Tag: economics

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 87

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Helped Cre­ate the Milo Trolling Play­book. You Should Stop Play­ing Right Into It (Ryan Hol­l­i­day, The Observ­er): “It was a mas­ter­ful bit of trolling that admit­ted­ly felt a lot more mean­ing­ful and excit­ing when I was younger than it does to me today: We encour­aged protests at col­leges by send­ing out­raged emails to var­i­ous activist groups and clubs on cam­pus­es where the movie was being screened. We sent fake tips to Gawk­er, which duti­ful­ly ate them up.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Meet the Pas­tor Who Chal­lenged Africa’s Old­est Dic­ta­tor with Sur­pris­ing Suc­cess (Ann Thomp­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last sum­mer, Mawarire led nation­al protests against the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing call­ing for every­one to stay home from work for a day; hun­dreds of thou­sands did. Mawarire was arrest­ed in July and charged with incit­ing pub­lic vio­lence. After thou­sands ral­lied to sup­port him and a court tossed the charges, Mawarire and his fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca. The pas­tor returned to Zim­bab­we alone last week.”
  3. Remind me what was so great about trade? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “…there are two ways to make cheese in the UK: the obvi­ous way, using cows, and the indi­rect way, by mak­ing cars and then trad­ing the cars in exchange for cheese. The British cheese indus­try is, in a very real sense, direct­ly com­pet­ing with the British car indus­try. Pro­tect one with a tar­iff, and you hurt the oth­er.”
  4. The Preach­er and the Sher­iff (Nathaniel Rich, NY Times): “The police said that Vic­tor White III, while detained in the back seat of a locked police car, his hands shack­led behind his back, had com­mit­ted sui­cide by shoot­ing him­self in the back with a hand­gun that an offi­cer had not found dur­ing an ear­li­er search.”
  5. Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Ter­ror Plots From Afar (Ruk­mi­ni Cal­li­machi, NY Times): “Inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ments from Europe show that a grow­ing share of attacks bear signs of con­tact with the Islam­ic State’s strong­hold, even though the attack­er was ini­tial­ly described as act­ing alone.”
  6. The Com­forts of the Bet­sy DeVos War (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “It’s not that lib­er­als aren’t gen­uine­ly wor­ried about every­thing that makes Trump­ism poten­tial­ly abnor­mal and un-repub­li­can and author­i­tar­i­an. But a more nor­mal threat to a deep-pock­et­ed inter­est group’s pref­er­ences still turned out to be a more nat­ur­al ral­ly­ing point than the specter of creep­ing Putin­ism.”

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 53

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Why I Believe Again (A.N. Wil­son, The New States­man): this piece is about sev­en years old, but I don’t remem­ber see­ing it before. “one thing that final­ly put the tin hat on any aspi­ra­tions to be an unbe­liev­er was writ­ing a book about the Wag­n­er fam­i­ly and Nazi Ger­many, and real­is­ing how utter­ly inco­her­ent were Hitler’s neo-Dar­win­ian rav­ings, and how potent was the oppo­si­tion, much of it from Chris­tians; paid for, not with clear intel­lec­tu­al vic­to­ry, but in blood.”
  2. The Evan­gel­i­cal Roots of Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ics (Bradley Bate­man, The Atlantic): “One unlike­ly exam­ple of the Protes­tant influ­ence on Amer­i­can cul­ture is the for­ma­tion of eco­nom­ics as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline in the Unit­ed States.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. Evan­gel­i­cals like me can’t vote for Trump — or Clin­ton. Here’s what we can do instead. (Alan Noble, Vox): This is a long and thought­ful piece. “unless a third-par­ty can­di­date with broad appeal emerges, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians would be bet­ter served by abstain­ing from [the pres­i­den­tial] vote and shift­ing their ener­gy toward elect­ing peo­ple to Con­gress and local and state gov­ern­ments who have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restrain whichev­er can­di­date is elect­ed as need­ed.“  
  4. Here Is The Pow­er­ful Let­ter The Stan­ford Vic­tim Read Aloud To Her Attack­er (Katie J.M. Bak­er, Buz­zfeed): many of you have seen this. If not, it’s worth read­ing. Pow­er­ful and insight­ful.
    • In rela­tion to this case, an anony­mous alum­na con­tact­ed me recent­ly to say: “I’m frus­trat­ed [that peo­ple] are not mak­ing an effort or rec­og­niz­ing the role that alco­hol and the cul­ture sur­round­ing the whole sit­u­a­tion had. What they’re call­ing for is greater pun­ish­ment on col­lege kids who com­mit sex­u­al assault but I think that kin­da miss­es a huge point. They refuse to rec­og­nize the sin in being ok with col­lege drink­ing and the whole frat par­ty thing.” I replied with a sug­ges­tion that she read some­thing I shared way back in issue 25 titled Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault, which I still believe is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar analy­sis I’ve read of the issue.
    • Many peo­ple feel that to crit­i­cize the par­ty scene is to excul­pate rapists. That seems odd to me, because we rec­og­nize that when some­one dri­ves drunk they accept moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for any acci­dents they cause. Their ine­bri­a­tion is not a defense — it is an admis­sion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty. And we also rec­og­nize the prin­ci­ple does not flow in both direc­tions — if you stab me while I am drunk, the fact that I am drunk does not pro­vide you with any excuse. The same prin­ci­ple holds here: Brock Turn­er’s drunk­en­ness is no defense and the vic­tim’s drunk­en­ness is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Fur­ther­more, our con­vic­tions about drunk dri­ving hint at a broad­er prin­ci­ple: drunk­en­ness is a sin because over time it pre­dictably leads to deplorable out­comes. This means that Brock Turn­er is to blame — and so are the parts of cam­pus cul­ture which encour­age drunk­en­ness. The par­ty scene is no excuse for Brock’s wicked­ness, but that does not make the par­ty scene a vir­tu­ous one. 
    • In fact, the par­ty scene on our cam­pus abounds with sin even when it fails to make nation­al news. The worst sin that night (that we know of) was the sex­u­al assault com­mit­ted by Brock Turn­er. But it was far from the only sin. There were numer­ous con­sen­su­al non­mar­i­tal sex­u­al encoun­ters that night — each of them also sin­ful (although less so). There were many peo­ple drunk that night — they too sinned, every one of them. There was arro­gant pos­tur­ing, envy, lust, anger, lying, betray­al, gos­sip, slan­der and a whole host of sins exac­er­bat­ed by alco­hol and the social sce­nario. Our alum­na’s instincts are cor­rect — the sys­tem itself makes sin like­ly and it should not be embraced by Chris­tians.
    • In case you stum­bled over the “worst sin/less sin­ful” judg­ments I made, you should read All Sins Are Not Equal (J.I. Pack­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today).
    • Thank you for your patience. I rarely add lengthy edi­to­r­i­al com­ments, but my words ran away with me today.
  5. My Life as a ‘Sex Object’ (Jes­si­ca Valen­ti, The Guardian): this is pow­er­ful, slight­ly vul­gar piece. I am always intrigued by authors who embrace the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion and are dis­mayed by some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions.
  6. 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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

[minor edit for clar­i­ty short­ly after post­ing]

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 44

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. How Covenants Make Us (David Brooks, NYT): “A con­tract pro­tects inter­ests, Pal­ly notes, but a covenant pro­tects rela­tion­ships. A covenant exists between peo­ple who under­stand they are part of one anoth­er. It involves a vow to serve the rela­tion­ship that is sealed by love: Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your peo­ple shall be my peo­ple. Peo­ple in a con­tract pro­vide one anoth­er ser­vices, but peo­ple in a covenant delight in offer­ing gifts.”
  2. When Reli­gious Groups Do What the Gov­ern­ment Won’t (Alana Semuels, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing through­out.
  3. Let’s Make Foot­ball A Col­lege Major (David John­son, Aeon): I am large­ly per­suad­ed. If a per­for­mance art can be a major, then why not a sport such as foot­ball? At least give ath­letes aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it for the work they put in.
  4. Is It Time for Amer­i­can Chris­tians to Dis­obey the Gov­ern­ment? (David Koyzis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the piece is much less alarmist than the title sug­gests. Worth read­ing.
  5. PIN Analy­sis (Nick Berry, blog): this is a pret­ty cool analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four dig­it PIN codes.
  6. Final­ly, some arti­cles by stu­dents in or alum­ni from our min­istry. If you get some­thing pub­lished, be sure to let me know!

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. Your sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

 

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
    • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
    • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
    • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘mar­riage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pic­tures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘rip­ping out the heart of almost every part of scrip­ture’.”
    • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
    • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
  2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
  3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
  4. Ran­dom Research

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.

Past edi­tions are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them via email at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 31

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor): How much time each day would it take you to read the entire Bible in a year? “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it!
  2. I’m Think­ing It Over (The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive, Alan Jacobs): this is real­ly good advice for social media. Bonus: it name-drops a leg­endary Stan­ford pro­fes­sor. Read­ing this arti­cle made me feel good about not send­ing this email out over Christ­mas break.  🙂
  3. Can You Glo­ri­fy God As An Econ­o­mist? (Chris­t­ian Post, Napp Naz­worth): tl;dr yes.
  4. Across The Race Divide (Gospel Coali­tion, Kevin DeY­oung) — some­what long but worth­while. Dif­fi­cult to excerpt in a way that won’t tempt you pigeon­hole the piece.
  5. Can Hob­by Lob­by Buy The Bible? (The Atlantic, Joel Baden and Can­di­da Moss): the fram­ing is alarmist, some of the claims about tex­tu­al crit­i­cism are dubi­ous, but the arti­cle is quite engag­ing. The alle­ga­tions of arti­fact smug­gling seem most­ly the byprod­uct of naivete to me and I hope they prove to be so. The authors are pro­fes­sors at Yale and Notre Dame.
  6. The Quixot­ic Adven­tures of Roy Moore (The Atlantic, Matt Ford) — I was most inter­est­ed by the begin­ning of the fifth para­graph: “While that may be tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect…”  Heh. I think the best jour­nal­ism on this was actu­al­ly done by The Mont­gomery Adver­tis­er. It blew away the NY Times, NPR, etc by actu­al­ly inter­view­ing peo­ple with dif­fer­ing opin­ions. If you want the sto­ry, read Moore Tar­gets Same-Sex Mar­riage (Bri­an Lyman, Mont­gomery Adver­tis­er).
  7. Quick Links (short­er pieces):

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.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 23

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. The Ulti­mate List of Birth­day Free­bies (Stan­ford Dai­ly, Saman­tha Wong): This is, with­out a doubt, one of the most use­ful links I have ever shared with you. Not so much about broad­er soci­etal issues — but you’ll want to read it nonethe­less.
  2. The Anti-Free Speech Move­ment at UCLA (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf): I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked this bit: “The col­lege stu­dents fight­ing to lim­it free speech or to pun­ish free expres­sion are court­ing tremen­dous harms that would ulti­mate­ly fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the least pow­er­ful, most mar­gin­al­ized groups of the present and future…. activists who say that they live in a sys­tem of white suprema­cy [should not] empow­er state admin­is­tra­tors to police speech at their dis­cre­tion!”  For much more, check out UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh’s com­ments on cam­pus free­dom of speech (some of which are quot­ed in the Frieder­s­dorf arti­cle).
  3. Cash Strapped Mis­sion­ar­ies Get A New Call­ing: Home (Wall Street Jour­nal, Tama­ra Audi): this is sad. I encour­age you to pray for and give to mis­sion­ar­ies.
  4. Refram­ing The Debate About Pay­day Lend­ing (the blog of the New York Fed): Fas­ci­nat­ing. I’ve been crit­i­cal of pay­day lenders in the past, but at least some of my mis­giv­ings appear to have been off the mark.
  5. A Black Leg­end Refut­ed (Catholic World Report): this is a review of Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler. The review is from a biased source, but is the most detailed of the reviews I’ve seen. Kirkus Reviews, a sec­u­lar source, also has good things to say about it as does First Things, which is in between the two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly. The book’s endorse­ments are impres­sive.
  6. Quick links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 22

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 week­ends (usu­al­ly Fri­days but last night we had alum­ni over for home­com­ing and it turned into a five hour par­ty, so this time Sat­ur­day) 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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Mus­lim Migrants, Meet Chris­t­ian Gyp­sies (Jil­lian Mel­chior, Wall Street Jour­nal): this is pret­ty beau­ti­ful.
  2. Moral Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Emo­tion­al Rejec­tion of God (William Lane Craig): Craig, who we host­ed on cam­pus years ago, answers a tough ques­tion. I think it’s amus­ing how often he directs the read­er to anoth­er one of his books, but I don’t guess he had an alter­na­tive if he want­ed to keep his answer short enough to be read­able.
  3. Hook­ing Up Is Easy To Do (Katie Van Syck­le, NY Mag):  “I’ve come back to my alma mater because it sits at the cross­roads of two major themes of mod­ern-day col­lege sex: hookup cul­ture, which seems as ram­pant as I remem­ber it, and sex­u­al assault… Late­ly, researchers have been mak­ing an obvi­ous but con­tro­ver­sial point: that these two trend lines are in fact relat­ed — that hook­ing up puts stu­dents at high­er risk of hav­ing non­con­sen­su­al sex, and that there are ele­ments of this cul­ture… that are more com­pli­cat­ed than ‘yes means yes.’”
  4. How Friend­ships Change In Adult­hood (Julie Beck, The Atlantic): there’s a lot in this arti­cle. I was struck by the idea that friend­ships are either active, dor­mant, or com­mem­o­ra­tive.
  5. Joel Osteen: Would Jesus Christ Be A Good Pres­i­dent? (David Wal­lis, New York Observ­er): the title is super-click-bait. It’s a short, inter­est­ing inter­view with Joel Osteen, pas­tor of the largest church in Amer­i­ca.
  6. Trea­sures On Earth: How Reli­gion Is Redis­trib­ut­ing The World’s Wealth (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): mis­lead­ing title, inter­est­ing data.
  7. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 9

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, I share 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. From the par­ty-with-puri­tans depart­ment: Our Puri­tan Her­itage (Democ­ra­cy, Jim Sleep­er): the author, a polit­i­cal sci­ence lec­tur­er at Yale, is not a Chris­t­ian. I think parts of his argu­ment are wrong, but I found the whole thing stim­u­lat­ing (the com­ments are worth read­ing as well). For some­thing more prac­ti­cal­ly help­ful, see Puri­tan Resources For Bib­li­cal Coun­sel­ing (Jour­nal of Bib­li­cal Coun­sel­ing, Tim Keller): good stuff about how to grow spir­i­tu­al­ly.
  2. From the sis­ter-in-Christ-doing-good depart­ment: Griev­ing Gov. Nik­ki Haley For­ev­er Changed By Church Mas­sacre (Post and Couri­er, Jen­nifer Berry Hawes): Nik­ki Haley, the gov­er­nor of South Car­oli­na, is an adult con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. There’s a 2012 inter­view about her faith at Chris­tian­i­ty Today.
  3. From the still-work­ing-to-show-the-world-that-we-are-one depart­ment: Dear Pas­tor, Can I Come To Your Church? (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Bradley Wright): an inter­est­ing study on implic­it racial bias in wel­com­ing new­com­ers to church. It may be behind a pay­wall — I was able to access the whole thing but some­one else told me they only got a snip­pet. The author, a soci­ol­o­gist at U Conn, gives ref­er­ences on his web­site (the Chris­tian­i­ty Today arti­cle is a pop­u­lar­iza­tion of a forth­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle).
  4. From the it-sounds-clever-the-first-time-you-hear-it-depart­ment: Why Pri­va­tiz­ing Mar­riage Would Be A Dis­as­ter (The Week, Shikha Dalmia): I’ve heard some Chris­tians sug­gest that we erect a wall of sep­a­ra­tion between mar­riage and state. This arti­cle sug­gests that is a fool­ish idea. For a Chris­t­ian take (the author of the pre­vi­ous arti­cle is agnos­tic) that comes to sim­i­lar con­clu­sion, read Dou­glas Wilson’s In Which First Things Does Some Fourth Things (Doug Wil­son is a fas­ci­nat­ing and polar­iz­ing fig­ure: read The Con­tro­ver­sial­ist from Chris­tian­i­ty Today to learn more about him).
  5. From the mak­ing-a-dif­fer­ence-is-hard depart­ment: The Myth of the Eth­i­cal Shop­per (Huff­in­g­ton Post, Michael Hobbes): I post­ed a sim­i­lar piece a few weeks ago. You have less con­trol as a con­sumer than you think because com­pa­nies have less con­trol than you think.
  6. From the in-our-back­yard depart­ment: Spir­i­tu­al Oppor­tu­ni­ty in Sil­i­con Val­ley (Lead­er­ship Jour­nal, Daniel Dar­ling): an inter­view with the author of a forth­com­ing book about Chris­tian­i­ty in Sil­i­con Val­ley. The book looks inter­est­ing. The author blogs at http://findinggodinsiliconvalley.com/

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 4

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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, I share 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.

  1. From the Charleston depart­ment:
    1. Why A Black Church? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): the last para­graph was like a punch in the gut.
    2. In this mov­ing Youtube clip, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims for­give the shoot­er in court and call upon him to repent. It sounds as though sev­er­al of them were actu­al­ly there when the shoot­ing hap­pened and inter­act­ed with the shoot­er in the hour before­hand.
    3. The Charleston Shoot­ing is the Largest Mass Shoot­ing in a House of Wor­ship Since 1991 (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is an infor­ma­tive overview of the his­to­ry of mass vio­lence at reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the US. I noticed one typo in the arti­cle — it refers to 176 deaths when I am pret­ty sure it should have referred to 176 vio­lent inci­dents lead­ing to 74 deaths in 2014.
    4. Black Amer­i­cans Are Killed at 12 Times the Rate of Peo­ple in Oth­er Devel­oped Coun­tries (Nate Sil­ver, FiveThir­tyEight): this is prob­a­bly the most depress­ing thing I read on a day of read­ing depress­ing things.
    5. The sto­ry of the lady who bust­ed the shoot­er is a more encour­ag­ing one. “It was God’s way of putting her in the right place at the right time, the Gas­to­nia woman said.”
  2. From the clar­i­ty is impor­tant depart­ment: Is Mor­monism Chris­t­ian? (Roger Olson, blog): Olson, a the­olo­gian, gives a very thor­ough and help­ful answer to the ques­tion. It’s real­ly long, so if you just want the sum­ma­ry jump to the last para­graph.
  3. From the mis­un­der­stood research depart­ment: The Real Les­son of the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment (Maria Kon­niko­va, New York­er): inter­est­ing for sev­er­al rea­sons, among them the fact that we walk past the site of the exper­i­ments reg­u­lar­ly.
  4. From the sin is per­va­sive depart­ment: All Your Clothes Are Made With Exploit­ed Labor (Gillian B. White, The Atlantic): even the most con­sci­en­tious com­pa­nies are unable to keep their prod­ucts oppres­sion-free.

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.