Tag: communion

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Two Hun­dred Peo­ple Left Our Small Church (Ben­jamin Vrbicek, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In sev­en years, our church—in terms of net attendance—has grown from around 150 to 350. But in the same amount of time, our church has lost as many as have stayed. The loss­es nev­er occur rapid­ly, as though a lev­ee burst, but more as a steady trick­le or slow leak. A few of our mem­bers died. One went to jail. One wrote me an eight-page let­ter of griev­ances I was instruct­ed to share with the elders; anoth­er wrote a chap­ter-length blog post sug­gest­ing we’re not even a church. Some parish­ioners didn’t let the door hit them on the way out because they kicked it off the hinges and left us to pick up the shat­tered pieces. These depar­tures are by far the excep­tions. Many of those who left told me nei­ther why they left nor even that they had left. I often find out via back chan­nels like social media and oth­er imper­son­al means.”
   • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle.
   • On a relat­ed note: one of a pas­tor’s love lan­guages is near­ly always atten­dance. If you stop going to a church, pas­tors assume that part of the rea­son you stopped is that you don’t like them. Even though they intel­lec­tu­al­ly know that is not always the case, it is nonethe­less a felt real­i­ty. It’s not true of all pas­tors, but I feel very con­fi­dent say­ing it is true of most pas­tors. Pas­tors often feel great sor­row when remem­ber­ing peo­ple who qui­et­ly depart­ed. Lov­ing peo­ple who don’t love you back (or you assume don’t love you back) is a man­date of the Chris­t­ian life, but it’s not fun.
2. I read the entire Quran, all the Hadiths, and the Sira. Here is what I found. (A.C. Rosen­thal, Sub­stack): “Plen­ty of ancient texts con­tain things that make mod­ern read­ers uncom­fort­able, and the Bible is not exempt from that cat­e­go­ry. The ques­tion that changed every­thing was struc­tur­al. It is this: in Chris­tian­i­ty, the founder is the stan­dard against which the insti­tu­tion is mea­sured. When the church falls short, the accu­sa­tion is always: you are not liv­ing like Jesus. The stan­dard itself is not in ques­tion. Jesus did not order raids. He did not arrange mar­riages with chil­dren. He did not autho­rize the exe­cu­tion of apos­tates. He was exe­cut­ed by the state, not empow­ered by it. Every­thing the church has done wrong can be mea­sured against what Jesus actu­al­ly did and found want­i­ng. The stan­dard holds. In Islam, the founder is the stan­dard. When you exam­ine the pri­ma­ry sources and find things that trou­ble you, you are not find­ing a gap between Islam and Muham­mad. You are find­ing Muham­mad.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry. A sol­id arti­cle with a gen­tle tone.
3. Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physi­cists been retract­ed? (Sam Kean, Sci­ence): “In ear­ly May, Yves Gin­gras, a his­to­ri­an of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Que­bec (UQ) at Mon­tre­al, was brows­ing Retrac­tion Watch, a web­site that cat­a­logs fraud, data manip­u­la­tion, and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic sins. He noticed a link that read, ‘Retrac­tions by Nobel Prize win­ners.’ Were there real­ly Nobel lau­re­ates whose papers had been with­drawn from the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture? After click­ing, Gin­gras froze. ‘That’s impos­si­ble,’ he recalls think­ing. The fourth name on the list, with two retract­ed papers, was Max Planck—a leg­endary pio­neer of quan­tum mechan­ics and the 1918 Nobel lau­re­ate in physics.”
   • Brief and worth the read. Super-inter­est­ing.
4. He Went to Prison. Now He Is in Charge of Them. (P.G. Sit­ten­feld, The Free Press): “Josh Smith, 51, spent this past Christ­mas in prison. Just like he did for five years after being caught at the age of 21 in pos­ses­sion of a kilo­gram of cocaine and 150 pounds of mar­i­jua­na. The dif­fer­ence? Smith wasn’t behind bars any­more. A year ago this month, he was sworn in as deputy direc­tor of the fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP), one of the world’s largest prison sys­tems.”
   • A fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file of a Chris­t­ian in pub­lic ser­vice.
5. I Co-Found­ed Wikipedia. Now I’m Banned for Life. (Lar­ry Sanger, The Free Press): “In exas­per­a­tion, I point­ed out that the mob was not fol­low­ing due process. There was no des­ig­nat­ed pros­e­cu­tor, but rather many self-select­ed ones. There was no list of charges, and what­ev­er any­one said became an action­able charge. There was no assigned judge, because my accusers were also my judges. And of course there was no pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, no jury, and no require­ment of deco­rum that would for­bid prej­u­di­cial state­ments. I knew Wikipedia’s dis­ci­pli­nary process­es were bad—but I had nev­er expe­ri­enced them myself. I was tried by a face­less mob. I learned that their great­est anger is reserved for those who refuse to bow in awe of their mighty pow­er.”
   • Sanger is, inci­den­tal­ly, a rel­a­tive­ly recent con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty, as I men­tioned last year.
6. Sci­ence rais­es more ques­tions than it answers (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “[Skep­tics] have faith (not entire­ly unwar­rant­ed on their lim­it­ed knowl­edge) that nat­ur­al the­o­ries will even­tu­al­ly fill every gap, not real­iz­ing that the gaps tend to widen and mul­ti­ply the deep­er we go. The ratio of what we know to what we don’t know keeps shrink­ing, and I sus­pect that’s by design. What’s an athe­ist to do once they ful­ly grasp this? I don’t know—maybe just accept that the uni­verse is fun­ny that way. But they should stop accus­ing Chris­tians of a ‘God of the gaps’ fal­la­cy when we invoke God for what is tru­ly unex­plain­able by nat­ur­al means.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
7. Who Should Be Admit­ted to the Lord’s Sup­per? 4 Views (Davy Elli­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Today, the table is cel­e­brat­ed less fre­quent­ly and more lan­guid­ly by many. It shouldn’t be so—everyone (but espe­cial­ly church lead­ers) needs to con­sid­er the supper’s fre­quen­cy, sig­nif­i­cance, and ben­e­fits. I want to help you think more deeply about who should be admit­ted to the sup­per. If com­mu­nion is a pre­cious and pro­found priv­i­lege, who par­tic­i­pates is impor­tant.”
   • The author comes to a wrong con­clu­sion, but explains some posi­tions that you might not know exist­ed along the way.

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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.