Tag: drugs

TGFI, Volume 558: global stupidity and counterproductive relevancy

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. Unlocked: The Fire of Stu­pid­i­ty Can­not Be Con­tained (David French, New York Times): “A dis­turb­ing num­ber of young peo­ple on the right are fas­ci­nat­ed with fas­cism. An extra­or­di­nary 34 per­cent of young peo­ple over­all express a favor­able view of com­mu­nism, and young Amer­i­cans are far more like­ly than their par­ents or grand­par­ents to say that polit­i­cal vio­lence is ‘some­times OK.’ And hov­er­ing over Amer­i­can cul­ture like a dark cloud is the rise of anti­semitism on both the left and the right.… When you step back and actu­al­ly think about it, these trends are con­found­ing. I mean, I can under­stand the temp­ta­tion to return to some of the dis­cred­it­ed ideas of the recent past, I guess, but to revive so many, all at once? And to do it so soon after those wretched ideas rav­aged the world?”
  2. The Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion Of Chris­tian­i­ty (Freya India, Sub­stack): “For a while I thought my gen­er­a­tion might be find­ing God. Now I wor­ry we are just find­ing con­tent about God.… Who knows, maybe in the future many of us will say we found Jesus through a YouTube Short, that God got rec­om­mend­ed by our algo­rithm. But I doubt it. I think if Chris­tians want to reach my gen­er­a­tion, real­ly reach us, they have to promise some­thing total­ly sep­a­rate from that, some­thing oth­er­world­ly, some­thing that doesn’t abide by mar­ket log­ic, some­thing dif­fer­ent, divine. Some­thing, for once, that isn’t cheap­ened or com­mod­i­fied.”
  3. There’s a Play­book for Col­lege. There Should Be One for Mar­riage. (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “We need to pro­vide young peo­ple with the same sort of struc­ture for find­ing a spouse that we’ve giv­en them for get­ting into col­lege. And they need to under­stand the degree of effort and inten­tion­al­i­ty required to get mar­ried.… Many peo­ple will be per­fect­ly hap­py being sin­gle or child­less for life. These aren’t for every­one. But col­lege isn’t for every­one either. Yet we edu­cate our high school­ers on the eco­nom­ic val­ue it can bring, the pres­tige of var­i­ous schools, the like­ly career prospects of dif­fer­ent majors, the real­is­tic schools one could attend and how to get into them. We could do some­thing sim­i­lar for mar­riage. In fact, we could tack some of that onto the col­lege advice. We should let young peo­ple know that col­lege is a once in a life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet large num­bers of high qual­i­ty sin­gles who are poten­tial future spous­es, for exam­ple.”
    • I keep telling y’all…
  4. Three Help­ful Word Pic­tures on AI Usage (Michael Gra­ham, blog): “There are two kinds of work — toil and labor: Toil is a work that is a direct result of the Fall. Labor is work that is a direct result of the creation/cultural man­date.… I am broad­ly inclined to use AI for toil and I am broad­ly reluc­tant to use gen­er­a­tive AI for labor.” (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  5. Can Chris­tians Smoke Weed? (Daniel Dar­ling, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “There’s no Bible verse that says, Thou shalt not smoke weed. But we can and should con­sid­er sev­er­al scrip­tur­al prin­ci­ples in our moral deci­sion-mak­ing about this drug, and I believe they lead to the con­clu­sion that cannabis has no place in the life of a Chris­t­ian.”
  6. I Watched an Evan­gel­i­cal Col­lege Die From the Inside (Antho­ny Bradley, Sub­stack): “…U.S. birthrates col­lapsed dur­ing the Great Reces­sion and nev­er recov­ered. This means that every enter­ing fresh­man class nation­wide will be small­er than the one before it, not for a sea­son, but for the fore­see­able future. America’s fer­til­i­ty rate is cur­rent­ly 1.6 births per woman. We have a col­lege edu­ca­tion envi­ron­ment built on a pri­or 2.3 birth rate. This is not mere­ly a mar­ket­ing prob­lem. You can­not recruit your way out of a demo­graph­ic decline. Insti­tu­tions that have been built on the assump­tion of a steady pipeline of eigh­teen-year-olds are now fac­ing a struc­tur­al ceil­ing. It’s the demo­graph­ic cliff. It’s a huge cliff. The pipeline is nar­row­ing, and no amount of enroll­ment strat­e­gy changes that fact.”
    • Worth read­ing even if you have no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties. Good info on the high­er-ed land­scape gen­er­al­ly.
  7. Why can’t Cal­i­for­nia count? (Eli McK­own-Daw­son and Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “[India is] one of the few places that can claim to have even more com­plex­i­ties than Cal­i­for­nia. In fact, elec­tions there are con­duct­ed in mul­ti­ple stages. But it did man­age to count 640 mil­lion votes in a day in 2024 once the final phase was over. Indeed, the more you scru­ti­nize this, the few­er excus­es Cal­i­for­nia has. It is not the state with the most mail vot­ing, nor is it the state with the lat­est mail bal­lot return dead­line. Mail-vot­ing states such as Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton, and Col­orado count slow­ly rel­a­tive to the US aver­age, but they’re all faster than Cal­i­for­nia.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.

TGFI, Volume 542: the humanities backstory and overhyped Chinese academia

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. The Multi­bil­lion-Dol­lar Foun­da­tion That Con­trols the Human­i­ties (Tyler Austin Harp­er, The Atlantic): “Today, no sin­gle enti­ty, includ­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, has a more pro­found influ­ence on the fis­cal health and cul­tur­al out­put of the human­i­ties than the Mel­lon Foun­da­tion. The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties’ grant bud­get was $78 mil­lion in 2024 (its over­all bud­get was less than half of what it was in 1980, when adjust­ed for infla­tion). Mel­lon award­ed $540 mil­lion in grants that same year; its endow­ment sits at rough­ly $8 bil­lion. Mellon’s largesse is bad­ly need­ed, espe­cial­ly as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has threat­ened fur­ther cuts to the NEH. But the foundation’s vir­tu­al monop­oly on human­i­ties fund­ing means that it has the pow­er to remake entire fields accord­ing to its desires. And in recent years, under the lead­er­ship of Eliz­a­beth Alexan­der, who became the organization’s pres­i­dent in 2018, Mel­lon has embraced an under­stand­ing of the human­i­ties that is much more util­i­tar­i­an, and far more polit­i­cal, than the one put for­ward by the 1964 com­mis­sion.”
    • Unlocked and gen­uine­ly shock­ing to me. One of the key insights: “The human­i­ties aren’t broke because they went woke. The human­i­ties went woke in large part _because_ they were broke. As oth­er donors, the gov­ern­ment, and uni­ver­si­ties them­selves all but aban­doned these fields, Mel­lon became a life­line.”
  2. The Pop­u­lar Pro­gres­sive Pod­cast Call­ing Evan­gel­i­cals ‘Can­cer’ (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, The Free Press): “…it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the vit­ri­ol she directs at [evan­gel­i­cals] being tar­get­ed at any oth­er reli­gious group by a major media fig­ure with so lit­tle con­se­quence. Take one clip that has cir­cu­lat­ed among evan­gel­i­cals recent­ly. I assumed its cap­tion on X, ‘White Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty is a can­cer,’ was intend­ed to scan­dal­ize with the most incen­di­ary quote. I thought wrong. If any­thing, the cap­tion under­sold a slan­der­ous, incu­ri­ous, unse­ri­ous screed that informed Welch’s view­ers that evan­gel­i­cals are ‘the worst peo­ple in our coun­try.’ They are, Welch says, peo­ple who want oth­ers to suf­fer, who belong to a ‘cult.’ And for Welch, this kind of lan­guage is par for the course. ‘I detest, with every mol­e­cule… in my being, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty,’ she said in May.”
  3. Get Mar­ried Young (Brad Wilcox, Com­pact): “First, the cul­ture is telling you to lean into work and trav­el. But work­ing for the man and ‘trav­el­ing to Thai­land’ is not going to bring you the ful­fill­ment you think it will. Sec­ond, you will min­i­mize your odds of being mis­er­able and max­i­mize your odds of liv­ing a mean­ing­ful and hap­py life by get­ting mar­ried and hav­ing kids. So, don’t wait to embark on life’s most impor­tant jour­ney. Third, do not assume that you can wait until your thir­ties to find a spouse and start your fam­i­ly. If you wait, you may miss out.”
    • Lots of good data in this one. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  4. Don’t Trust the Rank­ings That Put China’s Uni­ver­si­ties on Top (Ariel Pro­cac­cia, New York Times): “The gap between the rank­ings and real­i­ty can be explained by Goodhart’s law, which says that when a mea­sure becomes a tar­get, it ceas­es to be a good mea­sure. It’s like try­ing to cure a fever by icing the ther­mome­ter: You’ve cooled the instru­ment, but the patient is still burn­ing up. Chi­na has made suc­cess in glob­al uni­ver­si­ty rank­ings a nation­al pol­i­cy goal, in the process cre­at­ing incen­tives that pri­or­i­tize the appear­ance of excel­lence over the health of the research envi­ron­ment.”
  5. Two arti­cles about preva­lent sec­u­lar sex­u­al ethics:
    • Ope­nAI Exec­u­tive Who Opposed ‘Adult Mode’ Fired for Sex­u­al Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Geor­gia Wells & Sam Schech­n­er, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Ope­nAI has cut ties with one of its top safe­ty exec­u­tives, on the grounds of sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion, after she voiced oppo­si­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial roll­out of AI erot­i­ca in its Chat­G­PT prod­uct.… Before her fir­ing, Beier­meis­ter told col­leagues that she opposed adult mode, and wor­ried it would have harm­ful effects for users, peo­ple famil­iar with her remarks said. She also told col­leagues that she believed OpenAI’s mech­a­nisms to stop child-exploita­tion con­tent weren’t effec­tive enough, and that the com­pa­ny couldn’t suf­fi­cient­ly wall off adult con­tent from teens, the peo­ple said.”
    • The Sexbot Rev­o­lu­tion Is Already Here (Debra Soh, The Free Press): “Though sex dolls—meaning human‑like, anatom­i­cal­ly accu­rate, anthro­po­mor­phic figurines—were once believed to be used only by social­ly inept weirdos, today near­ly 10 per­cent of men in the U.S. have bought or owned one. And it’s not just the guys; 6 per­cent of women in the U.S. have done the same.… The aver­age sex doll own­er is a mid­dle-aged het­ero­sex­u­al man who is sin­gle or divorced, high-school edu­cat­ed, and employed. Research has shown that doll own­ers have sex with a doll about 11 times a month and sex with a human part­ner about 2.6 times a month. In con­trast, non–doll own­ers have sex with a human part­ner about 4.5 times a month.”
      • I am not con­vinced the num­bers in this arti­cle are reli­able (ten per­cent of guys sounds like a lot), but even if the num­bers are off this is kin­da wild.
  6. It’s Time for Amer­i­ca to Admit That It Has a Mar­i­jua­na Prob­lem (Edi­to­r­i­al Board, New York Times): “…sup­port­ers of legal­iza­tion pre­dict­ed that it would bring few down­sides. In our edi­to­ri­als, we described mar­i­jua­na addic­tion and depen­dence as ‘rel­a­tive­ly minor prob­lems.’ Many advo­cates went fur­ther and claimed that mar­i­jua­na was a harm­less drug that might even bring net health ben­e­fits. They also said that legal­iza­tion might not lead to greater use. It is now clear that many of these pre­dic­tions were wrong.… At least one in 10 peo­ple who use mar­i­jua­na devel­ops an addic­tion, a sim­i­lar share as with alco­hol. Even some who do not devel­op an addic­tion can still use it too much. Peo­ple who are fre­quent­ly stoned can strug­gle to hold a job or take care of their fam­i­lies.”
    • Unlocked.
  7. A Stan­ford Exper­i­ment to Pair 5,000 Sin­gles Has Tak­en Over Cam­pus (Jas­mine Li, Wall Street Jour­nal): “More than 5,000 Stan­ford stu­dents have used Date Drop at a school with about 7,500 under­grad­u­ates. It has spread to 10 oth­er col­leges includ­ing Colum­bia, Prince­ton and MIT, and Date Drop just raised $2.1 mil­lion in ven­ture-cap­i­tal fund­ing. The growth, fans say, reflects a real­i­ty about many col­lege kids: They’re intim­i­dat­ed by real-life courtship and over­whelmed by the end­less scroll of dat­ing apps. Entre­pre­neur­ial stu­dents have found huge demand for alter­nate match­mak­ing tools.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 512: denominations are good and smart people are bad

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 Denom­i­na­tions Are Good, Actu­al­ly (Eric Ton­jes, Mere Ortho­doxy): “I often hear non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al broth­ers and sis­ters talk about denom­i­na­tions as if they are the source of divi­sions in the church. Cer­tain­ly, the church is divid­ed, in both trag­ic and unavoid­able ways. Some divi­sions are the prod­uct of sin and self­ish­ness. Oth­ers are tem­po­rary but nec­es­sary because of dis­agree­ments about Scrip­ture and prac­tice. While the church still shares a spir­i­tu­al uni­ty, it is insti­tu­tion­al­ly split, and we should right­ly long to see it more uni­fied than it is. The thing that puz­zles me is the way many peo­ple think that by leav­ing any larg­er denom­i­na­tion or affil­i­a­tion group they are some­how help­ing to increase the uni­ty of the church. If your fam­i­ly is divid­ed, dis­own­ing every­body isn’t going to make it more unit­ed.”
  2. Peo­ple with high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty have weak­er moral foun­da­tions, new study finds (Eric W. Dolan, Psy­Post): “Peo­ple with high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty tend to endorse moral val­ues less strong­ly across the board, accord­ing to new research pub­lished in the jour­nal Intel­li­gence. The pat­tern held across two inde­pen­dent stud­ies and did not dif­fer by gen­der. These find­ings chal­lenge pop­u­lar assump­tions that smarter peo­ple hold stronger or more ‘enlight­ened’ moral val­ues.”
    • I actu­al­ly began to chuck­le at the arti­cle’s repeat­ed insis­tence that “most peo­ple assume smarter peo­ple are more moral.” Fact check: false. Smart peo­ple assume smarter peo­ple are more moral, sure. But most peo­ple? It’s hard not to notice that clever peo­ple are real­ly good at talk­ing them­selves into what­ev­er they need to talk them­selves into. And that means they’re good at ratio­nal­iz­ing self­ish and bad behav­ior.
  3. Heart­break and Hero­ism in Hill Coun­try, Texas (Dan Cren­shaw, The Free Pres): “The Guadalupe Riv­er that snakes through down­town Ker­rville aver­ages a depth of just 1.65 feet. But between 5:15 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. that day, it surged from two feet to 34 feet, becom­ing a lit­er­al wall of water that swept through Kerr Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ties.… One nev­er knows if they will be a hero when the time comes. Only a test of tragedy will be the judge. Many think they will act with courage, but fail. Many think they will lack the courage, but instead become the hero we need. Neigh­bors saved neigh­bors. Ordi­nary peo­ple became heroes. That is the spir­it of Texas. No flood can ever wash it away.”
    • That’s the same Dan Cren­shaw who serves as a con­gress­man. Many amaz­ing and heart­break­ing anec­dotes in this brief arti­cle.
  4. The Death of Par­ty­ing in the U.S.A.—and Why It Mat­ters (Derek Thomp­son, Sub­stack): “Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Amer­i­cans spent attend­ing or host­ing a social event declined by 50 per­cent. Almost every age group cut their par­ty time in half in the last two decades. For young peo­ple, the decline was even worse. Last year, Amer­i­cans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 per­cent less time attend­ing or host­ing par­ties than they did in 2003.”
  5. Eco­nom­ic Nihilism (Julia Stein­berg, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “Eco­nom­ic nihilism is then the ide­ol­o­gy of the young, aspi­rant class, will­ing to put in two years—but only two years—at what­ev­er firm is pres­ti­gious upon grad­u­a­tion. Eco­nom­ic nihilism is the ide­ol­o­gy that cel­e­brates tak­ing short­cuts. The econ­o­my itself is abstract­ed away, what’s left is a salary or its equiv­a­lent in cryp­to pay­outs.”
  6. Have Mer­cy on Me, a Zyn­ner (Luke Simon, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Your soul no longer pants for liv­ing water (Ps. 42:1) because the buzz has numbed its thirst. We’re trad­ing spir­i­tu­al depen­dence for a chem­i­cal calm, and we’re left with faith with­out hunger, wor­ship with­out depth, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with­out sur­ren­der. We become what Jesus warned against—not white­washed tombs but white-pouched ones.”
  7. “When peo­ple argue against free will, you often see them smug­gle in some intrigu­ing moral assump­tions.” (Rob Hen­der­son, Twit­ter)
    • The post has both text and a two-minute video of the author say­ing the same thing (tak­en from a longer video). The text is a good sum­ma­ry of the video, but the video gets a lil’ spicy at the end in a way the writ­ten text does not.

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 482

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 Chris­tians Oppose Euthana­sia (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Unlike many top­ics in the­ol­o­gy and ethics, this is not an issue on which the church has ever been ambigu­ous. There were no ear­ly church coun­cils to debate the tak­ing of inno­cent life. It didn’t take cen­turies of con­flict to adju­di­cate. On the con­trary, Chris­tians were known from the start for their adamant rejec­tion of pagan dis­re­spect for those unwant­ed by their fam­i­lies or deemed social­ly useless—the unborn and new­born, dis­abled and elder­ly.”
  2. When Was Jesus Born? Ital­ian Researcher Puts Christ’s Birth in Decem­ber, 1 BC (Edward Pentin, Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter): “[Herod was alive when Jesus was born, and we know Herod died after a lunar eclipse.] Ulti­mate­ly, based on the most accu­rate analy­sis pos­si­ble today of the vis­i­bil­i­ty to the naked eye of the lunar eclipses, the search for one of it real­ly vis­i­ble in Judea 2,000 years ago, placed in rela­tion to oth­er chrono­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal ele­ments deduced from the writ­ings of Jose­phus Flav­ius and Roman his­to­ry, leads to a sin­gle pos­si­ble solu­tion — name­ly, a dat­ing of the death of Herod the Great occur­ring in AD 2–3, com­pat­i­ble with the con­ven­tion­al begin­ning of the Chris­t­ian era — i.e., the Nativ­i­ty occurred at the end of the year 1 BC.”
  3. Sci­ence and Reli­gious Dog­ma­tism (Matías Cabel­lo, SSRN): “But why were non­be­liev­ers and oth­er free­thinkers par­tic­u­lar­ly cre­ative? Not because of lack of mys­ti­cism. Deists, with their mys­ti­cal belief in some sort of deity, have been as pro­duc­tive in sci­ence as out­right athe­ists (if not more). One pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for their joint abnor­mal­ly high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is that free­think­ing and athe­ism opened up a whole path of ideas dis­con­nect­ed from the pre­vail­ing thought sys­tem.… By the same token, how­ev­er, it fol­lows that, in a world over­whelm­ing­ly pop­u­lat­ed by athe­ists, the most inge­nious ideas should instead come from the few reli­gious­ly mind­ed (as long as their the­ol­o­gy offers a suf­fi­cient­ly stim­u­lat­ing thought sys­tem to dis­cov­er the secrets of nature). A result con­sis­tent with this inter­pre­ta­tion is the decline of the athe­ism coef­fi­cient among 20th-cen­tu­ry born sci­en­tists of table 1. By then, athe­ism had gone from being a dan­ger­ous and uncon­ven­tion­al world­view to become wide­spread among the sci­en­tif­ic elite.”
    • An inter­est­ing paper. I don’t buy all its con­clu­sions, but I enjoyed read­ing it. The excerpt is from at the end and is an impor­tant point: non­con­for­mi­ty brings some ben­e­fits, but non­con­for­mi­ty changes over time. It looks like heresy when ortho­doxy reigns, but non­con­for­mi­ty often looks like ortho­doxy when heresy has dom­i­nance. And we live in an era of heresy. As Tyler Cowen often com­ments: the impor­tant thinkers of the future will be reli­gious.
    • The author is, fun­ni­ly enough, an econ­o­mist teach­ing at a uni­ver­si­ty named after Mar­tin Luther.
  4. Two arti­cles mak­ing sim­i­lar points: our cur­rent aver­sion to invol­un­tary com­mit­ment is cru­el to some peo­ple who would great­ly ben­e­fit from the help that their men­tal ill­ness caus­es them to resist.
    • Jor­dan Neely Need­ed to Be Insti­tu­tion­al­ized (Josh Bar­ro, Sub­stack): “One through-line in the sto­ry is the immense amount of gov­ern­ment resources that were thrown at try­ing to keep Neely out of trou­ble. Through police, courts, jails, home­less out­reach, and treat­ment facil­i­ties, New York’s tax­pay­ers spent lav­ish­ly on an effort to keep Neely alive, in men­tal health care, and not pos­ing a dan­ger to the pub­lic or him­self. But it didn’t work because he was insane and he was not forced to accept the care he need­ed — except dur­ing a stint he spent in jail on Rik­ers Island, when he was suc­cess­ful­ly med­icat­ed.… it would behoove pro­gres­sives with pat takes about how what Neely real­ly need­ed was hous­ing and care to know that he was offered these things over and over again by an extreme­ly well-fund­ed social ser­vices appa­ra­tus. If you want­ed him to have hous­ing and care, you need­ed to be pre­pared to force them upon him; and if you weren’t, then you don’t have a solu­tion to the prob­lems of peo­ple like him.”
    • The Tragedy of Jor­dan Neely and Daniel Pen­ny (Bren­dan Ruber­ry, Per­sua­sion): “[End­ing invol­un­tary com­mit­ment had a per­verse effect, because] as it hap­pens, many patients are, in fact, unwill­ing to sub­mit to treat­ment, because noth­ing does more to harm one’s pow­ers of self-aware­ness, and one’s abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize the neces­si­ty of often lengthy pro­to­cols, than debil­i­tat­ing men­tal ill­ness.”
  5. Make Vil­lains Wicked Again (Ger­mán Sauce­do, First Things): “The clear images of true evil present in the best fairy tales, bal­lads, myths, and leg­ends offer both a vision of what is to be avoid­ed at all costs, as well as a vision of virtue. As such, the ‘sym­pa­thet­ic vil­lain’ genre is a symp­tom of a soci­ety that dis­agrees on what is good and what is evil, or that tries to explain evil away as trau­ma, psy­chopa­thy, or pathol­o­gy. But to iden­ti­fy and avoid evil, we must first learn to rec­og­nize the good. The insis­tence on sub­vert­ing vil­lains is a sign we have lost con­fi­dence in our belief that we can know what hero­ism looks like, a hero­ism that dis­plays the good that would oppose their unright­eous­ness.”
  6. Insur­ance com­pa­nies aren’t the main vil­lain of the U.S. health sys­tem (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “It’s not hard to under­stand why peo­ple hate health insur­ers. When you inter­act with the U.S. health care sys­tem, the providers — the hos­pi­tal staff, the doc­tor, the nurs­es, the tech­ni­cians — all just take care of you. The only time they ask you for mon­ey dur­ing your doc­tor vis­it is when you pay your copay at the front desk, and that’s usu­al­ly not that big — if the bill is big, they’ll send it to you lat­er. So for the most part, your inter­ac­tion with the providers is just you walk­ing up and ask­ing to be tak­en care of, and them tak­ing care of you. Your inter­ac­tion with the health insur­er, on the oth­er hand, feels like a strug­gle against an ene­my who wants to destroy you.”
  7. ‘Huge set­back’: SF’s mas­sive psy­che­del­ic church is leav­ing the city (Lester Black, SF Gate): “Hodges found­ed his church in 2019 around the belief that cannabis, mag­ic mush­rooms and oth­er psy­che­del­ic sub­stances are reli­gious sacra­ments that give humans spir­i­tu­al insights. Any adult can join by sign­ing up and pay­ing a $5 mem­ber­ship fee, which gives them access to pur­chase a wide range of psy­che­del­ic prod­ucts. Last year, the church expand­ed from its orig­i­nal loca­tion in Oak­land to a vacant build­ing on Howard Street in San Fran­cis­co. The church now counts over 115,000 mem­bers.”
    • Please note that the author is the “Cannabis edi­tor” at SF Gate. Some­times San Fran­cis­co becomes a par­o­dy of itself.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 472



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 472. There are (I am told) 472 ways to tile a 5x5 grid with inte­ger-sized squares (1x1 squares mixed with 2x2 squares and 3x3 squares, etc).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “We Lost Our Baby”: North Car­oli­na Fam­i­ly Los­es 3 after Climb­ing to Roof to Escape Helene Floods (FOX Weath­er on YouTube, 11 min­utes long): “I want them to remem­ber that there is joy beyond the pain… My son could­n’t be more proud at me for hang­ing on; my par­ents were prob­a­bly lift­ing me up when I was between the two things that were hold­ing me down. They are rejoic­ing at the fact that I now can tell them what God did for me, because it was God. He said, ‘Be still. I am in con­trol, and you will pass on.’ This is a back­fire for the dev­il, because he tried to take me out, and her I am shar­ing the word that my sev­en-year-old is a hero, and my par­ents live on in God’s glo­ry.”
    • You will absolute­ly cry watch­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Tolkien and Lewis Re-enchant­ed a War-Weary World (Lev Gross­man, New York Times): “‘The Myth­mak­ers’ takes us through 20 years of deep intel­lec­tu­al friend­ship between Lewis and Tolkien — which widened to include the social cir­cle around them, known as the Inklings — but it’s just as inter­est­ing when doc­u­ment­ing the slow, regret­table ship­wreck of that friend­ship. Jack and Tollers turned out to be not so very, very like each oth­er after all. After his con­ver­sion, Lewis, loud as ever, became famous as a radio lec­tur­er on Chris­tian­i­ty; this irked the qui­et, rig­or­ous Tolkien, because Lewis had nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied the­ol­o­gy, and Tolkien would nev­er have lec­tured on any­thing with­out earn­ing six advanced degrees in it first.”
  3. What Would Lecrae Do? (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…to hear one of the most tal­ent­ed and dec­o­rat­ed rap­pers alive name-check an artist whose work has revolved around Jesus was deeply heart­en­ing. What moves me is not the idea that some­day my own work might be noticed by some­one more famous. It’s the thought that a sin­cere, intel­li­gent, and pro­found artist like Kendrick Lamar, some­one who’s seen no end of good ideas and inter­est­ing art, might find some­thing in straight­for­ward­ly Chris­t­ian music that gives him pause, that makes him recon­sid­er.”
    • Christi­na is one of our alum­ni: a for­mer wor­ship leader and offi­cer in our min­istry.
  4. Held Hostage Over­seas? The IRS Wants Your Back Tax­es. (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “Many Amer­i­cans who return home after being ille­gal­ly detained over­seas arrive to find they’ve been billed thou­sands of dol­lars by the IRS—including late fees for unpaid tax­es.… ‘I got one of those bills from the IRS say­ing, you owe this much on this year, you owe this much on this year because of fail­ure to pay on time—here’s the inter­est that’s accrued,’ Wash­ing­ton Post reporter and for­mer hostage Jason Reza­ian told NPR. He faced more than $6,000 in fees for unpaid tax­es after his release, fol­low­ing 544 days of deten­tion in Iran.”
  5. Become Slaves to One Anoth­er (John M. G. Bar­clay, Plough): “Paul under­stands the world not as an emp­ty space in which indi­vid­u­als carve out their pri­vate sphere of free­dom, but as a ter­rain already pop­u­lat­ed by com­pet­ing pow­ers greater than human actors, who only imag­ine that they are free. As far as Paul is con­cerned, our search for an indi­vid­u­at­ed, atom­ized auton­o­my is itself an enslav­ing delu­sion, because we are, and are meant to be, free only as we are formed by rela­tion­ships with God and with oth­ers.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty at the Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land. He’s a well-regard­ed Bib­li­cal schol­ar.
  6. I Spent 13 Years Liv­ing as a Man. But After My Spouse’s Exposé, I’m Detran­si­tion­ing. (Tiger Reed, The Free Press): “For detran­si­tion­ers, there is no clear path. Gen­der-affirm­ing clin­i­cians have been ignor­ing and dis­miss­ing our con­cerns. While my tran­si­tion was cov­ered by insur­ance, my detran­si­tion is not. To restore my hair­line and remove my body hair will cost me thou­sands. In the next few years I may have breast recon­struc­tive surgery. There are many ques­tions I don’t have the answers to—such as whether my kids, now rang­ing in age from two to 16 years old, should still call me ‘Dad.’ I am plan­ning to change my name back to Rox­xanne, and to change my license so it says ‘female’ again. But I won­der if I’ll ever pass as a woman.  The gen­der-affirm­ing care mod­el relies on vul­ner­a­ble people’s impatience—rushing them toward major med­ical changes rather than stop­ping to under­stand the root of their pain and suf­fer­ing.”
  7. As America’s Mar­i­jua­na Use Grows, So Do the Harms (Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory and Car­son Kessler, New York Times): “The accu­mu­lat­ing harm is broad­er and more severe than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. And gaps in state reg­u­la­tions, lim­it­ed pub­lic health mes­sag­ing and fed­er­al restraints on research have left many con­sumers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and even med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers in the dark about such out­comes.… as more peo­ple turn to mar­i­jua­na for help with anx­i­ety, depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health issues, few know that it can cause tem­po­rary psy­chosis and is increas­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of chron­ic psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders.”
    • This is sad, both because of the human suf­fer­ing involved and also because some peo­ple seem gen­uine­ly shocked that drugs can have neg­a­tive side-effects.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 461



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 461, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. So You’ve Decid­ed to Vote for an Unfit Can­di­date (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “Come Novem­ber, most vot­ers will choose between two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, nei­ther of whom are fit for office, as I have pre­vi­ous­ly argued. I’m not just argu­ing that they are sin­ners and there­fore ‘evil’ in the sense that every­one is fall­en; I’m argu­ing that they are specif­i­cal­ly unjust and immoral and unfit for posi­tions of nation­al lead­er­ship.… There are many issues to take into account when vot­ing for a can­di­date, but one of them is how your vote will form your own soul.”
  2. Arti­cles mak­ing obser­va­tions rarely heard in high-sta­tus soci­ety:
    • New Research Finds Huge Dif­fer­ences Between Male and Female Brains (Leonard Sax, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “As you can see, there wasn’t a con­tin­u­um: the female fin­ger­prints of brain activ­i­ty were quite dif­fer­ent from the male fin­ger­prints of rest­ing brain activ­i­ty, with no over­lap. These find­ings strong­ly sug­gest that what’s going on in a woman’s brain at rest is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from what’s going on in a man’s brain at rest.”
    • How divorce nev­er ends (Brid­get Pheta­sy, The Spec­ta­tor): “All of this is to say some­thing you don’t hear that often: divorce will affect your kids for the rest of their lives, well into adult­hood. They will have split hol­i­days and sum­mers. They will have step­par­ents. Their kids will have step-grand­par­ents. What­ev­er inher­i­tance they would have been enti­tled to is often being divvied up with oth­er spous­es and their kids. More impor­tant than the mon­ey, how­ev­er, is the atten­tion they’ll nev­er get because their par­ents are dat­ing or remar­ry­ing or what­ev­er. They will only be with one par­ent half of the year — if they’re lucky: we only saw my dad twice a year. They will have to choose who gets Christ­mas, for­ev­er. Or they will be bounc­ing around at hol­i­day time with their kids, just like the old days.”
    • The Real Prob­lem With Legal Weed (Charles Fain Lehman, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “While mar­i­jua­na may not be as bad as some crit­ics claim, the med­ical evi­dence is clear that it can do sub­stan­tial harm. Mar­i­jua­na is addic­tive — around 30 per­cent of users use com­pul­sive­ly, even as their use harms them­selves and the peo­ple around them.… Mar­i­jua­na does hurt a sub­stan­tial por­tion of its con­sumers, often quite bad­ly. And there is no rea­son to think that busi­ness­es won’t sell mar­i­jua­na to those it hurts, if they’re allowed to. What the alco­hol and tobac­co mar­kets show us, rather, is that addic­tion and prof­it don’t mix well.”
      • Unlocked.
    • We deserve a more nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about work­ing moms (Rachel M. Cohen, Vox): “After the essay on moth­er­hood dread was pub­lished, I heard from Sharon Sassler, a Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty soci­ol­o­gist who stud­ies rela­tion­ships and gen­der. She had recent­ly pub­lished a paper on gen­der wage gaps in the com­put­er sci­ence field and found that moth­ers in com­put­er sci­ence actu­al­ly earned more than child­less women (though this ‘wage pre­mi­um’ was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than what fathers earned). ‘It was dif­fi­cult for me to find a home for the attached arti­cle because review­ers can­not fath­om that moth­ers might out-earn sin­gle women, though there is a grow­ing body of evi­dence that [they] do,’ she wrote in her email to me. ‘It might be selec­tion [bias] … but giv­en that folks have found this across dis­ci­plines sug­gests that the moth­er­hood penal­ty real­ly needs to be reassessed.’ I was curi­ous about Sassler’s sug­ges­tion that moms might actu­al­ly earn more and that we don’t often hear that because gate­keep­ers ‘seem to like the nar­ra­tive that women are always screwed by fam­i­ly.’”
  3. This Is What Elite Fail­ure Looks Like (Oren Cass, New York Times): “Tak­ing the majority’s pref­er­ences seri­ous­ly, even when they con­flict with the pref­er­ences of more sophis­ti­cat­ed experts, is often dis­par­aged as pop­ulism. But while elect­ed offi­cials and their tech­no­crat­ic advis­ers may have spe­cial insight into how the people’s goals are best achieved, only the peo­ple can deter­mine what those goals should be and whether they are being met…. While pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives so often seek to max­i­mize effi­cien­cy and growth, move peo­ple to oppor­tu­ni­ty and redis­trib­ute from the economy’s win­ners to the losers, the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can has an attach­ment to place, a focus on fam­i­ly, a com­mit­ment to mak­ing things, and would accept eco­nom­ic trade-offs in pur­suit of those pri­or­i­ties.… The impor­tant fea­ture of all these pref­er­ences is that they are inher­ent­ly valid. No set of facts or sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, to which an expert might have supe­ri­or access, over­rides what peo­ple actu­al­ly val­ue and what trade-offs they would choose to make. Lead­ers might seek to shape pub­lic opin­ion and alter pref­er­ences — indeed, that is part of lead­ing — but they must yield to the out­come. Their oblig­a­tion is to pur­sue the community’s pri­or­i­ties, not their own.”
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies Have Gone to Thai­land for 200 Years. Why Aren’t There More Chris­tians? (Rebec­ca Brit­ting­ham, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Yet the free­dom that Chris­tians enjoy in Thai­land hasn’t trans­lat­ed into a wide accep­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty by local Thais. Despite near­ly 200 years of Protes­tant mis­sions, only about 1.2 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion are Chris­tians. The ques­tion of why Thai­land is such dif­fi­cult soil for the seed of the gospel to grow has plagued mis­sion­ar­ies, as many have seen lit­tle fruit for the years they’ve spent learn­ing Thai, build­ing rela­tion­ships, and try­ing to intro­duce locals to the gospel.”
  5. I Went From Fos­ter Care to Yale. This Is What I Learned About ‘Lux­u­ry Beliefs.’ (Rob K. Hen­der­son, New York Times on YouTube): six minute video.
    • This is worth watch­ing even if you’re famil­iar with his ‘lux­u­ry beliefs’ con­cept.
    • I actu­al­ly had din­ner in a group with Rob on Sun­day night. We’re not friends — I just saw that he was in town and will­ing to meet up with peo­ple so I DMd him on Twit­ter. Nice guy.
  6. How Lib­er­al Col­lege Cam­pus­es Ben­e­fit Con­ser­v­a­tive Stu­dents (Lau­ren A. Wright, The Atlantic): “Con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture war­riors argue that edu­ca­tion at high­ly selec­tive col­leges is worth­less, and rec­om­mend that con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents who don’t want to be silenced or indoc­tri­nat­ed opt out. I dis­agree. Con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents expe­ri­ence what high­er edu­ca­tion has long claimed to offer: expo­sure to dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, reg­u­lar prac­tice build­ing and defend­ing coher­ent argu­ments, intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges that spur cre­ativ­i­ty and growth. Lib­er­al acad­e­mia has large­ly robbed lib­er­al stu­dents of these rewards.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. No pay­wall.
  7. Reli­able Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Ger­ard Laun­ders His Grudges Into the Pub­lic Record (Trac­ing Wood­grains, Sub­stack): “Wikipedia’s job is to repeat what Reli­able Sources say. David Gerard’s mis­sion is to deter­mine what Reli­able Sources are, using any argu­ments at his dis­pos­al that instru­men­tal­ly favor sources he finds agree­able.… From there, it’s sim­ple: Wikipedia edi­tors duti­ful­ly etch onto the page, with a neu­tral point of view, that Huff­in­g­ton Post writ­ers think this, PinkNews edi­tors think that, and expe­ri­enced Har­vard pro­fes­sors who make the mis­take of writ­ing for The Free Press think noth­ing fit for an ency­clo­pe­dia.”
    • This is a long, wild arti­cle about inter­net minu­ti­ae. But if you’ve ever won­dered about bias on Wikipedia, dive in.

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 414

Once a week, usu­al­ly on Fri­day, 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 414, which is a mul­ti­ple of 23.

A day late because I was trav­el­ing. Next week’s may be delayed as well.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The best pre­dic­tor of hap­pi­ness in Amer­i­ca? Mar­riage (W. Brad­ford Wilcox and David Bass, Unherd): “This truth is borne out yet again in new research from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, which found that mar­riage is the ‘the most impor­tant dif­fer­en­tia­tor’ of who is hap­py in Amer­i­ca, and that falling mar­riage rates are a chief rea­son why hap­pi­ness has declined nation­al­ly. The research, sur­vey­ing thou­sands of respon­dents, revealed a star­tling 30-per­cent­age-point hap­pi­ness divide between mar­ried and unmar­ried Amer­i­cans. This hap­pi­ness boost held true for both men and women.… Oth­er fac­tors do mat­ter — includ­ing income, edu­ca­tion­al achieve­ment, race, and geog­ra­phy — but mar­i­tal sta­tus is most influ­en­tial when it comes to pre­dict­ing hap­pi­ness in the study.”
    • Relat­ed: More on Sin­gle­ness, Mar­riage, and the Church (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “…some read­ers took me to be say­ing that sin­gle peo­ple are in sin or not grow­ing in their faith the way that mar­ried peo­ple are. Not so. There is a pro­found (sub­tle, per­haps, but pro­found) dif­fer­ence between say­ing that some­thing has intrin­sic val­ue in the nor­ma­tive life of an indi­vid­ual or the church, and say­ing that this thing is com­pul­so­ry.”
    • Very help­ful fol­lowup to the arti­cle I shared last week.
  2. The Hard-Drug Decrim­i­nal­iza­tion Dis­as­ter (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “…the sticky fact that pro­po­nents of decrim­i­nal­iza­tion rarely con­front is that addicts are not mere­ly sick peo­ple try­ing to get well, like can­cer suf­fer­ers in need of chemother­a­py. They are peo­ple who often will do just about any­thing to get high, how­ev­er irra­tional, self-destruc­tive or, in some cas­es, crim­i­nal their behav­ior becomes. Addic­tion may be a dis­ease, but it’s also a lifestyle — one that decrim­i­nal­iza­tion does a lot to facil­i­tate. It’s eas­i­er to get high wher­ev­er and how­ev­er you want when the cops are pow­er­less to stop you.”
    • Unlocked.
  3. She’s the One (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “Humans are good at hedo­nical­ly adapt­ing to most mate­r­i­al con­di­tions. You get used to your house, your car, your clothes, your gran­ite coun­ter­top, and your mon­ey. What humans are bad at hedo­nical­ly adapt­ing to is… oth­er peo­ple. If you spend a lot of time around humans whose com­pa­ny you enjoy, you will prob­a­bly be hap­py. If you spend a lot of time around human whose com­pa­ny you detest, you will prob­a­bly be unhap­py. Over your life­time, you will prob­a­bly spend more time around your spouse than any oth­er human. So while find­ing good friends and good co-work­ers is cru­cial for hap­pi­ness, find­ing a good spouse is even more so.”
    • This is full of most­ly-good advice for guys.
  4. What’s going on with the reports of a room-tem­per­a­ture super­con­duc­tor? (John Tim­mer, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “The per­fect time to write an arti­cle on those results would be when they’ve been con­firmed by mul­ti­ple labs. But these are not per­fect times. Instead, rumors seem to be fly­ing dai­ly about pos­si­ble con­fir­ma­tion, con­fus­ing and con­tra­dic­to­ry results, and informed dis­cus­sions of why this mate­r­i­al either should or should­n’t work.”
    • Relat­ed: LK-99 Is the Super­con­duc­tor of the Sum­mer (Ken­neth Chang, New York Times): “I tru­ly don’t get the excite­ment about her preprint,” said Dou­glas Natel­son, a pro­fes­sor of physics at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty in Hous­ton. “That’s not to say that it’s wrong, just that the­o­rists and com­pu­ta­tion­al mate­ri­als folks very often pro­duce preprints based on the lat­est claimed mate­r­i­al of inter­est. There’s noth­ing excep­tion­al in that.”
  5. You’re prob­a­bly recy­cling plas­tic wrong. And it’s not your fault. (Robert Gebel­hoff, Wash­ing­ton Post):  “Pic­ture this: You fin­ish a drink from a red Solo cup, and before throw­ing it out, you check the bot­tom of the cup to see the icon­ic recy­cling sym­bol. That means it can be tossed in the recy­cling bin, right? Wrong. Solo cups are made of poly­styrene, a plas­tic that is very dif­fi­cult to recy­cle.… Nowa­days, the only plas­tic items that are con­sis­tent­ly recy­cled are bot­tles and jugs made out of poly­eth­yl­ene tereph­tha­late (which is labeled with a ‘1’) and high-den­si­ty poly­eth­yl­ene (labeled with a ‘2’), as a sur­vey of recy­cling facil­i­ties by Green­peace shows. Recy­cling plants typ­i­cal­ly reject almost every­thing else, mean­ing it ends up in land­fills.”
  6. He Held Up a Bank to Get His Own Mon­ey (Raja Abdul­rahim, New York Times): “The cen­tral bank has not allowed depos­i­tors to with­draw more than a few hun­dred dol­lars a month since a finan­cial col­lapse in 2019. So, like oth­er des­per­ate Lebanese before him — some of them sim­i­lar­ly com­pelled by the need for med­ical treat­ment — Mr. al-Haj­jar went to his bank in Novem­ber, threat­en­ing to burn it down unless it gave him some of the $250,000 he had in his account. More than 12 hours lat­er, he left with $25,000 in stacks of cash. ‘If you don’t go in and threat­en to hurt them, they won’t give you any­thing,’ he said months lat­er.”
    • Absolute­ly wild (and sad) sto­ry.
  7. California’s free prison calls are repair­ing estranged rela­tion­ships and aid­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion (Kwasi Gyam­fi Asiedu & Helen Li, Los Ange­les Times): “At a time when most con­sumers enjoy free or low-cost call­ing, prison phone calls at their peak in Cal­i­for­nia cost more than $6 per 15 min­utes via a pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider. That allowed only hur­ried, super­fi­cial con­ver­sa­tions between the sib­lings — with one eye always on the clock.”

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 On The Expe­ri­ence of Being Poor-ish, For Peo­ple Who Aren’t (Anony­mous, Sub­stack): “When some­one is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m try­ing to deter­mine how poor exact­ly they were, there’s one ever­green ques­tion I ask that has nev­er failed to give me a good idea of what kind of sit­u­a­tion I’m deal­ing with. That ques­tion is: ‘How many times have they turned off your water?’.” Fol­low up: Being Poor-ish Revis­it­ed: Read­er Ques­tions These are both real­ly good. From vol­ume 291.

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 406

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 406, which is also the name of a poem by John Boyle O’Reil­ly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Church Grows in Brook­lyn (Sheluyang Peng, The Free Press): “…Chris­tian­i­ty is thriv­ing if you know where to look. Peo­ple say immi­grants do the jobs that native-born Amer­i­cans don’t want to do. Going to church is one of them. Over two-thirds of today’s immi­grants to the Unit­ed States are Chris­tians, and promi­nent reli­gious schol­ars fore­cast that immi­grants will sin­gle-hand­ed­ly reverse Christianity’s decline in Amer­i­ca.”
  2. Please Don’t Ask If I Played a Sport in Col­lege (Ger­ald Hig­gin­both­am, SPSP): “…these open­ing ques­tions were from an actu­al con­ver­sa­tion I had while trav­el­ing after grad­u­at­ing from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in 2014. After a stranger struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, I shared that I had just grad­u­at­ed with a major in psy­chol­o­gy. On cue, the stranger asked their first fol­low-up ques­tion, the one that I was typ­i­cal­ly used to: ‘What sport did you play?’ Some may see this ques­tion as a com­pli­ment, but it is not—it is an assump­tion root­ed in a long­stand­ing stereo­type about Black peo­ple.”
    • Ger­ald, now a pro­fes­sor at UVA, is an alum­nus of our min­istry.
  3. Blas­phe­my Then and Now (Carl True­man, First Things): “Oppo­nents of blas­phe­my then and of blas­phe­my now share some­thing in com­mon: a con­cern to pro­tect that which is sacred. But that is where the sim­i­lar­i­ty begins and ends. Old-style blas­phe­my involved des­e­crat­ing God because it was God who was sacred. Today’s blas­phe­my involves sug­gest­ing that man is not all-pow­er­ful, that he can­not cre­ate him­self in any way he choos­es, that he is sub­ject to lim­its beyond his choice and beyond his con­trol.”
  4. Under­stand­ing the Tech Right (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “In our cur­rent pol­i­tics, one can sim­pli­fy the world by say­ing that con­ser­v­a­tives are in favor of hier­ar­chy and against change, with lib­er­als against hier­ar­chy and for change. While this isn’t how things always work out in prac­tice, and there are many nuances and qual­i­fiers one could add, this is at least how each side per­ceives itself. The Tech Right com­bines the accep­tance of inequal­i­ty of the right with the open­ness to change of the left. The pro-change, anti-equal­i­ty quad­rant is the sweet spot for sup­port for cap­i­tal­ism, so of course they tend to favor free mar­ket eco­nom­ic poli­cies.”
  5. The Hill­song exper­i­ment is over. Chris­tian­i­ty was nev­er meant to be cool (Cherie Gilmour, The Age): “Per­haps now that Hill­song has been cast out of the Gar­den of Eden, the hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple who are and have been mem­bers can find their way for­ward. The future of the church will depend on its next move. But for all saints and sin­ners alike who need grace, it’s worth remem­ber­ing there was only one man who said, ‘Fol­low me’. And he wasn’t on Insta­gram.”
  6. Fre­quent mar­i­jua­na users tend to be lean­er and less like­ly to devel­op dia­betes. But the pseu­do-health ben­e­fits come at a price, experts say (Erin Prater, Yahoo Finance): “It’s well estab­lished that cannabis con­sump­tion is linked to low­er BMI and improved car­diometa­bol­ic risk, the authors write. But their find­ings point to the abil­i­ty of the drug to per­ma­nent­ly dis­rupt organ func­tion, “with poten­tial­ly far-reach­ing con­se­quences on phys­i­cal and men­tal health,” Piomel­li said. “Ado­les­cent expo­sure to THC may pro­mote an endur­ing ‘pseu­do-lean’ state that super­fi­cial­ly resem­bles healthy lean­ness but might, in fact, be root­ed in … organ dys­func­tion,” the authors wrote.
  7. Red­di­tor cre­ates work­ing ani­me QR codes using Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion (Benj Edwards, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “The cre­ator did not detail the exact tech­nique used to cre­ate the nov­el codes in Eng­lish, but… they appar­ent­ly trained sev­er­al cus­tom Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion Con­trol­Net mod­els (plus LoRA fine tun­ings) that have been con­di­tioned to cre­ate dif­fer­ent-styled results. Next, they fed exist­ing QR codes into the Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion AI image gen­er­a­tor and used Con­trol­Net to main­tain the QR code’s data posi­tion­ing despite syn­the­siz­ing an image around it, like­ly using a writ­ten prompt.… This inter­est­ing use of Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion is pos­si­ble because of the innate error cor­rec­tion fea­ture built into QR codes. This error cor­rec­tion capa­bil­i­ty allows a cer­tain per­cent­age of the QR code’s data to be restored if it’s dam­aged or obscured, per­mit­ting a lev­el of mod­i­fi­ca­tion with­out mak­ing the code unread­able.”
    • Wild stuff- that these codes work is very cool.

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 Only Bib­li­cal Peace­mak­ing Resolves Racial and Polit­i­cal Injus­tice (Justin Giboney, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In 2020, the pan­dem­ic forced Amer­i­cans to dis­tance our­selves phys­i­cal­ly. Our pol­i­tics, iden­ti­ties, and world­views forced us fur­ther apart too. We watch the same occur­rences and walk away not only with dif­fer­ent opin­ions, but with a dif­fer­ent set of facts. And yet, through social media, we’ve bridged our divides just enough to antag­o­nize one anoth­er.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The author is pres­i­dent of the AND Cam­paign. From vol­ume 285.

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 404

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 404, which makes me hap­py that I’ve final­ly found it. If you know, you know.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Two arti­cles for spir­i­tu­al growth, both rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Roast What You Kill: Becom­ing a Man Who Fol­lows Through (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “What a strange pic­ture. The man woke up ear­ly. He pre­pared his tools. He lay in wait. He act­ed delib­er­ate­ly, force­ful­ly. He took the prize, brought home the meat — but nev­er cooked it. Per­haps he decid­ed he had worked hard enough for one day. Per­haps he real­ized just how tired he felt. His enthu­si­asm died before the meal was pre­pared. He labored promis­ing­ly, for a time. He remained focused, for a while. His was hard but unfin­ished work. In the end, his plate is just as emp­ty as that of the oth­er slug­gard, wak­ing at his return.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who notes: “The author focus­es on men, but I think a lot of his points apply to women too.”
    • 3 Rea­sons We Avoid Evan­ge­lism (Matt Smethurst, Gospel Coali­tion): “In a post-Chris­t­ian age, we can’t pre­sume any basic assump­tions in those we’re try­ing to reach with the gospel. So we must take care to lean in and lis­ten well, to climb into our neighbor’s way of see­ing and inhab­it­ing the world. Oth­er­wise, we’ll be speak­ing about terms—even bib­li­cal ones—that’ll be sim­ply mis­un­der­stood or reject­ed out­right. ‘God loves you’ is great news, but mean­ing­less if you don’t under­stand the nature of God (or for that mat­ter, love).”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by the very same stu­dent
  2. Why this Jew is binge-watch­ing The Cho­sen (and maybe you should too) (Fay­dra Shapiro. The Times of Israel): “I wish that Jews could under­stand that the New Tes­ta­ment is thor­ough­ly Jew­ish – replete with Jew­ish cat­e­gories and Jew­ish prac­tices, Jew­ish con­tro­ver­sies, Jew­ish scrip­ture, and brim­ming with Jews – I think we could reclaim some of our own his­to­ry. Because let’s face it, if we want to under­stand some­thing about the Judaism of our ances­tors in this spe­cif­ic peri­od, the New Tes­ta­ment has some real val­ue. And if Jews could feel more com­fort­able with the New Tes­ta­ment as com­pris­ing an impor­tant piece of Jew­ish cul­tur­al lit­er­a­ture, we might be able to engage more deeply togeth­er as Jews and Chris­tians.”
    • I’ve met Fay­dra twice and will prob­a­bly meet her again this sum­mer on the Pas­sages trip.
  3. What Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism Has Done to My State and My Faith Is a Sin (Susan Stub­son, New York Times): “I am adrift in this unnamed sea, unteth­ered from both my faith com­mu­ni­ty and my polit­i­cal par­ty as I try to rec­on­cile evan­gel­i­cals’ repeat­ed endorse­ments of can­di­dates who thumb their noses at the least of us. Chris­tians are called to serve God, not a polit­i­cal par­ty, to put our faith in a high­er pow­er, not in human beings. We’re taught not to bow to false idols. Yet idol­a­try is increas­ing­ly promi­nent and our foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples — humil­i­ty, kind­ness and com­pas­sion — in short sup­ply.”
    • A good read. Unlocked.
  4. When the Ther­a­peu­tic God Isn’t Suf­fi­cient (John Car­pen­ter, Mere Ortho­doxy): “God’s peo­ple have to endure the cat­a­stro­phes of the world. We can protest ‘it’s not fair, why should we taste the worm­wood and the gall when we didn’t do what brought about the judg­ment?’ But it hap­pens. Peo­ple live mate­ri­al­is­ti­cal­ly, tak­ing loans they can’t pay, get­ting hous­es too expen­sive for them. It’s greed; it’s mate­ri­al­ism. Then the econ­o­my crash­es, like it did in 2008. Is it only the greedy and mate­ri­al­is­tic who suf­fer? No. Many are swept along into unem­ploy­ment and bank­rupt­cy. Ethiopia made some hor­ri­ble eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal choic­es in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. One result was that our daugh­ter died and there was blood every­where.”
    • This is quite good.
  5. The Price of Pot (Aaron Renn, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Accord­ing to a new study from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty researchers, recre­ation­al pot use in teens is asso­ci­at­ed with increased depres­sion and increased sui­ci­dal thoughts. It’s also asso­ci­at­ed with high­er lev­els of tru­an­cy and fight­ing, as well as low­er grade point aver­ages. It’s impor­tant to note that this study zeroed in on non-abu­sive recre­ation­al use, exclud­ing peo­ple that researchers iden­ti­fied as hav­ing a drug prob­lem.”
  6. I taught in San Fran­cis­co. Chil­dren are trained to be offend­ed (James Vescovi, Newsweek): “The city’s trou­bles are in large part due to a mind­set that seems to per­vade life and that I encoun­tered in schools, where I was a high school teacher. In a nut­shell, adults are afraid to offend, while chil­dren seem trained to be offend­ed.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. A dif­fer­ent stu­dent, for those keep­ing track at home.
  7. Yet more praise for Tim Keller
    • 5 ways Tim Keller was the anti-celebri­ty celebri­ty pas­tor (Kate­lyn Beaty, Sub­stack): “This might sound insult­ing, but I mean it in the best way: Tim Keller didn’t lead with his looks. His appear­ance and dress were pleas­ant, and pleas­ant­ly unre­mark­able. I loved this anec­dote from Tyler Huck­abee, that Keller declined doing a pho­to­shoot for a mag­a­zine pro­file. (Free makeover and glossy images? Sign me up!) Huck­abee said Keller just didn’t seem inter­est­ed. Anoth­er way of say­ing this: Keller val­ued sub­stance over style. He didn’t need to be dressed in lux­u­ry cloth­ing for New York­ers to find his mes­sage com­pelling.”
    • A Tale of Two New York City Pas­tors (Kara Bet­tis Car­val­ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[In col­lege I attend­ed both Redeemer and Hill­song and] it was hard to miss the stark dif­fer­ences between both church­es and their lead­ers: One formed me. The oth­er enter­tained me.… The nefar­i­ous truth is that we, too, are often respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing celebri­ty pas­tors. In col­lege, was I hun­gry for Scrip­ture and gospel-cen­tered com­mu­ni­ty? Yes. Was I also will­ing to be emo­tion­al­ly tit­il­lat­ed, spir­i­tu­al­ly dis­tract­ed and even enter­tained, and look­ing for a place to belong? Also, yes.”
    • The Far-See­ing Faith of Tim Keller (Michael Luo, New York­er): “His lim­it­ed preach­ing expe­ri­ence, in a small-town church in the Bible Belt, made him an unlike­ly fit for New York City. With­in three years of its found­ing, how­ev­er, Redeemer had swelled from fifty peo­ple to a thou­sand. By the mid-aughts, it had become a bea­con, around the world, for pas­tors inter­est­ed in min­is­ter­ing to cos­mopoli­tan audi­ences. Unlike many sub­ur­ban megachurch­es, with their soft-rock praise bands and user-friend­ly ser­mons, Redeemer’s ser­vices were almost defi­ant­ly staid, fea­tur­ing tra­di­tion­al hymns and litur­gy. But the ser­mons were wry and eru­dite, filled with lit­er­ary allu­sions and philo­soph­i­cal ref­er­ences, and Keller was shrewd about urg­ing his con­gre­gants to exam­ine their ‘coun­ter­feit gods’—their pur­suit of totems like pow­er, sta­tus, and wealth, which the city encour­aged.”
    • Tim Keller Lives (Mar­vin Olasky, Reli­gion and Lib­er­ty Online): “I had one-to-one talks with Keller only three times, so I hope you’ll read else­where about his influ­ence via friend­ships. My wife and I did lis­ten in per­son to his ser­mons from 2008 to 2011, and at first we did so anx­ious­ly. Lis­ten­ing to how he han­dled dif­fi­cult Bible pas­sages was like watch­ing a short­stop rang­ing far to his right on a hard-hit ball: Will he be able to reach it? He has. He’s on the out­field grass: How can he pos­si­bly throw out the run­ner at first? He just did.”
      • As a preach­er, I want to high­light this. Keller’s preach­ing was extra­or­di­nary. Lis­ten­ing to him preach was like watch­ing a gold medal­ist com­pete. No. That’s not right, because lis­ten­ing to preach­ing isn’t pas­sive. Lis­ten­ing to him preach was like being in the ring with a cham­pi­on — when you weren’t busy get­ting pum­meled you were in awe of his skill.
    • What Has Trump Cost Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty? (Ross Douhat, New York Times): “When reli­gious con­ser­vatism made its peace with Don­ald Trump in 2016, the fun­da­men­tal cal­cu­la­tion was that the ben­e­fits of polit­i­cal pow­er — or, alter­na­tive­ly, of keep­ing cul­tur­al lib­er­al­ism out of full polit­i­cal pow­er — out­weighed the costs to Chris­t­ian cred­i­bil­i­ty inher­ent in accept­ing a hea­then fig­ure as a polit­i­cal cham­pi­on and leader. The con­trary cal­cu­la­tion, made by the Chris­t­ian wing of Nev­er Trump, was that accept­ing Trump required moral com­pro­mis­es that Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty would ulti­mate­ly suf­fer for, what­ev­er Supreme Court seats or pol­i­cy vic­to­ries reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives might gain.”
      • Does not go where you expect — this is actu­al­ly an inter­est­ing reflec­tion on Tim Keller. Rec­om­mend­ed.

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 Great Unrav­el­ing (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “I don’t know the answer. But I know that you have to be sort of strange to stand apart and refuse to join Team Red or Team Blue. These strange ones are the ones who think that polit­i­cal vio­lence is wrong, that mob jus­tice is nev­er just and the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence is always right. These are the ones who are skep­ti­cal of state and cor­po­rate pow­er, even when it is clamp­ing down on peo­ple they despise.” 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 403

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 403, which is one of those num­bers that feels like it might be prime but is not — it is 13 · 31. I think it’s cool that its prime fac­tors are reversed ver­sions of each oth­er.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. What Hap­pened to His­to­ri­an Mol­ly Worthen? (Collin Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion Pod­cast). This 90 minute pod­cast episode was rec­om­mend­ed to me more than once, and I final­ly gave it a lis­ten. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. A well-known his­to­ri­an and jour­nal­ist con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty and tells her sto­ry here. JD Greear and Tim Keller play key roles in the sto­ry.
  2. What the Church Should Do… (Mike Glenn, Sub­stack): “Sev­er­al times a week, every week, some­body will come up to me and say, “You know what our church should do?” … I’ll smile and say, ‘That’s a great idea. Get back to me when you’ve got it worked out.’ Most peo­ple are very annoyed by my answer. I don’t know why. God had giv­en them that bur­den, not me. I learned a long time ago, I can only do so much. I’ve also learned every fol­low­er of Christ is unique­ly gift­ed and called to serve the Kingdom’s redemp­tive mis­sion in the world.”
  3. Died: Tim Keller, New York City Pas­tor Who Mod­eled Win­some Wit­ness (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Tim Keller, a New York City pas­tor who min­is­tered to young urban pro­fes­sion­als and in the process became a lead­ing exam­ple for how a win­some Chris­t­ian wit­ness could win a hear­ing for the gospel even in unlike­ly places, died on Fri­day at age 72—three years after being diag­nosed with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.”
    • Tim Keller Prac­ticed the Grace He Preached (Col­in Hansen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “His steadi­ness under this grow­ing hos­til­i­ty gave courage and com­fort to younger lead­ers who became dis­il­lu­sioned by the fall of so many of our for­mer heroes. Even I wor­ried about uncov­er­ing unflat­ter­ing secrets when I began writ­ing his biog­ra­phy. Instead, talk­ing to dozens of Keller’s close friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who knew him from child­hood only con­firmed my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of him.”
    • He Made Me Want to Be More Like Jesus (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “You see, the point about Tim Keller is that he was gra­cious toward peo­ple who couldn’t repay him, because he knew that Jesus had been gra­cious to him first. Tim real­ly, gen­uine­ly, total­ly believed that he was more sin­ful than he could ever have imag­ined, and more loved by God than he could have ever hoped. He believed this. And this belief spilled out in how he inter­act­ed with oth­ers.”
    • Tim Keller Prac­ticed the Grace He Preached (Col­in Hansen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “His steadi­ness under this grow­ing hos­til­i­ty gave courage and com­fort to younger lead­ers who became dis­il­lu­sioned by the fall of so many of our for­mer heroes. Even I wor­ried about uncov­er­ing unflat­ter­ing secrets when I began writ­ing his biog­ra­phy. Instead, talk­ing to dozens of Keller’s close friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who knew him from child­hood only con­firmed my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of him.”
    • We nev­er met, but Keller was extreme­ly influ­en­tial on me and I mourn his pass­ing.
  4. How I became a ‘Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist’ (Ken­neth L. Wood­ward, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with find­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists is that no one can agree on what the term means.”
  5. Why Is The Aca­d­e­m­ic Job Mar­ket So Weird? (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten):  “Col­leges want two things from their pro­fes­sors. First, they need them to teach class­es. Sec­ond, they need them to do good research, raise the college’s rep­u­ta­tion, and look pres­ti­gious. Col­leges want to pre­tend to stu­dents that the same peo­ple are doing both these jobs, because stu­dents like the idea of being taught by pres­ti­gious thought lead­ers. But they don’t want to actu­al­ly have the same peo­ple do both jobs, because the most valu­able use of pres­ti­gious thought lead­ers’ time is doing research or pro­mot­ing their ideas. Every hour Ein­stein spends in the class­room is an hour he’s not spend­ing in the lab mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies that will rain down hon­ors upon him­self and his insti­tu­tion. And there’s no guar­an­tee Ein­stein is even a good teacher. Solu­tion: hire for two dif­fer­ent posi­tions, but give them the same job title to make things max­i­mal­ly con­fus­ing for stu­dents. Have them occa­sion­al­ly do each oth­ers’ jobs, so stu­dents get even more con­fused. You very con­spic­u­ous­ly hire Ein­stein, and hold out the car­rot of being taught by Ein­stein. But Ein­stein actu­al­ly only teach­es one 400-lev­el sem­i­nar a year, and every oth­er class is taught by the cheap­est per­son able to teach at all.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. Rec­om­mend­ed espe­cial­ly to any­one who aspires to acad­e­mia.
  6. Legal­iz­ing Mar­i­jua­na Is a Big Mis­take (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Of all the ways to win a cul­ture war, the smoothest is to just make the oth­er side seem hope­less­ly uncool. So it’s been with the march of mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion: There have been moral argu­ments about the excess­es of the drug war and med­ical argu­ments about the poten­tial ben­e­fits of pot, but the vibe of the whole debate has pit­ted the chill against the uptight, the cool against the square, the relaxed future against the Prin­ci­pal Skin­ners of the past.”
    • Unlocked and worth your time.
  7. He Told Fol­low­ers to Starve to Meet Jesus. Why Did So Many Do It? (Andrew Hig­gins, New York Times): “As of this past week, 179 bod­ies have been exhumed and moved to a hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary in the coastal town of Malin­di, around 100 miles east of Shaka­ho­la, for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and autop­sy. The government’s chief pathol­o­gists report­ed last week that while star­va­tion caused many deaths, some of the bod­ies showed signs of death by asphyx­i­a­tion, stran­gu­la­tion or blud­geon­ing. Some had had organs removed, a police affi­davit said.”
    • I shared a news arti­cle about this before,  but this one has more detail. Wild. Unlocked.

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 Every­thing Is Bro­ken (Alana New­house, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Being on a ship near­ly 4 mil­lion square miles in area along with 330 mil­lion oth­er peo­ple and real­iz­ing the entire hull is pock­marked with holes is ter­ri­fy­ing.” Wide-rang­ing. 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.