Tag: culture

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 94

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. Sor­ry, but if you’re a Chris­t­ian, you need to go to church. Reg­u­lar­ly. (Paul Prather, Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader): “You might see your­self as a ter­rif­ic base­ball pitch­er. But if you only throw base­balls in your back­yard at a ply­wood cutout, you won’t progress. You’re not even real­ly play­ing base­ball. To dis­cov­er the full extent of your abil­i­ties, to under­stand the true game, you need a catch­er, a coach, infield­ers and out­field­ers — and even some­one stand­ing in the batter’s box ready to swat your best fast­ball right back at you.”
  2. Review­ing Rod Dreher’s “The Bene­dict Option” (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): The Bene­dict Option is a much-dis­cussed book which lays out a strat­e­gy for Chris­tians in the mod­ern world — delib­er­ate with­draw­al from some aspects of cul­ture, delib­er­ate engage­ment with oth­ers. This is one of the most insight­ful reviews I’ve read.
  3. Just Who Are These ‘Peo­ple of Faith’ Any­way? (John Stack­house, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Ther­ava­da form of Bud­dhism, still the dom­i­nant ver­sion of that reli­gion in Sri Lan­ka and South­east Asia, does not ven­er­ate a deity. The Chi­nese tra­di­tions of Con­fu­cian­ism and Dao­ism do not, either. Many forms of belief in the super­nat­ur­al do not require faith so much as knowl­edge of the divine and of the cor­rect prac­tices to align one­self with it in order to best nego­ti­ate the world.”
  4. Can Reli­gious Char­i­ties Take the Place of the Wel­fare State? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Keis­ter [a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty] has argued that reli­gious engage­ment is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with finan­cial generosity—in a recent paper, for exam­ple, she found that those who attend reli­gious ser­vices every week give near­ly three times as much as those who don’t.”
  5. Read the above in con­junc­tion with How Utah Keeps The Amer­i­can Dream Alive (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “The vast wel­fare infra­struc­ture from the Mor­mon Church nat­u­ral­ly makes it eas­i­er to have small­er gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that could be repli­cat­ed by oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. But the val­ues of the Mor­mon Church may cre­ate a pub­lic that sim­ply needs less help. That’s hard­er for anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty to imi­tate. I’m not sure this key ingre­di­ent is avail­able in a sec­u­lar ver­sion; I think reli­gion might only come in reli­gion fla­vor. How the heck is some state gov­ern­ment sup­posed to get peo­ple to mar­ry, and stay mar­ried?”
  6. In Europe, cohab­i­ta­tion is stable…right? (Brad Wilcox and Lau­rie DeRose, Brook­ings): “It is easy to see why some con­clude that mar­riage per se does not mat­ter. But here’s the thing: mar­riage is itself strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty. U.S. chil­dren born to cohab­it­ing par­ents are twice as like­ly to see their par­ents’ rela­tion­ship end com­pared to chil­dren born to mar­ried par­ents…”
  7. Does it pay to get a dou­ble major? (Chris­tos Makridis, Quartz): our very own Chris­tos ana­lyzes whether get­ting a techie plus a fuzzy major yields a high­er salary than get­ting either alone.
  8. Why Amer­i­can Farm­ers Are Hack­ing Their Trac­tors With Ukrain­ian Firmware (Jason Koe­bler, Vice): “It’s quite sim­ple, real­ly. John Deere sold farm­ers their trac­tors, but has used soft­ware to main­tain con­trol of every aspect of its use after the sale.”

    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 66

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. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
  2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
  3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
  4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
  5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
  6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
  7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
  8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

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 17

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. Fear (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, NY Review Of Books): I don’t often find overt­ly the­o­log­i­cal pieces in the New York Review of Books, much less ones whose open­ing lines are, “Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian coun­try. This is true in a num­ber of sens­es.” She’s gonna get some hate mail.
  2. Some things that made me chuck­le:
  3. Why Do Good Uni­ver­si­ties Tend To Be Good At Every­thing? (Quo­ra ques­tion): Short but insight­ful.
  4. What Stan­ford Taught Me About Grace (Seth Vil­le­gas, per­son­al blog): Seth is an alum­nus of our min­istry who is cur­rent­ly doing grad work at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
  5. Reli­gion and the Repub­lic (David Forte, With­er­spoon Insti­tute): the author (a law pro­fes­sor) explains the impor­tance of reli­gious speech in the pub­lic square. This seems like a good place to men­tion one of my favorite aca­d­e­m­ic papers: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy.
  6. From the I‑know-I-shared-this-last-week-but-want-to-share-it-with-the-new-stu­dents depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.

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.