Tag: famous Christians

TGFI, Volume 561: church-leavers and wikipedia-gatekeepers

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

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 548: anxiety, atheism, and China

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. Stop Being Anx­ious About Your Anx­i­ety (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The lis­ten­er is wor­ried because she doesn’t want to dis­obey Jesus, and she knows that he said, ‘Do not be anx­ious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on’ (Matt. 6:25, ESV through­out). And she’s inter­pret­ing this the way she would if she were refus­ing a moral com­mand from the Lord, like to for­give her ene­mies. The irony is that because of that, she can’t see that these pas­sages are not warn­ings but reas­sur­ances.…. Anx­i­ety tells you that you have to secure your future. Anx­i­ety about anx­i­ety tells you that you have to secure even your inner life. Anx­i­ety about anx­i­ety wants you to hear the voice of Jesus as irri­tat­ed and angry: Stop it! But the voice of Jesus is real­ly say­ing, You can rest. I’m here.”
  2. These sci­ence-based argu­ments destroyed my athe­ism (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “When I was an under­grad study­ing data for the Big Bang, every­thing I need­ed to answer my spe­cif­ic question—what was the chem­istry of the very ear­ly uni­verse before stars start­ed cook­ing up heav­ier elements?—was con­ve­nient­ly in place. Too con­ve­nient­ly. A fool­proof way to fin­ger­print every ele­ment and com­pound? Check. A smooth, pow­er­ful light source to back­light the most dis­tant reach­es? Check. An expand­ing uni­verse that lets us rewind cos­mic his­to­ry just by look­ing at dif­fer­ent wave­lengths? Check. A trans­par­ent atmos­phere so we can actu­al­ly do the obser­va­tions from the ground? Check. Laws of nature that don’t ran­dom­ly change with time or place? Check. The list goes on. I lit­er­al­ly could not have done the work unless dozens of these para­me­ters lined up just right. It felt less like luck and more like an engraved invi­ta­tion to explore the care­ful work of a tran­scen­dent Intel­li­gence.”
    • The author was for­mer­ly an astro­physi­cist at UT Austin. She now leads a min­istry.
  3. The Church in Chi­na Isn’t What You Think (Joy Marie Clark­son inter­view­ing Eas­t­en Law, Plough): “There’s an abid­ing myth that reg­is­tered church­es are just tools of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, that they do what­ev­er it demands. I want to clar­i­fy that this isn’t true. Many in the reg­is­tered church­es are gen­uine Chris­tians. They sim­ply have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on church and state, and they choose to nav­i­gate this rela­tion­ship with the Par­ty. They will sign the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. They will give speech­es, such as on the Sini­ciza­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty. But they also take care of their con­gre­ga­tions and try to help peo­ple walk in faith. Their approach to nego­ti­a­tion with this tight­en­ing con­trol is dif­fer­ent from that of house church­es, which are resist­ing, hid­ing, and mov­ing around.”
    • The inter­vie­wee is a pro­fes­sor of world Chris­tian­i­ty at Yon­sei Uni­ver­si­ty in Seoul.
  4. Two great Chuck Nor­ris obit­u­ar­ies:
    • Chuck Nor­ris obit­u­ary: actor and mar­tial artist (The Times): “In 1994, when Chuck Nor­ris was star­ring in the TV action show Walk­er, Texas Ranger and at the peak of his fame, two men tried to mug him. When the Dal­las police sub­se­quent­ly arrived, they found the duo with bro­ken arms, knives on the ground and Nor­ris, then 54, wait­ing qui­et­ly near­by. Try­ing not to laugh, the offi­cers asked the pair whether they knew who they had attacked. ‘We knew who he was,’ they said. ‘We just fig­ured that all that stuff on tele­vi­sion was fake.’ That there was noth­ing fake about Nor­ris was per­haps the key to his suc­cess and to his con­sid­er­able cul­tur­al sta­tus in the US.”
      • Absolute leg­end. Note this is the British Times. The Amer­i­can New York Times did not include this or any oth­er tru­ly epic scene in their obit­u­ary.
    • Chuck Nor­ris, 1940–2026 (Son­ny Bunch, The Bul­wark): “Inva­sion USA became an under­ground sen­sa­tion in Roma­nia, with boot­leg videos of the film passed around and help­ing to fuel the 1989 upris­ing’ against Nico­lae CeauÅŸes­cu, de Sem­lyen notes in his book. Accord­ing to James Bruner, who worked on the film with Nor­ris and direc­tor Chuck Zito, ‘They use the poster, to this day, in Roma­nia when they protest against the gov­ern­ment.… Ulti­mate­ly, action movies are about free­dom. Over­com­ing evil, in what­ev­er form it may be.’ ”
  5. Tech­nol­o­gy Weak­ens Our Minds. We Can Fix This. (Cal New­port, The New York Times): “We should con­sid­er tak­ing as strong a stance against ultra­processed con­tent as we already do against ultra­processed food. Which is to say: Most peo­ple should avoid these diver­sions most of the time. In the same way that you’re unlike­ly to eat Twinkies as a reg­u­lar snack, or still believe that Pop-Tarts pro­vide a bal­anced break­fast, stop con­sum­ing ultra­processed con­tent. Don’t use Tik­Tok. Don’t use Insta­gram. Don’t use X. Their sug­ar-high ben­e­fits aren’t worth the costs.… [and] any use of A.I. that main­ly serves to make core busi­ness tasks cog­ni­tive­ly less demand­ing should be treat­ed with cau­tion. Here’s a sim­ple rule that rein­forces this idea: Your writ­ing should be your own. The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the men­tal equiv­a­lent of a gym work­out by an ath­lete — it’s not an annoy­ance to be elim­i­nat­ed but a key ele­ment of your craft.”
  6. Sci­en­tists Filmed a Whale Birth. The Sur­prise: Mom Had Many Helpers. (Catrin Ein­horn, New York Times): “They found that the whales ori­ent­ed to the moth­er dur­ing labor and to the new­born after deliv­ery. Sperm whale calves can­not imme­di­ate­ly swim effec­tive­ly, and a core group of indi­vid­u­als — Rounder, her sis­ter Auro­ra, and a young, unre­lat­ed whale named Ariel — spent the most time lift­ing the new­born. But every whale in the group act­ed as ‘a pri­ma­ry sup­port­er’ at some point, includ­ing the sole male, an ado­les­cent named Allan who was start­ing to leave the group to embark on a large­ly soli­tary life, as male sperm whales do. But he appeared at the birth. The calf was rarely left untouched, and it was usu­al­ly being touched by at least two whales simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.”
  7. Promi­nent Pas­tor Calls for Texas Demo­c­rat to be ‘Cru­ci­fied With Christ’ (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “The host, Joshua Haymes, said of Mr. Talari­co: ‘I pray that God kills him. Ulti­mate­ly that means killing his heart and rais­ing him up to new life in Christ.’ Mr. Pot­teiger respond­ed: ‘Right — we want him cru­ci­fied with Christ. I want him to be — I think, Saul of Tar­sus — Talari­co of Tar­sus. That’s what I want.’ ”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. When out­siders eaves­drop on Chris­t­ian con­ver­sa­tions we can sound pret­ty weird to them.

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 531: Christianity improves longevity, plus some smart people who believe

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. More Than a Mag­ic Pill (Kathryn But­ler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Church atten­dance reduces all-cause mor­tal­i­ty by near­ly 30 per­cent over a 15-year peri­od and pro­tects woman against sui­cide by 400 per­cent. Week­ly church­go­ing in women over 40 is as pro­tec­tive against death as annu­al mam­mo­grams, McLaugh­lin writes. Those attend­ing ser­vices more than week­ly at age 20 have ‘a rough­ly sev­en-year greater life expectan­cy than their nonchurch­go­ing peers.’ Church­go­ing pro­tects against alco­hol, smok­ing, and drug abuse and decreas­es the odds of depres­sion by one-third.”
    • I been sayin’ it. Preach!
  2. Alvin Planti­nga, God’s Philoso­pher (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the 1950s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher,” said philoso­pher Kel­ly James Clark, one of Plantinga’s stu­dents. “By the 1990s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
  3. The Mak­ing of an Elite: Japan­ese Chris­tians (Cremieux, Sub­stack): “It’s prob­a­bly sur­pris­ing to hear that 20% of the post-World War II Prime Min­is­ters of Japan before the new­ly-elect­ed Sanae Takaichi have been Chris­t­ian. Out of those 35 Prime Min­is­ters since 1945, Shigeru Yoshi­da and Tarō Asō were Catholic, and Tet­su Kataya­ma, Ichirō Hatoya­ma, Masayoshi ÅŒhi­ra, Shigeru Ishi­ba, and Yukio Hatoya­ma were var­i­ous fla­vors of Protes­tant. How this hap­pens in a coun­try that’s less than 1% Chris­t­ian and in which there’s sig­nif­i­cant anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion is per­plex­ing, but I think it makes sense giv­en how today’s Japan­ese Chris­tians came to be.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. The role of the samu­rai was very unex­pect­ed to me!
  4. How Two Times Reporters Cov­er Chris­tian­i­ty in a Polar­ized Amer­i­ca (Patrick Healy, Eliz­a­beth Dias & Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “I think a lot about which details to include in a sto­ry, and how I’m describ­ing peo­ple and scenes. Part of fair­ness is not tak­ing cheap shots by sub­tly depict­ing one side as back­ward or unso­phis­ti­cat­ed, for exam­ple. I also try to bring peo­ple into as many hous­es of wor­ship as pos­si­ble. And I would define that expan­sive­ly, from tra­di­tion­al church ser­vices to prayer meet­ings to wor­ship ser­vices in the Trump White House.”
    • Unlocked. A real­ly well-done inter­view. I have gen­er­al­ly found Gra­ham and Dias to be fair and insight­ful. Most of the sto­ries involv­ing the NYT being tone-deaf to reli­gion have come about when jour­nal­ists who don’t cov­er the reli­gion beat try to drag reli­gion into their sto­ry with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what they’re try­ing to describe.
  5. It Used to Be ‘Get Mar­ried.’ Now It’s ‘Stay Sin­gle.’ (Freya India, The Free Press): “I keep hear­ing about how there’s too much pres­sure to set­tle down. Appar­ent­ly every­one wants to know when you’re get­ting mar­ried, when you’re hav­ing kids.… My whole life I’ve only ever felt the oppo­site, an over­whelm­ing pres­sure to be sin­gle. In the sec­u­lar lib­er­al world I used to think there were no expec­ta­tions, no pres­sure. There is, though: The pres­sure today is to avoid any­thing that might stick, to run through life with­out get­ting snagged on any respon­si­bil­i­ties, with­out get­ting teth­ered to some­one else too ear­ly.… We don’t scru­ti­nize the 25-year-old who is still sin­gle but the one who set­tles down. In fact, this feels like the only life deci­sion left to dis­ap­prove of, the only one accept­able to judge. Want­i­ng to com­mit is the one desire that is dis­cour­aged, treat­ed with sus­pi­cion, the only thing in the mod­ern world we are ever told to delay.”
    • Relat­ed: Senior Scaries: Treat­ing dat­ing like the job mar­ket (Erin Ye, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The last time I was on the phone with my mom, she told me that it was my own fault I didn’t have a boyfriend. ‘You need to start treat­ing dat­ing like it’s the job mar­ket: you’re not apply­ing to posi­tions, you’re not inter­view­ing, you’re not even doing things that you can add to your résumé,’ she said. ‘You just need to get out there. Think of it like get­ting an intern­ship. Don’t wor­ry about the return offer just yet!’ ”
  6. They Led at Sad­dle­back Church. ICE Said They Were Safe. (Andy Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The grow­ing abo­li­tion of dis­cre­tion, per­haps more than any oth­er aspect of the administration’s immi­gra­tion sup­pres­sion, will cause the deep­est pain for many fam­i­lies that pre­vi­ous­ly had lit­tle to fear. Indi­vid­u­als with­in the US immi­gra­tion edi­fice have long had some author­i­ty to exer­cise com­pas­sion in sit­u­a­tions where, in their judg­ment, the cost to soci­ety of a person’s removal might be high­er than the cost of non­re­moval. One could view such dis­cre­tion, as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does, as a weak­ness. Or one could see dis­cre­tion as the car­di­nal qual­i­ty that sep­a­rates a human jus­tice sys­tem from a cold enforce­ment machine with all the sen­si­bil­i­ty of a red-light cam­era.”
    • A mov­ing sto­ry, told with all the messy details.
  7. Trump says Chris­tians are being per­se­cut­ed in Nige­ria. The real­i­ty is more com­pli­cat­ed (Chine­du Asadu, AP News): “Nigeria’s pop­u­la­tion of 220 mil­lion is split almost even­ly between Chris­tians, who live pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the south, and Mus­lims, most­ly in the north — where attacks have long been con­cen­trat­ed and where lev­els of illit­er­a­cy, pover­ty and hunger are among the country’s high­est. Nation­wide, Mus­lims con­sti­tute a slight major­i­ty. Experts and data from two non­par­ti­san sources — the U.S.-basedt and Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions — show Chris­tians are often tar­gets in a small per­cent­age of over­all attacks that appear to be moti­vat­ed by reli­gion, in some north­ern states. But the num­bers and ana­lysts also indi­cate that across the north, most vic­tims of over­all vio­lence are Mus­lims.”
    • I was skep­ti­cal of the head­line, but the arti­cle makes a good case for it. Hav­ing said that, the author has­n’t shown that there isn’t a prob­lem of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion in Nige­ria; the author has only shown that there is also a prob­lem of ram­pant law­less­ness.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • 6–7 in the Bible (Kristy Etheridge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “News out­lets from The New York Times to The Indi­an Express have cov­ered the glob­al phe­nom­e­non that delights chil­dren, puz­zles grownups, and leaves school teach­ers 67 per­cent sure they should retire ear­ly.… a church in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, cre­at­ed an entire out­reach event around the infa­mous num­bers. Jonathan White is a pas­tor and direc­tor of children’s pro­gram­ming at Meck­len­burg Com­mu­ni­ty Church. When he deter­mined that the 6–7 trend wasn’t harm­ful and wasn’t going away, he wrote it into the church’s Novem­ber fam­i­ly night.”
  • Schol­ars Now Believe Num­ber Of The Beast Is Actu­al­ly 67 (Baby­lon Bee)
  • The Bat­man effect: The mere sight of the ‘super­hero’ can make us more altru­is­tic (Gaby Clark, Phys.org): “In the exper­i­men­tal con­di­tion, anoth­er exper­i­menter dressed as Bat­man entered the scene from anoth­er door of the train. Faced with this unex­pect­ed encounter, pas­sen­gers were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to offer their seats: 67.21% of pas­sen­gers offered their seats in the pres­ence of Bat­man, or more than two out of three, com­pared to 37.66% in the con­trol exper­i­ment, or just over one out of three.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  • Mil­lions Con­vert To Chris­tian­i­ty After The­olo­gians Con­firm There Is No Microsoft Teams In Heav­en (Baby­lon Bee)

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 530: a Christian doctor, the medical benefits of church attendance, and campus revival

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. Accused of Des­e­cra­tion, a Doc­tor Faces the End of His Life’s Work (Ben­jamin Weis­er, New York Times): “One day in March 2015, sur­veil­lance cam­eras at a thou­sand-year-old Bud­dhist tem­ple on the out­skirts of Tokyo cap­tured a man wear­ing a hood­ed wind­break­er, a white col­lared shirt and black shoes, dab­bing at wood­en pil­lars with oil on his fin­ger­tip.… He is Masahide Kanaya­ma, 63, a sin­gle, child­less doc­tor who had devot­ed his life to help­ing women bear chil­dren; a man whose Chris­t­ian faith was insep­a­ra­ble from his work. He has prac­ticed in Man­hat­tan for near­ly three decades and is an expert in endometrio­sis, a con­di­tion in which cells sim­i­lar to the uter­ine lin­ing grow out­side the uterus. His patients describe how his surg­eries end­ed years of crip­pling pain and, in some cas­es, allowed them to have chil­dren.”
    • Unlocked. A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, brought to my atten­tion by an alum­nus. Pray for Dr. Kanaya­ma.
  2. Church Could Save Your Life? (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, if you aren’t cur­rent­ly a church­go­er and you start attend­ing week­ly, you reduce your chances of devel­op­ing depres­sion by a third. A med­ica­tion this effec­tive would be wide­ly pre­scribed. But while your ther­a­pist or doc­tor may encour­age yoga, med­i­ta­tion, or more time out­side in nature, he or she almost cer­tain­ly won’t rec­om­mend you go to church. The ben­e­fits of ‘orga­nized reli­gion’ don’t fit with the big sto­ry we are telling in the West about the good­ness of aban­don­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs.”
  3. It’s Here: Gen‑Z Revival Hits Cam­pus­es This Fall (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps you’ve heard the sto­ries of revival here and there—Asbury, the Salt Com­pa­ny, and var­i­ous col­lege min­istries across the coun­try. Sta­tis­tics also sound­ed promising—from Eng­land to the Unit­ed States, more young peo­ple report mak­ing a per­son­al com­mit­ment to Jesus and attend­ing church. The num­ber of peo­ple with no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, which had been increas­ing for decades, seemed to stall. To me, it felt like watch­ing a pot of water heat up—there were iso­lat­ed bub­bles but not enough to real­ly call it a boil.”
    • An encour­ag­ing arti­cle. Two notes:
      • I’m not hear­ing sim­i­lar reports from any min­istry at Stan­ford (note the Chica­go anec­dotes, though)
      • The Gospel Coali­tion’s the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments mean that this arti­cle is focused on cer­tain min­istries. I believe oth­er min­istries are see­ing sim­i­lar things nation­wide.
  4. ‘I Should Have Quit’ (John Fet­ter­man, The Free Press): “Gise­le looked over at me. The cor­ner of my mouth was droop­ing ever so slight­ly. The droop­ing last­ed only a sec­ond or two, but she had watched a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment on strokes, and it had stayed with her. She spoke to the state troop­er who was dri­ving us. ‘I think he’s hav­ing a stroke. We have to get to the hos­pi­tal now.’ I thought she was crazy: ‘What are you talk­ing about? You’re nuts. I’m fine.’ She thought I was crazy: ‘We have to get to the emer­gency room now!’ The troop­ers switched on the police lights. We hap­pened to be 10 min­utes from Lan­cast­er Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, which spe­cial­izes in strokes and prob­lems of the heart. Had we been in a rur­al area of the state, with­out close access to a hos­pi­tal, I would have died. I did any­way. I am not entire­ly sure of the sequence, but dur­ing surgery, my heart stopped for sev­er­al sec­onds.”
    • Tears came to my eyes while read­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed regard­less of your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion.
  5. That New Hit Song on Spo­ti­fy? It Was Made by A.I. (Kyle Chay­ka, The New York­er): “No realm of cul­ture or enter­tain­ment remains untouched by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence: Coca-Cola just released a Christ­mas ad made with A.I. visu­als; A.I. actors are being hyped in Hol­ly­wood. But the tech­nol­o­gy has had an espe­cial­ly swift impact on song­writ­ing. A cou­ple of years ago, a smat­ter­ing of A.I. tracks went viral for using tricks like repli­cat­ing the voic­es of pop stars, includ­ing Jay‑Z and Drake. Now we’re in the midst of a full-blown A.I. music moment. This month, an A.I. coun­try song called ‘Walk My Walk’ (with per­cus­sive claps and for­get­table lyrics such as ‘Kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk’) hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Coun­try Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, and passed three mil­lion streams on Spo­ti­fy; the per­former behind it is a square-jawed dig­i­tal avatar named Break­ing Rust. In Sep­tem­ber, Xania Mon­et, an A.I. R. & B. singer cre­at­ed by a young poet in Mis­sis­sip­pi, land­ed a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar record deal after sev­er­al Bill­board-chart­ing sin­gles.”
  6. Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: how one porn plat­form made mil­lions suing its view­ers (Tarp­ley Hitt, The Guardian): “…since Sep­tem­ber 2017, Vixen’s own­ers had been pur­su­ing anoth­er rev­enue stream: fil­ing thou­sands of boil­er­plate copy­right law­suits against indi­vid­ual ‘John Does’ and col­lect­ing mil­lions in set­tle­ment fees – a mass lit­i­ga­tion cam­paign one fed­er­al judge likened to ‘a hi-tech shake­down’.… Accord­ing to West­law and Pac­er data from the past three years, Strike 3 account­ed for 50% of the fed­er­al copy­right dock­et all on its own. I first heard about Strike 3 in Sep­tem­ber, when some legal clerk friends men­tioned that near­ly every judge on their cir­cuit was han­dling a stack of Strike 3 cas­es – which are now so con­sis­tent as to have become rou­tine.”
    • I am shocked, SHOCKED, that a porn com­pa­ny would be uneth­i­cal in any way. How could they treat their users with any­thing but the utmost respect and cour­tesy? Treat­ing peo­ple with dig­ni­ty is prac­ti­cal­ly their entire busi­ness mod­el.
  7. Pick­le­ball on Sun­day: Why some top col­lege play­ers are call­ing foul (Ben Brasch, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The NCAA has a long-stand­ing rule that adjusts cham­pi­onship sched­ules to accom­mo­date play­ers or teams from schools with writ­ten poli­cies bar­ring com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­days or oth­er days for reli­gious rea­sons. Twen­ty-two of the NCAA’s rough­ly 1,100 mem­ber schools have such poli­cies this year, the group told The Wash­ing­ton Post. But pick­le­ball is not an NCAA sport. And it’s not clear whether all three orga­ni­za­tions at the fore­front of the col­lege game, which includes more than 100 schools, are ready to make a change. Chris­tian­i­ty is cen­tral to the Nation­al Col­le­giate Pick­le­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, which hosts region­al and nation­al tour­na­ments, said its founder, Noah Suem­nick. The league’s web­site promi­nent­ly ref­er­ences a Bible verse from the Book of Matthew.”

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 527: beyond adolescent atheism, counterproductive peer review, and Girls Gone Bible

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. As we grow out of intel­lec­tu­al ado­les­cence, religion’s pop­u­lar­i­ty soars (Charles Mur­ray, New York Post): “…I had con­clud­ed that when reli­gion no longer sup­plies a frame­work for think­ing about tran­scen­dent qual­i­ties, artists tend to make their work about their per­son­al pref­er­ences, and their per­son­al pref­er­ences tend­ed to be self-absorbed and banal. As an unbe­liev­er, what was I to make of that? One option was to infer that the great artists of the past had fool­ish­ly imag­ined they were tap­ping into the tran­scen­dent, and their delu­sion inspired them. But that line of thought became embar­rass­ing when I con­front­ed their work. Is it plau­si­ble that those indi­vid­u­als who achieved things so far beyond the rest of us were uni­form­ly stu­pid about the great ques­tions? I decid­ed they under­stood things we don’t. Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach does not need to explain him­self.”
  2. 1 in 5 chemists have delib­er­ate­ly added errors into their papers dur­ing peer review, study finds (Dalmeet Singh Chawla, Chem­i­cal and Engi­neer­ing News): “More than 20% of chem­istry researchers have delib­er­ate­ly added infor­ma­tion they believe to be incor­rect into their man­u­scripts dur­ing the peer review process, in order to get their papers pub­lished.”
  3. The Girls Who Found God in a Pod­cast (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “Girls Gone Bible launched in 2023, with a week­ly show, and has since amassed more than 20 mil­lion lis­tens, and near­ly two mil­lion fol­low­ers on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok com­bined.… what struck me most about the audi­ence at the Keswick The­ater was how nor­mal, how cool, they all were. These weren’t the car­i­ca­ture of ‘Jesus freaks,’ but more like Regi­na George with eye­lash exten­sions. They spoke about burnout, and lone­li­ness, and how hard it is to get a guy to com­mit to you, and want­i­ng to take life seri­ous­ly.”
  4. Two arti­cles about a wide­spread sin:
    • Escape the Lit­tle Hell of Porn (Marc Sims, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Hat­ing your­self in the after­math of habit­u­al sin feels so right because it feels so close to repen­tance. But it isn’t. Judas hat­ed him­self for his sin, but he didn’t repent. What’s the dif­fer­ence between self-hatred and repen­tance? Real repen­tance begins with what the sin­ful woman in Luke 7 does as she weeps over Jesus’s feet. She’s aware of her sin, so she weeps. But she’s also aware of her Sav­ior, so she brings her tears to him.”
    • What Porn Does to Us (Chris­tine Emba, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “That under­stand­ing of what women are for can spill out into real life and into real inter­ac­tions with oth­er peo­ple. Peo­ple say, ‘It’s just pornog­ra­phy. It’s just some­thing I’m watch­ing. It doesn’t have any­thing to do with my real life.’ That’s not how peo­ple work. Our brains aren’t wired like that. And our souls are not wired like that.”
  5. My Dad Is in a Chi­nese Prison (Grace Jin Drex­el, The Free Press): “My dad’s name is Ezra Jin. He is the head pas­tor of the Zion Church in Chi­na, a com­mu­ni­ty with a reach of tens of thou­sands of Chris­tians across the coun­try who pri­mar­i­ly prac­tice their faith online or via small under­ground church­es in rent­ed spaces. They are a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple whose faith has endured despite a years-long cam­paign by the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty to intim­i­date them into renounc­ing their faith. In 2018, Chi­nese police shut down my dad’s church in Bei­jing, a beau­ti­ful sanc­tu­ary with over 1,500 con­gre­gants. Refus­ing to cow­er in the face of a total­i­tar­i­an regime, my dad got cre­ative. He moved his ser­mons online, mak­ing them acces­si­ble to peo­ple across the coun­try, and from there, he con­tin­ued to build his con­gre­ga­tion.”
  6. The Appeal of the Cam­pus Right (Julia Stein­berg, The Atlantic): “I arrived at Stan­ford in the fall of 2021 as a pro­gres­sive from Los Ange­les, where most of my peers and I had thought of con­ser­v­a­tives as, essen­tial­ly, evil. At a club fair, I signed up for the Stan­ford Young Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca, as well as the left­ist mag­a­zine, The Stan­ford Sphere. I hoped to live in one of Stanford’s co-op hous­es, com­mu­nal liv­ing spaces large­ly focused on left-lean­ing activism. As the school year got under way, how­ev­er, I began to notice some­thing that grat­ed on me. Debates in the class­room, whether about social­ism or Pla­to or the Quran, felt high­ly del­i­cate, as if every­one was afraid of offend­ing every­one else.”
    • Includ­ing large­ly because of the Stan­ford-spe­cif­ic obser­va­tions. I don’t believe I ever crossed paths with the author when she was an under­grad.
  7. If You Ask A.I. for Mar­riage Advice, It’ll Prob­a­bly Tell You to Get Divorced (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “…users who ask AI bots for coun­sel­ing or therapy—which is right now a lot of peo­ple, and is going to be a lot more peo­ple in the future—are going to get a lot of answers pulled from Red­dit. In oth­er words, these LLMs are going to spit­ting out answers to ques­tions like, ‘Should I get divorced,’ by repeat­ing how users on Red­dit answer those kinds of ques­tion. And we know how users on Red­dit tend to answer those ques­tions!”

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 524: beauty and virality

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 Idea of the Beau­ti­ful Is a Sig­na­ture of God’: A Q&A With Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God cre­at­ed that was not meant to rav­ish us with its beau­ty. The idea of the beau­ti­ful is a sig­na­ture of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many oth­er peo­ple. This dis­til­la­tion of the joy, the sen­so­ry joy, of being among things in the world. I think the loss of beau­ty is a loss of an intel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline, which sci­ence nev­er lost because sci­en­tists always have the right to say a for­mu­la is beau­ti­ful. We in the out­side world, we’ve aban­doned the word and the con­cept. It’s sug­ges­tive that the sci­en­tists use it.”
  2. Per­form­ing Gen­der, Left and Right (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “How each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weak­ness­es as a move­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives fun­da­men­tal­ly get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Lib­er­als are thought­ful and polite but place a high pri­or­i­ty on emo­tion­al safe­ty and avoid­ing dan­ger­ous or uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions.… These per­son­al­i­ty and aes­thet­ic dif­fer­ences are cen­tral to polit­i­cal divides. So much of pol­i­tics is who you know, and it’s dif­fi­cult to go some­where in a move­ment if you don’t get along with the peo­ple in it. Elites there­fore sort accord­ing to per­son­al­i­ty in addi­tion to ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. Why Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Is Built for Tik­Tok (Riv­er Page, The Free Press): “Of course evan­gel­i­cals went viral on Tik­Tok. The medi­um is per­fect for the mes­sage; but also, the mes­sage is per­fect for the medi­um. Catholics have art and ancient rit­u­als. Evan­gel­i­cals have rhetoric and emotion—the kind of stuff that trav­els far and wide on a plat­form where you have 15 sec­onds to grab people’s atten­tion.”
  4. Craft Is the Anti­dote to Slop. (Will Mani­dis, Sub­stack): “From Gen­e­sis, man enters not a par­adise with­out labor but a world of inten­tion­al cre­ation. The LORD God places man in the Gar­den of Eden ‘to dress it and to keep it’ (Gen­e­sis 2:15) estab­lish­ing labor not as pun­ish­ment but as sacred voca­tion. This orig­i­nal call­ing invites us to co-cre­ate the King­dom, tend­ing and devel­op­ing the world with inten­tion and care. Our fun­da­men­tal pur­pose is not con­sump­tion but par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ongo­ing work of cre­ation. The ser­pen­t’s temp­ta­tion rep­re­sents the first short­cut in human his­to­ry.… Human­i­ty’s first sin was, in part, choos­ing the easy short­cut over the mean­ing­ful process – pre­fer­ring effort­less gain to the demand­ing but ful­fill­ing work of tend­ing the gar­den.”
  5. Real­iz­ing a desired fam­i­ly size: when should cou­ples start? (Habbe­ma et al, Human Repro­duc­tion): “With­out IVF, cou­ples should start no lat­er than age 32 years for a [90% chance of a] one-child fam­i­ly, at 27 years for a two-child fam­i­ly, and at 23 years for three chil­dren. When cou­ples accept 75% or low­er chances of fam­i­ly com­ple­tion, they can start 4–11 years lat­er.”
    • An alum­nus passed this along to me and I found it fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. He’s Chris­t­ian. In Nige­ria, That Meant Tor­ture and Prison. (Josh Code, The Free Press): “What came to my mind when I was in deten­tion was that death could be the final result. I knew the con­se­quences of help­ing Mus­lims who have con­vert­ed to Christianity—and also the fact that the police were look­ing for them. So death was what was on my mind.… From the point of my deten­tion to the point where I was released, I was con­stant­ly pray­ing and fast­ing. Because of the way I was pray­ing, the oth­er men detained with me thought I was a pas­tor and were even call­ing me ‘rev­erend’ and ask­ing me to remem­ber them in my prayers, so that the Lord would also deliv­er them from cap­tiv­i­ty. Mind you, they were Mus­lims, not Christians—their deten­tion was not on account of their faith.”
  7. There Are Only Two Gametes (Car­ol Hooven, Tablet): “We call ani­mals that pro­duce sperm ‘male’ and those that pro­duce eggs ‘female.’ That’s about it. The bot­tom line is that there are two gamete types and thus two sex­es. There are no oth­er sex­es, no oth­er repro­duc­tive cat­e­gories. Among main­stream evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gists, there is sim­ply no dis­agree­ment on these basic points: The ‘gamet­ic view’ is the estab­lished ortho­doxy of our field. It applies across sex­u­al­ly repro­duc­ing ani­mals and accom­mo­dates all the com­plex­i­ty and vari­a­tion with­in the sex­es. It holds in non­re­pro­duc­tive­ly viable animals—like post­menopausal me—that don’t pro­duce gametes; it holds in male sea­hors­es that get preg­nant; in clown­fish who change from male to female (first pro­duc­ing sperm and then eggs); in females who iden­ti­fy as male (trans men) and take male lev­els of testos­terone and have a deep voice and a thick, bushy beard.”

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 523: religion makes you happy and war is terrifying

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. Reli­gious Peo­ple Are Hap­pi­er Than Non-Reli­gious Peo­ple (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “To go back to where I start­ed — let me just say the one true thing again. High­ly active reli­gious peo­ple are hap­pi­er than non-reli­gious peo­ple. There’s no oth­er way to spin this data than this sim­ple con­clu­sion.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. The author is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis.
  2. I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready for It. (Niall Fer­gu­son, The Free Press): : “Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is now in its fourth year—or its 12th, if you date it from the annex­a­tion of Crimea in 2014. Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, the coun­try has cycled through three wars. First it was a tank war, in which columns of Russ­ian tanks fought a bun­gled blitzkrieg. Then it became an artillery war, in which the two sides trad­ed fire from entrenched posi­tions. Now, how­ev­er, it’s almost entire­ly a drone war, with a sup­port­ing role for small and high­ly vul­ner­a­ble infantry units. The ques­tion is how well Euro­peans under­stand this. The peo­ple of Poland, Roma­nia, Esto­nia, and (per­haps) Den­mark all now know that Russ­ian drones are capa­ble of enter­ing their air­space. But have they tru­ly grasped what that implies?”
    • The author is a senior fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion. I am told he is a fair­ly recent con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty, although I have nev­er met him per­son­al­ly and only know of his faith through pub­lic sources.
  3. What Women Wish They’d Known Before Try­ing to Get Preg­nant (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic): “When Anna De Souza was in her ear­ly 30s, she asked her ob-gyn when she should start think­ing about hav­ing kids. ‘When you were 26,’ she remem­bers the doc­tor say­ing. She was sur­prised. She’d had some sense that fer­til­i­ty decreas­es with age but didn’t know how sig­nif­i­cant the drop-off was. No doc­tor had ever told her, and she cer­tain­ly didn’t learn about it in school.”
    • Unlocked. This is a drum I will keep beat­ing — most of you should plan to have kids ear­li­er than your peers!
  4. Some thoughts on free speech:
    • The Cen­sor­ship You Prac­tice Today Will Be Used Against You Tomor­row (Greg Lukianoff, New York Times): “I don’t like hav­ing to make a case for human rights such as free­dom of speech by appeal­ing to self-inter­est; these are sup­posed to be rights whose impor­tance tran­scends one’s per­son­al needs. But for polit­i­cal par­ti­sans, it’s often the only argu­ment that cuts through. So here’s my prac­ti­cal warn­ing: The weapon that you reach for today will be used against you tomor­row. Using your oppo­nents’ nas­ti­est tools doesn’t per­suade them to dis­arm; it inspires retal­i­a­tion. Tit for tat, for­ev­er and ever.”
    • How not to lim­it free speech (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “There is a pre­sump­tion, then, in favor of free expres­sion, pre­cise­ly because it facil­i­tates the nat­ur­al end of our ratio­nal pow­ers. How­ev­er, not all forms of expres­sion are pro­tect­ed by this pre­sump­tion, because not all forms of expres­sion have any­thing to do with our ratio­nal pow­ers. For exam­ple, pornog­ra­phy does not appeal to our ratio­nal­i­ty and in no way con­tributes to dis­cov­er­ing truth or to debate by which we might root out error.… pornog­ra­phy is in no way pro­tect­ed by the nat­ur­al right to free speech.”
      • The author is a devout Catholic who is also a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor. This is a help­ful essay that cov­ers a lot of ground.
  5. How My Dad Helped Me Mas­ter My Autism (Leland Vit­tert, The Free Press): “Today, most par­ents would prob­a­bly send a kid like me to ther­a­py. Even back then, a diag­no­sis might have got­ten me sig­nif­i­cant spe­cial treat­ment. But my dad knew that there wasn’t a teacher or ther­a­pist who could step in and sud­den­ly make me fit in. The world wasn’t going to adapt to me, and he wasn’t going to try to make it. There would be no ther­a­pists or accom­mo­da­tions. If I was going to suc­ceed, he would have to adapt me to the world.”
  6. I vis­it­ed Gaza. The food aid sur­prised me. (Ken Isaacs, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The main provider of food assis­tance in the Gaza Strip today arguably is the Gaza Human­i­tar­i­an Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion backed by the Unit­ed States and Israel. GHF has faced harsh crit­i­cism for its work in Gaza, with Unit­ed Nations agen­cies and non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions pub­lish­ing a let­ter in July urg­ing donors and coun­tries not to fund the foundation’s work and to instead revert to a sole­ly U.N.-led response. I arrived in Gaza a skep­tic of GHF but left an advo­cate. Sim­ply put, the com­mon por­tray­al of this orga­ni­za­tion rad­i­cal­ly dis­torts real­i­ty.”
    • The author works for Samar­i­tan’s Purse, a Chris­t­ian relief agency.
  7. Two viral clips from the same event (Char­lie Kirk’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice).
    • Eri­ka Kirk on Hus­band’s Assas­sin: “I for­give him.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): two min­utes
    • “I hate my oppo­nent and I don’t want the best for them.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): five min­utes (the famous bit is at about the one minute mark)
    • Watch them both before you read the arti­cles that com­ment on them. Hav­ing watched them, I think some com­men­ta­tors are sub­tly dis­tort­ing them. Watch for your­self, and then mull the respons­es.
    • Why MAGA Evan­gel­i­cals Can Cheer Love and Hate at the Same Time (David French, New York Times): “Many peo­ple who saw or read about the ral­ly were puz­zled by what they per­ceived as a con­tra­dic­tion. How can you cheer love and hate at the same time? How can you wor­ship Jesus and cheer such a base and gross descrip­tion of oth­er human beings, peo­ple who are cre­at­ed in the image of God? My reac­tion was dif­fer­ent. Final­ly, I thought, curi­ous Amer­i­cans who tuned in got to see MAGA the­ol­o­gy more com­plete­ly — and what they wit­nessed was the best and worst of MAGA Chris­tian­i­ty.”
    • The Biggest Tent (The Dis­patch): “The funer­al was what I thought it would be. Until Eri­ka Kirk spoke, and then it was some­thing else.… The last place you would look for grace in Amer­i­can pub­lic life in 2025 is at a Repub­li­can polit­i­cal ral­ly, espe­cial­ly one where the usu­al lust for ruth­less­ness has been juiced by wrath and grief. For Mrs. Kirk to muster it in this set­ting, at this moment, despite the sin­gu­lar anguish with which she’s been bur­dened, felt almost mirac­u­lous even to a non-believ­er like me.… I’ve heard of polit­i­cal ‘big tents,’ but I’ve nev­er heard of one big enough to accom­mo­date two moral sys­tems that aren’t just con­tra­dic­to­ry but irrec­on­cil­able. ‘Christ’s mes­sage, fol­lowed by its very antithe­sis,’ phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Edward Fes­er wrote of the con­trast between Kirk’s and Trump’s remarks. ‘It’s almost as if the audi­ence is being put to a test.’ ”
    • Eri­ka Kirk and America’s Reli­gious Revival (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “By dawn, the lines to get into State Farm Sta­di­um stretched for blocks. Peo­ple camped out overnight to secure a place.… By mid-morn­ing, the 73,000-seat sta­di­um was full. Orga­niz­ers opened the are­na next door for over­flow, but even that quick­ly reached capac­i­ty. In total, an esti­mat­ed 200,000 peo­ple turned out—more than Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s funer­al in 1968.”
    • Is Eri­ka Kirk the Future of MAGA? (Matthew Con­tinet­ti, The Free Press): “Nev­er had I seen some­one upstage Pres­i­dent Trump. It hap­pened Sun­day. Trump spoke for longer than Eri­ka. But she had already brought down the house. Her for­give­ness and hope moved the nation. Clear­ly Trump was mulling over her eulo­gy. When he sly­ly con­trast­ed his style with Charlie’s, Trump kid­ding­ly apol­o­gized. ‘I hate my oppo­nent and don’t want the best for them,’ he said. ‘Sor­ry, Eri­ka.’ When was the last time Trump apol­o­gized? Then he added, ‘Eri­ka, you can talk to me and the whole group, but maybe they can con­vince me that that’s not right, but I can’t stand my oppo­nent.’ Even the pres­i­dent can learn from Eri­ka Kirk.”
    • ‘I Hate My Oppo­nent’: Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memo­r­i­al Dis­till His Pol­i­tics (Nick Catog­gio, New York Times): “When asked about the diver­gent mes­sages from the pres­i­dent and Mrs. Kirk, Karo­line Leav­itt, the White House press sec­re­tary, said on Mon­day that the pres­i­dent was ‘authen­ti­cal­ly him­self.’” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Meet the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize win­ners (Jen­nifer Ouel­lette, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “Diet sodas and oth­er zero-calo­rie drinks are a main­stay of the mod­ern diet, thanks to the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers whose mol­e­cules can’t be metab­o­lized by the human body. The authors of this paper are intrigued by the notion of zero-calo­rie foods, which they believe could be achieved by increas­ing the sat­is­fy­ing vol­ume and mass of food with­out increas­ing the calo­ries. And they have just the addi­tive for that pur­pose: poly­te­tra­flu­o­roeth­yl­ene (PTFE), more com­mon­ly known as Teflon. Yes, the stuff they use on non­stick cook­ware. They insist that Teflon is inert, heat-resis­tant, imper­vi­ous to stom­ach acid, taste­less, cost-effec­tive, and avail­able in handy pow­der form for easy mix­ing into food. They rec­om­mend a ratio of three parts food to one part Teflon pow­der.”
    • I lowkey wan­na eat a teflon-stuffed meal now.
  • Sheep (SMBC)
  • ‘Very mean squir­rel’ seek­ing food has sent at least 2 peo­ple to the ER in a Cal­i­for­nia city (AP News)
  • Sin­ful, Rebel­lious Home­school­er Stays Up Past 9:30 To Read Chron­i­cles Of Nar­nia (Baby­lon Bee)

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 521: mostly Charlie Kirk

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. 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. A lot of arti­cles about the mur­der of Char­lie Kirk. Even peo­ple who bare­ly knew who Kirk was seem to have been deeply moved by his assas­si­na­tion.
    • Stu­dent accep­tance of vio­lence in response to speech hits a record high (Ryne Weiss & Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, FIRE): “Accord­ing to FIRE’s annu­al Col­lege Free Speech Rank­ings sur­vey, in 2020, the nation­al aver­age showed about 1 in 5 stu­dents said it was ever accept­able to use vio­lence to stop a speak­er. That num­ber has since risen to a dis­turb­ing 1 in 3 stu­dents.”
    • How Great the Chasm That Lay Between Us (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Where to begin? The mur­der of Char­lie Kirk feels dif­fer­ent.… Char­lie Kirk was not an elect­ed offi­cial, but a pri­vate cit­i­zen. He was a com­men­ta­tor and media per­son­al­i­ty. Because of that, this killing feels wider in sym­bol­ism. Tonight, a lot of Amer­i­cans feel like some­one died on their behalf. And there’s some truth in that.”
    • Char­lie Kirk Was Prac­tic­ing Pol­i­tics the Right Way (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “You can dis­like much of what Kirk believed and the fol­low­ing state­ment is still true: Kirk was prac­tic­ing pol­i­tics in exact­ly the right way. He was show­ing up to cam­pus­es and talk­ing with any­one who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effec­tive prac­ti­tion­ers of per­sua­sion.… In the inau­gur­al episode of his pod­cast, Gov. Gavin New­som of Cal­i­for­nia host­ed Kirk, admit­ting that his son was a huge fan. What a tes­ta­ment to Kirk’s project.”
    • After Kirk Killing, Amer­i­cans Agree on One Thing: Some­thing Is Seri­ous­ly Wrong (Shawn Hubler, Edgar San­doval and Audra D. S. Burch, New York Times): “No mat­ter their pol­i­tics, peo­ple said they were deeply unset­tled after the killing of Mr. Kirk… Mr. Kirk’s death at 31 sym­bol­ized for many the col­lapse of what they thought was a basic, com­mon-sense, need-not-be-debat­ed Amer­i­can val­ue: that peo­ple express­ing a polit­i­cal opin­ion should not be shot for it.”
    • Je Suis Char­lie (Bethel McGrew, Sub­stack): “It is unique­ly, vis­cer­al­ly hor­ri­fy­ing: the polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion of a young hus­band and father who held no polit­i­cal office, nor was he cam­paign­ing for one. He was a polit­i­cal fig­ure, true, but still a pri­vate cit­i­zen. A pri­vate cit­i­zen who, to his killer, for the great crime of exist­ing while vocal­ly mid­dle-of-the-road con­ser­v­a­tive, deserved to die. And not just in the eyes of his killer, as we quick­ly learned.”
      • McGrew is a Chris­t­ian essayist/journalist with a Ph.D. in math and I when I run across her con­tent I usu­al­ly find it help­ful.
    • Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians Mourn Kirk as a Mar­tyr (Eliz­a­beth Dias and Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “‘I’m rack­ing my brain try­ing to think of anoth­er polit­i­cal fig­ure that had a sim­i­lar impact and fol­low­ing who was assas­si­nat­ed, and the only per­son I can think of is Mar­tin Luther King Jr.,’ Mr. Schilling said.”
    • If We Keep This Up, Char­lie Kirk Will Not Be the Last to Die (David French, New York Times): “That’s one thing I respect­ed about Char­lie — and it’s worth empha­siz­ing because the assas­sin attacked him as he spoke on cam­pus — he wasn’t afraid of a debate. He was will­ing to talk to any­one. And when he was shot in the mid­dle of a debate, the assas­sin didn’t just take aim at a pre­cious human being, cre­at­ed in the image of God, he took aim at the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment itself.”
    • Hit­ting The Jugu­lar Of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “…I [do not] think it is wrong to ‘politi­cize’ his own hor­ri­ble assas­si­na­tion. Because it was an express­ly polit­i­cal act. It was polit­i­cal because it struck Kirk in the core act of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy: debat­ing his oppo­nents. We don’t know the pre­cise motive behind the mur­der right now, but that’s irrel­e­vant. This was aimed lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly at the jugu­lar of a free soci­ety.”
  2. One of our mil­i­tary alum­ni liked the “hon­esty tax” arti­cle I shared last week and sent me this mono­graph about the same dynam­ic in the mil­i­tary: Lying to Our­selves: Dis­hon­esty in the Army Pro­fes­sion (Leonard Wong & Stephen J. Ger­ras, US Army War Col­lege): “For exam­ple, one colonel described how his brigade com­man­der need­ed to turn in his sit­u­a­tion report on Fri­day, forc­ing the bat­tal­ions to do theirs on Thurs­day, and there­fore the com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted their data on Wednesday—necessitating the com­pa­nies to describe events that had not even occurred yet. The end result was that, while the com­pa­nies gave it their best shot, every­one includ­ing the bat­tal­ion com­man­der knew that the com­pa­ny reports were not accu­rate.”
    • This fact was strik­ing: “In the rush by high­er head­quar­ters to incor­po­rate every good idea into train­ing, the total num­ber of train­ing days required by all manda­to­ry train­ing direc­tives lit­er­al­ly exceeds the num­ber of train­ing days avail­able to com­pa­ny com­man­ders. Com­pa­ny com­man­ders some­how have to fit 297 days of manda­to­ry require­ments into 256 avail­able train­ing days.” It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for them to ful­fill the require­ments they have to affirm they ful­filled!
  3. The Ser­i­al Killer’s Apol­o­gist (Zac Bis­son­nette, The Free Press): “He then led police to the bod­ies of young men he and Cor­ll had mur­dered with the help of anoth­er accom­plice, David Brooks. In all, 27 men and boys had been killed; Hen­ley was tried and con­vict­ed on six counts of mur­der with mal­ice.… Ramsland’s treat­ment of Hen­ley rep­re­sents ther­a­py cul­ture tak­en to its log­i­cal extreme. There is no vil­lain so odi­ous that he can’t be recast through the lens of a trau­ma framework—and a sym­pa­thet­ic expla­na­tion can always be found through exten­sive talk­ing.”
  4. NASA dis­cov­ers ‘clear­est sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars’ (Kasha Patel, Wash­ing­ton Post): “But the col­or­ful speck­les on the rocks pose an even more allur­ing mys­tery. These fea­tures are two well-known min­er­als made of iron, phos­pho­rus and sul­fur. One called vivian­ite — also some­times referred to as corpse crys­tals — forms dur­ing the decay of organ­ic mate­r­i­al and is blue-green. The oth­er, called greig­ite, shows up as a dull brown. But when these two min­er­als are found togeth­er in sed­i­ments on Earth, Hurowitz said, it’s usu­al­ly a result of micro­bial metab­o­lisms.… The authors acknowl­edge that these min­er­als could have formed with­out microbes — with the involve­ment of heat, for instance. But the new study deter­mined the Mar­t­ian rocks don’t appear to have been heat­ed.”
  5. Strange Gifts of the Spir­it (Sarah Kil­lam Cros­by, Plough): “Ire­naeus, the great sec­ond-cen­tu­ry bish­op of Lyons, wrote that true dis­ci­ples of Christ received and exer­cised spir­i­tu­al gifts grant­ed them through the grace of God. ‘Some real­ly and tru­ly dri­ve out demons, … some have fore­knowl­edge of the future, and visions and prophet­ic speech, and oth­ers lay their hands on the sick and make them well, and as we said, even the dead have been raised and have remained with us for many years.’ Ori­gen like­wise claimed that mirac­u­lous signs and won­ders were still per­formed, though with greater scarci­ty, in the church­es of his day, and Augustine’s City of God recounts sev­er­al mir­a­cles, includ­ing heal­ings and exor­cisms. For these and oth­er patris­tic the­olo­gians, it was clear that super­nat­ur­al gifts of the Spir­it were still present in the life of the church. These texts show that heal­ings, prophe­cies, and oth­er phe­nom­e­na were viewed as part of the pat­tern which had been ini­ti­at­ed at Pen­te­cost.”
  6. Expe­ri­ences Shape Beliefs. They Shouldn’t Deter­mine Them. (Samuel James, Gospel Coali­tion): “When some­one talks about why they’ve changed their con­vic­tions about some­thing, they increas­ing­ly refer to neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences more often than per­sua­sive argu­ments.… It’s not so much about los­ing faith in a creed, but los­ing faith in some­body. There’s a grow­ing ten­den­cy to then iden­ti­fy the per­son in whom we have lost faith as the sum total of their beliefs, and change our think­ing accord­ing­ly. ‘Because X per­son did Y bad thing, this must mean X per­son was wrong about Z idea.’”
  7. Tanks Were Just Tanks, Until Drones Made Them Change (Mar­co Her­nan­dez & Thomas Gib­bons-Neff, New York Times): “…Russia’s and Ukraine’s Sovi­et-era tanks rum­ble across the bat­tle­field cov­ered in anti-drone nets and spikes, dan­gling chains and unwieldy cages. The exte­ri­or trans­for­ma­tions of these hulk­ing vehi­cles are a tes­ta­ment to how quick­ly drones have changed the war in Ukraine in just over three years.”

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 517: being timely for church and some Chi Alpha props

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 Being Late to Church Mat­ters (Joe Carter, The Gospel Coali­tion): “If we believe the ser­vice is pri­mar­i­ly about what we can get out of it—uplifting music, an encour­ag­ing ser­mon, fel­low­ship with friends—then arriv­ing late makes sense. After all, we can still catch most of the ‘good stuff.’ But if you under­stand cor­po­rate wor­ship as some­thing we do togeth­er as the body of Christ—if you see it as our col­lec­tive offer­ing of praise to our Creator—then show­ing up late takes on a dif­fer­ent mean­ing entire­ly. We’re not just show­ing up late; we’re miss­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in some­thing the Lord has designed to form us as his peo­ple.”
  2. My expe­ri­ence at the Stan­ford Ver­i­tas Forum: Hen­nessy and Gelsinger on lead­er­ship, ethics and AI (Pedro David Espinoza, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The forum was mod­er­at­ed by Elli Schulz ’25, pres­i­dent of Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship and vice pres­i­dent of Vox Clara, a stu­dent-run mag­a­zine part­nered with Ver­i­tas. It offered a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with lead­ers who have shaped the tech world while reflect­ing on iden­ti­ty, pur­pose, ethics, and faith. Elli, whom I’ve known since 2022 through Chi Alpha — one of Stanford’s most diverse and largest Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions — brought calm con­fi­dence, light­heart­ed humor and sharp ques­tions to guide the hour-long con­ver­sa­tion. She was the ide­al mod­er­a­tor, giv­en her pas­sion for apolo­get­ics and ded­i­ca­tion to faith and work.”
    • Includ­ing entire­ly because it makes Chi Alpha look good.
  3. My Reli­gion is “Some­thing Else” (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “…young peo­ple don’t know what the word Protes­tant means any­more, and that’s going to cause major prob­lems in mea­sur­ing reli­gion going for­ward.… Among the youngest adults in the sam­ple, almost none of them select­ed Protes­tant. In fact, few­er than 10% did so until you get into respon­dents in their late 30s. In con­trast, large num­bers sim­ply said they were Chris­t­ian—at least 20% of those in their late teens and ear­ly 20s.”
  4. The Book That Can Inspire Both a Pope and a Politi­cian (Randy Boy­ago­da, New York Times): “In oth­er words, the two most promi­nent Amer­i­can Catholics [J. D. Vance and Pope Leo] have each been pro­found­ly influ­enced by a 1,600-year-old book about why the Roman Empire was falling apart. What makes it so con­vinc­ing, and why are pow­er­ful peo­ple still turn­ing to it for guid­ance and insight?”
    • The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor. Rec­om­mend­ed by the moth­er of an alum­nus.
  5. Stop Ask­ing Kids If They’re Depressed (Abi­gail Shri­er, The Free Press): “Kids are wild­ly sug­gestible, espe­cial­ly where psy­chi­atric symp­toms are con­cerned. Ask a kid repeat­ed­ly if he might be depressed—how about now? Are you sure?—and he just might decide that he is. Intro­duce ‘gen­der dys­pho­ria’ into a peer group, and a swath of sev­enth grade girls are like­ly to decide they were born in the wrong body. Intro­duce ‘test­ing anx­i­ety’ or ‘social pho­bia,’ or ‘sui­ci­dal­i­ty’ to them, and many teens are like­ly to decide: I have that, too. There is a rea­son clin­i­cians keep anorex­ia patients from social­iz­ing unsu­per­vised in a hos­pi­tal ward; anorex­ia is pro­found­ly social­ly con­ta­gious.”
  6. Cana­da Is Killing Itself (Elaina Plott Cal­abro, The Atlantic): “One day, admin­is­ter­ing a lethal injec­tion to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legit­i­mate as a ton­sil­lec­to­my, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and dia­betes combined—surpassing coun­tries where assist­ed dying has been legal for far longer.”
    • A sad read with some gen­uine­ly shock­ing quotes. Unlocked.
  7. What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones (Lenore Ske­nazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): “Chil­dren want to meet up in per­son, no screens or super­vi­sion. But because so many par­ents restrict their abil­i­ty to social­ize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hov­er­ing: their phones.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • For­give­ness (Pearls Before Swine)
  • Apos­tles Quick­ly Start Act­ing Pious As They Notice Luke Watch­ing And Tak­ing Notes (Baby­lon Bee)
  • Pana­ma Playlists: “I found the real Spo­ti­fy accounts of celebri­ties, politi­cians, and jour­nal­ists. Many use their real names. With a lit­tle inves­ti­gat­ing, I could say with near-cer­tain­ty: yep, this is that per­son.  I’ve been scrap­ing their playlists for over a year. Some indi­vid­u­als even have a set­ting enabled that dis­plays their last played song. I scraped this con­tin­u­ous­ly, so I know what songs they played, how many times, and when.  The Pana­ma Papers revealed hid­den bank accounts. This reveals hid­den tastes.”

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 509: a Christian assassin, Harvard Law Review, Juneteenth

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. Stop Striv­ing and Have a Baby (Nicholas Clair­mont, The Free Press): “…hav­ing kids isn’t just pos­si­ble, think­able, or doable. It’s actu­al­ly super fun, mas­sive­ly eas­i­er than any­one tells you, and so ener­giz­ing and clar­i­fy­ing that if you are an ambi­tious per­son, you should have a kid out of pure per­son­al self­ish­ness.”
  2. Friends say Min­neso­ta shoot­ing sus­pect was deeply reli­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Mus­t­ian & Michael Bieseck­er, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Friends and for­mer col­leagues inter­viewed by AP described Boel­ter as a devout Chris­t­ian who attend­ed an evan­gel­i­cal church and went to cam­paign ral­lies for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.”
    • In response: The Prob­lem of the Chris­t­ian Assas­sin (David French, The New York Times): “Our nation is relearn­ing a les­son that it nev­er should have for­got­ten. Extrem­ist Chris­t­ian lan­guage and the­ol­o­gy can lead to extreme Chris­t­ian vio­lence in the same way that extreme lan­guage can lead to extreme vio­lence in oth­er faith tra­di­tions and among peo­ple who have no faith at all. Chris­tians aren’t bet­ter than any­one else. We’re fash­ioned from the same human clay, and we’re sus­cep­ti­ble to the same temp­ta­tions and fail­ures.”
  3. The Gospel Does­n’t Impart a Lens, but a Life (Steven M. Bryan, Mere Ortho­doxy): “I sus­pect that some of the ways that we speak about those who aban­don Chris­t­ian faith and become sec­u­lar mir­rors a sec­u­lar under­stand­ing of what it means to become a Chris­t­ian in the first place. To speak about ‘de-con­struc­tion’ implies that becom­ing a Chris­t­ian is a mat­ter of con­struct­ing a ‘world­view.’ It risks rat­i­fy­ing the claim that becom­ing a Chris­t­ian is some­thing like becom­ing a Marx­ist or a nation­al­ist or even a post­mod­ernist. It is sim­ply to dis­man­tle one sto­ry about the world and to con­struct anoth­er. To speak about ‘de-con­ver­sion’ implies that the Gospel imparts a lens, not life.”
    • The author is a New Tes­ta­ment pro­fes­sor at Trin­i­ty Evan­gel­i­cal Divin­i­ty School.
  4. What Church Do You Attend? Maybe More Than One, Sur­vey Finds (Adelle Banks, Roys Report): “Researchers for the mul­ti­year Hart­ford Insti­tute for Reli­gion Research study found that 46% of some 24,000 church­go­ers respond­ing to their sur­vey report­ed active engage­ment with more than one church.”
  5. Matt Ygle­sias on debat­ing (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “In prac­tice, one big rea­son to debate is so you can put four peo­ple on the floor and attract an audi­ence and some pub­lic atten­tion, yet with­out slight­ing any one of the ‘stars’ by mak­ing it a pan­el. As a method of truth-seek­ing, I do not think pub­lic debate does very well.”
  6. Exclu­sive: Har­vard Law Review Axes 85 Per­cent of Sub­mis­sions Using Race-Con­scious Rubric, Doc­u­ments Show (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “The Free Bea­con obtained more than 500 doc­u­ments from the journal’s two lat­est vol­umes, includ­ing the one cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion. The new doc­u­ments are all from 2024 and 2025—after the Supreme Court banned affir­ma­tive action at universities—and span four dis­tinct stages of the arti­cle selec­tion process. They pro­vide the most com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture yet of the racial and ide­o­log­i­cal pref­er­ences at the elite law review, which has become a key front in the Trump administration’s war on Har­vard and is now the sub­ject of three fed­er­al probes. The doc­u­ments show that at least 42 dif­fer­ent edi­tors con­sid­ered race or gen­der when mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions in 2024. That num­ber accounts for 40 per­cent of the 104 edi­tors who serve on the jour­nal at any giv­en time, all of whom have a vote in pub­li­ca­tion deci­sions. While some edi­tors rec­om­mend­ed pieces on the grounds that the author was a minor­i­ty, oth­ers paid more atten­tion to the article’s foot­notes, comb­ing through the cita­tions to see how many sources were white, black, or trans­gen­der.”
  7. Arti­cles which appear to have been writ­ten in hon­or of June­teenth:
    • June­teenth Is Our Sec­ond Inde­pen­dence Day (Con­doleeza Rice, The Free Press): “But even though my fam­i­ly has been cel­e­brat­ing June­teenth since my child­hood, it wasn’t until 2021 that Con­gress vot­ed, almost unan­i­mous­ly, to make June­teenth Nation­al Inde­pen­dence Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day. Because many Amer­i­cans are unfa­mil­iar with its sig­nif­i­cance, some, per­haps under­stand­ably, won­der why it need­ed nation­al recog­ni­tion at all. After all, all Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate the Fourth of July—the ulti­mate cel­e­bra­tion of our nation’s found­ing, of our inde­pen­dence and our lib­er­ty.  To me, June­teenth is a recog­ni­tion of what I call America’s sec­ond found­ing.”
      • The author is a fel­low believ­er and also the direc­tor of Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
      • The arti­cle con­tains this stun­ning para­graph: “I was eight years old when, on a Sun­day morn­ing in Sep­tem­ber 1963, the 16th Street Bap­tist Church was bombed. I felt the blast a few blocks away in the church where my father was the pas­tor. Four lit­tle girls, two of whom I knew, were killed.”
    • What Amer­i­can Stu­dents Aren’t Taught About Slav­ery (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “What I learned from teach­ing slav­ery to a group of col­lege fresh­men is that many (per­haps most) Amer­i­can kids grad­u­ate high school believ­ing, false­ly, that slav­ery hap­pened only in Amer­i­ca. Their minds are not blown by rehears­ing the bru­tal facts of Amer­i­can slav­ery. Their minds are blown to learn that oth­er bru­tal slaver­ies also exist­ed all over the world. Nor is this his­tor­i­cal amne­sia con­fined to high school stu­dents. The Unit­ed Nations has deemed March 25 a day of remem­brance for the transat­lantic slave trade. There is no UN day of remem­brance for the Arab slave trade, the Bar­bary slave trade, the Indi­an Ocean slave trade, or any of the slaver­ies local­ized to spe­cif­ic regions such as the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent, Chi­na, Korea, and East­ern Europe—each of which account­ed for mil­lions of slaves.… Instead of white­wash­ing the grim facts of Amer­i­can slavery—as Amer­i­can his­to­ry text­books did in the past, and as cer­tain cor­ners of the Amer­i­can right would be all too hap­py to revive—I rec­om­mend tak­ing the oppo­site approach: adding mate­r­i­al rather than sub­tract­ing it. We must include the glob­al and ubiq­ui­tous nature of slav­ery in every school cur­ricu­lum.”
      • The author, him­self African-Amer­i­can and Puer­to Rican, is a jour­nal­ist and a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Austin.
    • Fred­er­ick Dou­glass Found His Mis­sion in the Black Church (Jes­si­ca Jan­vi­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Douglass’s mud­dled expe­ri­ence with evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty mir­rored what many oth­er slaves expe­ri­enced. Many of them came to faith through evan­gel­i­cal­ism and were able to grasp the hope of emancipation—and equal­i­ty. Yet they also saw white evan­gel­i­cal preach­ers espouse proslav­ery doc­trines and com­fort with tear­ing apart Black fam­i­lies to uphold the lucra­tive insti­tu­tion. With this hypocrisy in mind, Dou­glass famous­ly wrote, ‘I love the pure, peace­able, and impar­tial Chris­tian­i­ty of Christ: I there­fore hate the cor­rupt, slave­hold­ing, women-whip­ping, cra­dle-plun­der­ing, par­tial and hyp­o­crit­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty of this land.’ ”

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.