “Lib­er­als were sure the dev­il would come slouch­ing out of Alaba­ma or Texas, beat­ing a bible and shout­ing about sodomy and sin. They didn’t expect him to be a busi­ness­man who lives on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.” This is some­thing I saw allud­ed to in the pri­maries but haven’t seen men­tioned in a while. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 73

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Here is the 2010 arti­cle I men­tioned in my ser­mon: Study of the ther­a­peu­tic effects of prox­i­mal inter­ces­so­ry prayer (STEPP) on audi­to­ry and visu­al impair­ments in rur­al Mozam­bique (Google schol­ar link). And the book I men­tioned, Mir­a­cles by Craig Keen­er, is in Green Library at BS2548 .K44 2011. 
  2. The Bur­ial Place Of Jesus Exposed For The First Time In Cen­turies: An Inter­view On What It Orig­i­nal­ly Looked Like And How We Know This Is The Right Loca­tion (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “Read­ers might won­der, though, how we know this is real­ly the place Jesus was buried…. What does the Bible say? How about archae­ol­o­gy? Do we know what first-cen­tu­ry tombs looked like? How big were these tombs?”
  3. Papyrus offers non­bib­li­cal men­tion of Judean king­dom in Jerusalem (Michael Chabin, Reli­gion News Service): “Israeli archae­ol­o­gists have unveiled the ear­li­est known non­bib­li­cal Hebrew-lan­guage ref­er­ence to Jerusalem, dat­ing back to the time of the First Tem­ple in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry B.C.” Note that there is some con­tro­ver­sy about the papyrus.
  4. Nei­ther Trump Nor Clin­ton Is The End Of The Repub­lic (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “[Amer­i­ca] sur­vived chat­tel slav­ery that made a mock­ery of found­ing prin­ci­ples, Shay’s Rebel­lion, the Whiskey Insur­rec­tion, the burn­ing of its cap­i­tal by the British, the Trail of Tears, The Dred Scott deci­sion, the afore­men­tioned civ­il war, the assas­si­na­tions of pres­i­dents, Plessy vs. Fer­gu­son, an impe­ri­al­ist for­ay into the Philip­pines, the Espi­onage and Sedi­tion Acts, a flu pan­dem­ic that killed 20 mil­lion world­wide and an esti­mat­ed 675,000 Amer­i­cans, the Great Depres­sion, the glob­al rise of fas­cism, World War II, an expan­sion­ist Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship with nuclear weapons that infil­trat­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment, Jim Crow, Water­gate, urban riots, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion, and the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. But now it’s all over [because of this elec­tion].” See also Friedersdorf’s arti­cle How  Mil­lions Of Good Peo­ple Can Vote Dif­fer­ent­ly Than You Will.
  5. The Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quences of Law (Joe Bosquin, Builder): “Large, sweep­ing statutes like Prop 13 have con­se­quences that con­tin­ue to man­i­fest decades after they are passed. In this case, it’s a dearth of entry-lev­el hous­ing.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 69

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. 
  2. A Col­lege Is A Com­mu­ni­ty But It Can­not Be A Home (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): for­get col­lege. This whole world is not your home — 1 Peter 2:11; Hebrews 13:14.
  3. Is Pla­gia­rism A Sin? (Ger­vase Markham, per­son­al blog): this is well-argued and rais­es issues I had not con­sid­ered before.
  4. Split Over Don­ald Trump and Cut Off by Cul­ture Wars, Evan­gel­i­cals Despair (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY Times): an unusu­al­ly per­cep­tive piece from the often obliv­i­ous-to-reli­gion New York Times.
  5. Sci­ence Denial­ism: Pot. Ket­tle. Black. (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): a nuclear physi­cist gives an stim­u­lat­ing sum­ma­ry of cos­mo­log­i­cal fine-tun­ing and how both the­ists and skep­tics often mis­un­der­stand it.
  6. Eco­nom­ic Free­dom and Reli­gion: An Empir­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tion (SSRN): “Our cross-sec­tion­al dataset includes 137 coun­tries aver­aged over the peri­od 2001–2010. Sim­ple cor­re­la­tions show that Protes­tantism is asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic free­dom, Islam is not, with Catholi­cism in between.”
  7. Can Islam and Lib­er­al­ism Coex­ist? (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Sha­di Hamid. “Dur­ing the course of our con­ver­sa­tion… we dis­cussed why lib­er­als have trou­ble tak­ing reli­gion seri­ous­ly, the future of Islamist pol­i­tics in Turkey and Egypt, and what the rise of Don­ald Trump has meant for Amer­i­can Mus­lims.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 68

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mis­sion­ar­ies are strug­gling to work under new Rus­sia law ban­ning pros­e­ly­tiz­ing (Michael Ali­son Chan­dler, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A month after the restric­tions went into effect on July 20, at least sev­en peo­ple had been charged under it…  The list includes a Bap­tist preach­er from the Unit­ed States who was charged with hold­ing reli­gious ser­vices in his home and adver­tis­ing them on pub­lic bul­letin boards. He was con­vict­ed and fined, but he is appeal­ing the case.”
  2. ‘Hill­song’ Casts a Sec­u­lar Lens on an Evan­gel­i­cal Band (NY Times, Joe Coscarel­li): “Hillsong’s cre­ative direc­tor… described embrac­ing the rock-star expo­sure as ‘try­ing to draw atten­tion to your­self for the sole premise of draw­ing atten­tion away from your­self’ — to God.”
  3. 7 Books on the White-Black Racial Divide You Should Read (Ivan Mesa, Gospel Coali­tion): because you don’t have enough books to read at Stan­ford.
  4. We Gave Four Good Poll­sters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Dif­fer­ent Results. (NY Times, Nate Cohn): “Well, well, well. Look at that. A net five-point dif­fer­ence between the five mea­sures, includ­ing our own, even though all are based on iden­ti­cal data. Remem­ber: There are no sam­pling dif­fer­ences in this exer­cise.” I didn’t know this at all. Wow. We know less about the elec­tion than we thought.
  5. “If you are a very tal­ent­ed per­son, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Sil­i­con Val­ley.” (Peter Thiel said it, and this link is to an op-ed by Aaron Renn in a Chica­go paper defend­ing it.) For a con­trary take, read this com­ment from Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion.
  6. No, We Should­n’t Start Wor­ry­ing About Glob­al Inequal­i­ty — Pover­ty’s The Prob­lem (Forbes, Tim Worstall): “[Reduc­ing inequal­i­ty is] a bad goal. One rea­son being that rich peo­ple get­ting poor­er reduces inequal­i­ty. And if inequal­i­ty reduc­tion is our goal then we should there­fore wel­come such things as reces­sions.” Found on a student’s twit­ter feed.
  7. What If Evo­lu­tion Bred Real­i­ty Out Of Us? (NPR, Adam Frank): read­ing this called to mind some­thing Chester­ton observed way back in 1908:

    It is idle to talk always of the alter­na­tive of rea­son and faith. Rea­son is itself a mat­ter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any rela­tion to real­i­ty at all. If you are mere­ly a scep­tic, you must soon­er or lat­er ask your­self the ques­tion, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even obser­va­tion and deduc­tion? Why should not good log­ic be as mis­lead­ing as bad log­ic? They are both move­ments in the brain of a bewil­dered ape?” The young scep­tic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old scep­tic, the com­plete scep­tic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” — Ortho­doxy, G. K. Chester­ton

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 67

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Ice­break­ers Are Ter­ri­ble. They Also, Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Work Real­ly Well (Cari Romm, NY Mag­a­zine): “Is there any val­ue to mak­ing a room­ful of peo­ple mis­er­able with false cheer? Psy­chol­o­gist Anton Vil­la­do is adamant that the answer is yes, and that ice­break­ers don’t have to be pleas­ant to be effec­tive.” Rel­e­vant for the start of the school year.
  2. Reli­gion in US ‘worth more than Google and Apple com­bined’ (Har­ri­et Sher­wood, The Guardian): “the sums spent by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions on social pro­grammes have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9bn. Twen­ty of the top 50 char­i­ties in the US are faith-based, with a com­bined oper­at­ing rev­enue of $45.3bn.” There’s some excel­lent com­men­tary on this at Crux.
  3. The First Coun­try to Offi­cial­ly Defend Chris­tians Per­se­cut­ed by ISIS (World Watch Mon­i­tor at Chris­tian­i­ty Today): It’s Hun­gary. Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter for Human Resources said, “Today, Chris­tian­i­ty has become the most per­se­cut­ed reli­gion, where out of five peo­ple killed [for] reli­gious rea­sons, four of them are Chris­tians.… In 81 coun­tries around the world, Chris­tians are per­se­cut­ed, and 200 mil­lion Chris­tians live in areas where they are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”
  4. Why Not a Col­lege Degree in Sports? (Roger Pielke Jr., NY Times): “Beyond our cul­tur­al bias­es, what real­ly is the dif­fer­ence between a Shake­speare play, an orches­tra con­cert and a bas­ket­ball game? Each per­for­mance requires some high-lev­el com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and men­tal acu­ity, devel­oped through years of train­ing and study, and for which only a select few reach elite lev­els.” There is a sim­i­lar arti­cle back in issue 44.
  5. Time For A Realign­ment (NY Times, David Brooks): “There’s a good chance many of you will be switch­ing polit­i­cal par­ties over the next 15 years.” This is true both for the rea­sons Brooks men­tions and also because some of you will change your minds.
  6. The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing.

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).

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.

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