Tag: famous Christians

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 149

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. The Ugly Cod­ed Cri­tique of Chick-Fil-A’s Chris­tian­i­ty (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “A few years ago, a well-known pro­gres­sive com­men­ta­tor mused to his large Twit­ter fol­low­ing that some­times he wish­es all the Chris­tians would just dis­ap­pear. I would like to believe he was sim­ply too unin­formed to real­ize that he was wish­ing for a whiter world.” This arti­cle makes an impor­tant point that you may find use­ful in cam­pus dis­cus­sions. It is in response to the very odd Chick-Fil‑A’s Creepy Infil­tra­tion Of New York City (Dan Piepen­bring, New York­er). Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  2. Church Of The Don­ald (Ruth Gra­ham, Politi­co): “Trump per­son­al­ly has appeared 11 times on CBN since his cam­paign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more inter­views to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS…. Chris­t­ian broad­cast­ers offer an unmedi­at­ed chan­nel to the liv­ing rooms of a remark­ably wide swath of Amer­i­can believ­ers, an audi­ence more polit­i­cal­ly and racial­ly diverse than you might expect. TBN alone has more local sta­tions to its name than Fox or the three major net­works.” Insight­ful and rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. When the Rohingya Came, This Chris­t­ian Hos­pi­tal Was Ready (Sarah Eekhof Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is a grip­ping sto­ry and dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Wow.
  4. Alfie Evans and Our Moral Cross­roads (Charles Camosy, First Things): “Alfie Evans’s death is being aimed by the very peo­ple whose voca­tion it is to help and pro­tect him. The dif­fer­ence in Alfie’s case is that, because he has con­tin­ued to breathe, the pre­tense of ‘removal of bur­den­some treat­ment’ is patent­ly absurd. In a sit­u­a­tion that was no doubt dis­tress­ing to those who hoped he would die, Alfie’s con­tin­u­ing to breathe has clar­i­fied the true object of the act of remov­ing his ven­ti­la­tor.” The more I read about this case the angri­er I become.
  5. Alan Jacobs: a Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­al for the inter­net age (David J. Michael, Amer­i­ca): “…he was pub­lish­ing schol­ar­ly work with­in his field but was increas­ing­ly devot­ing time to writ­ing essays and the­o­log­i­cal pieces for Chris­t­ian mag­a­zines and jour­nals. Switch­ing back and forth could be dis­ori­ent­ing, and he spent sev­er­al years debat­ing and pray­ing about which audi­ence he should focus on. ‘At one point, I just had an epiphany: You don’t get to choose.You’re gonna have to write for your schol­ar­ly peers, and you’re gonna have to write for your fel­low Chris­tians because you have things to say to both audi­ences. So, that means, you got­ta learn to code switch.’” I am a big fan of Alan Jacobs’ writ­ing.
  6. Dear Human­i­ties Profs: We Are The Prob­lem (Eric Ben­nett, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Three gen­er­a­tions ago, lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors exchanged a rig­or­ous­ly defined sphere of exper­tise, to which they could speak with author­i­ty, for a much wider field to which they could speak with vir­tu­al­ly no pow­er at all…. Lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors have affect­ed Amer­i­ca more by sleep­ing in its down­town hotels and eat­ing in its fast-food restau­rants than by telling one anoth­er where real prospects for free­dom lay. ” Oof. That’s a sol­id blow, right there. The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Prov­i­dence Col­lege.
  7. Uncan­ny Vul­vas (Diana Fleis­chman, Jaco­bite Mag­a­zine): “Video games and social media already under­mine the native psy­cho­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms that make us work towards sta­tus — they sup­ply more imme­di­ate rewards and take far less effort than any­thing we work towards out in the real world. Sex robots are only going to make that worse, espe­cial­ly for young men.” Def­i­nite­ly not a Chris­t­ian arti­cle. From a some­what relat­ed Chris­t­ian stand­point: The Eco­nom­ics of Sex­u­al Puri­ty (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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 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 144

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. Exten­sive Data Shows Pun­ish­ing Reach of Racism for Black Boys (Emi­ly Bad­ger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce And Kevin Quealy, NY Times): “The authors, includ­ing the Stan­ford econ­o­mist Raj Chet­ty and two cen­sus researchers, Mag­gie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to iden­ti­fy neigh­bor­hoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites. ‘The prob­lem,’ Mr. Chet­ty said, ‘is that there are essen­tial­ly no such neigh­bor­hoods in Amer­i­ca.’ And, intrigu­ing­ly, these pock­ets — includ­ing parts of the Mary­land sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, and cor­ners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many low­er-income black chil­dren had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not.”
    • The main take­away from this research is that Amer­i­can soci­ety is fail­ing black men. The sole ray of hope I saw in the arti­cle was in the para­graph above: poor black boys appar­ent­ly do as well as sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed poor white boys if there are black fathers near­by. It’s stun­ning: a dense gath­er­ing of fathers can bring health even into father­less sit­u­a­tions. The fam­i­ly is a basic build­ing block of soci­ety and we weak­en it at great risk. I’m shocked this result from the study hasn’t received more cov­er­age.
  2. Mar­riage Has Become a Tro­phy (Andrew Cher­lin, The Atlantic): “For many peo­ple, regard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, a wed­ding is no longer the first step into adult­hood that it once was, but, often, the last. It is a cel­e­bra­tion of all that two peo­ple have already done, unlike a tra­di­tion­al wed­ding, which was a cel­e­bra­tion of what a cou­ple would do in the future.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Johns Hop­kins.
  3. This Preach­er Would Be Hap­py to Share Your Bowl of Açaí (Lau­ra Wil­son, New York Times): “Pas­tors today who want to start a min­istry for those 40 and under fol­low a well-trav­eled path. First, they lease an old the­ater or club. Next, they find great singers and back­up musi­cians. A fog machine on stage is nice. A church should also have a catchy logo or catch­phrase that can be stamped onto mer­chan­dise and brand­ed — socks, knit hats, shoes and sweat­shirts. (An online pop-up shop on Memo­r­i­al Day sold $10,000 in mer­chan­dise its first hour, Mr. Veach said.) And last­ly, church­es need a mon­ey app — Zoe uses Push­pay — to make it easy for church­go­ers to tithe with a swipe on their smart­phones.”
    • I thought this was an odd para­graph: “‘Insta­gram built our church,’ he said one after­noon at his office here a block from the El Rey The­ater. ‘Isn’t that fas­ci­nat­ing?’ Mr. Veach believes he can save souls by being the hip and hap­py-go-lucky preach­er, the one you want to share a bowl of açaí with at Back­yard Bowls on Bev­er­ly Boule­vard, who declines to pub­licly dis­cuss pol­i­tics in the Trump era because it’s hard to min­is­ter if no one wants to come to church. Jesus is sup­posed to be fun, right? ‘I want to be loud and dumb,’ Mr. Veach said with a wide, toothy grin. ‘That’s my goal. If we aren’t mak­ing peo­ple laugh, what are we doing? What is the point?’”
  4. Why Cloud­flare Let An Extrem­ist Strong­hold Burn (Steven John­son, Wired): “Lit­er­al­ly, I woke up in a bad mood and decid­ed some­one shouldn’t be allowed on the inter­net. No one should have that pow­er.” I shared one of the relat­ed arti­cles back in issue 136, but didn’t real­ize it was the theme of the whole issue: The (Divi­sive, Cor­ro­sive, Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech. The oth­er arti­cles are worth check­ing out as well. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend.
  5. Ter­ry Crews: How to Have, Do and Be All You Want (Tim Fer­riss Pod­cast): this is a mov­ing inter­view. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Worth men­tion­ing: Ter­ry Crews is pub­lic about his Chris­t­ian faith on social media, although it does not come through in this inter­view. I men­tion that because he says some things about guilt and shame towards the end that are not quite right the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but are still worth think­ing about.  
  6. God Made Me Black On Pur­pose (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “A pil­lar of the area’s African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, the shop fea­tures aging walls cov­ered in pho­tos, news clip­pings and oth­er para­pher­na­lia. Two indi­vid­u­als in par­tic­u­lar are lion­ized: Barack Oba­ma, the country’s first black pres­i­dent; and Scott, the first black sen­a­tor from the South since Reconstruction—and the only African-Amer­i­can ever to serve in both cham­bers of Con­gress. Both are chil­dren of sin­gle moth­ers, but polit­i­cal­ly, the pair have lit­tle in com­mon: Oba­ma, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat raised pri­mar­i­ly by well-off whites in Hawaii before adopt­ing Chicago’s impov­er­ished South Side as his polit­i­cal base; Scott, a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who grew up poor in North Charleston, and whose ini­tial tick­et to D.C. was punched by afflu­ent vot­ers in the state’s three-quar­ters-white 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Still, they are mem­bers of a small fraternity—two of just 10 African-Amer­i­cans ever to serve in the Senate—and both are an immea­sur­able source of pride for the bar­ber shop and its cus­tomers.”
    • One detail from lat­er in the arti­cle that stood out to me: Scott got saved in col­lege at a Bible study. Col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Also, the way he became a Repub­li­can is actu­al­ly real­ly fun­ny. Search the arti­cle for the phrase, “Scott knew imme­di­ate­ly he would run; what he didn’t know was for which par­ty.”
  7. How many hours does it take to make a friend? (Jef­frey Hall, Jour­nal of Social and Per­son­al Rela­tion­ships):  “Tak­en togeth­er, results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from casu­al friend to friend is greater than 50% after around 80–100 hr togeth­er. Results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from friends to good/best friends is greater than 50% after 119 hr over 3 weeks and 219 hr over 3 months.” The author is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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 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 121

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. The Exchanged Life (J. Hus­don Tay­lor, a let­ter to his sis­ter): “It lit­tle mat­ters to my ser­vant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expen­sive arti­cles. In either case he looks to me for the mon­ey, and brings me his pur­chas­es. So, if God place me in great per­plex­i­ty, must He not give me much guid­ance; in posi­tions of great dif­fi­cul­ty, much grace; in cir­cum­stances of great pres­sure and tri­al, much strength? No fear that His resources will be unequal to the emer­gency!” (brought to my atten­tion by a stu­dent, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed)
  2. The news from Las Vegas is so heart­break­ing. Here are a few pieces about it and also about the issue of guns more gen­er­al­ly.
  3. A Brief His­to­ry of Ces­sa­tion­ism (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “In the 1700s and 1800s, sus­pi­cion of claimed mir­a­cles was con­nect­ed to anti-Catholi­cism. Protes­tant crit­ics saw the Catholic tra­di­tion as rid­dled with fake claims of mir­a­cles. Ridi­cul­ing the fake mir­a­cle claims of Catholics (such as icons bleed­ing a liq­uid that turned out to be cher­ry juice) became a sta­ple of Reformed polemics against the Catholic Church. So when seem­ing­ly mirac­u­lous events hap­pened in Protes­tant church­es, even sym­pa­thet­ic observers warned against the threat of bogus mir­a­cles.”
  4. The Lim­its of “Diver­si­ty” (Kele­fa San­neh, The New York­er): “It is pos­si­ble that ‘diver­si­ty’ will ulti­mate­ly prove too weak a term to do all that is asked of it. Con­tem­po­rary advo­cates some­times empha­size, instead, “inclu­sion,” a less neu­tral con­cept, and one that ges­tures at the polit­i­cal agen­das that inevitably shape these debates.”
  5. ‘Pan­icked’ Lon­don train com­muters force open doors, flee onto tracks when man reads the Bible aloud (Dou­glas Per­ry, Ore­gon Live). I’ve said it before — our cul­ture has replaced the fear of God with the fear of reli­gion. It’s a poor trade.
  6. Why the rule of law suf­fers when we have too many laws (Ilya Somin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Because of the vast scope of cur­rent law, in mod­ern Amer­i­ca the author­i­ties can pin a crime on the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple, if they real­ly want to. Whether you get hauled into court or not depends more on the dis­cre­tionary deci­sions of  law enforce­ment offi­cials than on any legal rule…. the rule of law has large­ly been sup­plant­ed by the rule of chance and the rule of exec­u­tive dis­cre­tion. Inevitably, polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and par­ti­san­ship have a major impact on the lat­ter. For exam­ple, fed­er­al law enforce­ment pri­or­i­ties are very dif­fer­ent under Trump than they were under Oba­ma.”
  7. Roy Moore is a fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure with a com­pelling sto­ry. He’s the guy you might know as “that Ten Com­mand­ments judge from the South.” He is run­ning for a seat in the US Sen­ate and he just won the pri­ma­ry elec­tion and seems on track to win the gen­er­al elec­tion. There are inter­est­ing times ahead as a result.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 109

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. How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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 106

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. One Amer­i­can fam­i­ly’s mis­sion to res­cue civil­ians in Mosul (Mar­co Wer­man, PRI’s The World): I heard this sto­ry on NPR this week and was floored. Lis­ten to the thir­teen-minute inter­view (don’t just read the sur­round­ing text ‑the siz­zle is in the audio ver­sion). Amaz­ing. For more about David Eubank’s min­istry, read Jun­gle Cow­boys (Sophia Lee, World Mag­a­zine).
  2. The Legal Mean­ing of the Cos­by Mis­tri­al (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al bur­den of proof in any crim­i­nal tri­al is inten­tion­al­ly designed to heav­i­ly favor defen­dants, because we long ago embraced as a soci­ety Blackstone’s prin­ci­ple. For­mu­lat­ed in the sev­en­teen-six­ties by the Eng­lish jurist William Black­stone, the pre­sump­tion is that it is bet­ter to have ten guilty peo­ple go free than that one inno­cent per­son suf­fer. Hard as it is to stom­ach today, embrac­ing that cal­cu­lus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to men­tion ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers) to go free in order to pro­tect the one false­ly accused.” Gersen, a Har­vard Law prof, also has anoth­er sol­id arti­cle this week: Why Racial­ly Offen­sive Trade­marks Are Now Legal­ly Pro­tect­ed.
  3. Phi­lan­do Castile After­math (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Still, I can’t grasp why Castile’s killer got away scot-free, and why there hasn’t been much of an out­cry. If a police offi­cer can shoot to death a motorist who was obey­ing all his com­mands, and walk away a free man from that shoot­ing, how safe are any of us?” On Slate, Leon Ney­fakh writes Phi­lan­do Castile Should Be the NRA’s Per­fect Cause Célèbre. There’s Just One Prob­lem. See also David French’s The Unwrit­ten Law That Helps Bad Cops Go Free.
  4. Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democ­rats, Trans­gen­derism, and Islamist Ter­ror (Jonathan V. Last, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “Although I describe myself as trans­gen­der (I was don­ning flam­boy­ant male cos­tumes from ear­ly child­hood on), I am high­ly skep­ti­cal about the cur­rent trans­gen­der wave, which I think has been pro­duced by far more com­pli­cat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tors than cur­rent gen­der dis­course allows. Fur­ther­more, I con­demn the esca­lat­ing pre­scrip­tion of puber­ty block­ers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for chil­dren. I regard this prac­tice as a crim­i­nal vio­la­tion of human rights.”
  5. Mis-Edu­cat­ing The Young (David Brooks, NY Times): “Child­hood is more struc­tured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the mer­i­toc­ra­cy spits peo­ple out into a young adult­hood that is less struc­tured than it has ever been.”
  6. The most impor­tant truth about hard work, and also read­ing, that you can find (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Giv­en two peo­ple of approx­i­mate­ly the same abil­i­ty and one per­son who works ten per­cent more than the oth­er, the lat­ter will more than twice out­pro­duce the for­mer. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the oppor­tu­ni­ty – it is very much like com­pound inter­est.”
  7. Two minds: The cog­ni­tive dif­fer­ences between men and women (Bruce Gold­man, Stan­ford Med­i­cine): “In a study of 34 rhe­sus mon­keys, for exam­ple, males strong­ly pre­ferred toys with wheels over plush toys, where­as females found plush toys lik­able. It would be tough to argue that the mon­keys’ par­ents bought them sex-typed toys or that simi­an soci­ety encour­ages its male off­spring to play more with trucks.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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 99

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. Porn Star James Deen’s Cri­sis of Con­science (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “In any case, he now feels there is an eth­i­cal dilem­ma in porn. On one hand, the industry’s suc­cess depends on its being acces­si­ble to mass audi­ences online. On the oth­er hand, Deen is con­vinced that the acces­si­bil­i­ty of porn is harm­ing young peo­ple.” This arti­cle is graph­ic.
  2. This Black Pas­tor Led A White Church — In 1788 (Thabiti Anyab­wale, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “He was licensed to preach on Novem­ber 29, 1780 and five years lat­er became the first African-Amer­i­can ordained by any reli­gious body in Amer­i­ca. In 1804 Mid­dle­bury Col­lege award­ed Haynes an hon­orary Master’s degree—another first for an African-Amer­i­can.”
  3. Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order On Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Is Worse Than Use­less (David French, Nation­al Review): “the order has three main com­po­nents: 1) a promise to ‘pro­tect and vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote reli­gious lib­er­ty,’ 2) a direc­tive to ‘ease restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by church­es and char­i­ties,’ and 3) an order to ‘fed­er­al agen­cies to exempt some reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions from Afford­able Care Act require­ments that pro­vide employ­ees with health cov­er­age for con­tra­cep­tion.’ Those direc­tives are respec­tive­ly 1) mean­ing­less, 2) dan­ger­ous, and 3) mean­ing­less.” The ACLU agrees, say­ing in their press release that the order was “an elab­o­rate pho­to-op with no dis­cernible pol­i­cy out­come.”
  4. It’s Basi­cal­ly Just Immoral To Be Rich (A.Q. Smith, Cur­rent Affairs): “We can define some­thing like a ‘max­i­mum moral income’ beyond which it’s obvi­ous­ly inex­cus­able not to give away all of your mon­ey. It might be 50 thou­sand. Call it 100, though. Per per­son. With an addi­tion­al 50 allowed per child. This means two par­ents with a child can still earn $250,000! That’s so much mon­ey. And you can keep it. But every­one who earns any­thing beyond it is oblig­at­ed to give the excess away in its entire­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Com­pare and con­trast with 1 Tim­o­thy 6:17–19.
  5. How Two Mis­sis­sip­pi Col­lege Stu­dents Fell in Love and Decid­ed to Join a Ter­ror­ist Group (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, when the Bureau comes across two kids like Jae­lyn and Moe—lost, in love, and grasp­ing toward a dark future—agents could try to set them on anoth­er path, reach­ing out to their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. In real­i­ty, though, that’s not what the coun­try has asked them to do.”
  6. The Reac­tionary Temp­ta­tion (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag): “With­in the space of 50 years, Amer­i­ca has gone from seg­re­ga­tion to dizzy­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism; from tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly struc­tures to wide­spread divorce, cohab­i­ta­tion, and sex­u­al lib­er­ty; from a few respect­ed sources of infor­ma­tion to an end­less stream of peer-to-peer media; from careers in one com­pa­ny for life to an ever-accel­er­at­ing need to retrain and regroup; from a patri­archy to (incom­plete) gen­der equal­i­ty; from homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a sin to homo­pho­bia as a taboo; from Chris­tian­i­ty being the com­mon cul­ture to a sec­u­lar­ism no soci­ety has ever sus­tained before ours.”
  7. Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 95

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. ‘You Can’t Give In’: Mon­ty Williams On Life After Tragedy (Chris Bal­lard, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “He puts on a good face, but talk­ing about what hap­pened, as he does over the course of the next three days, often paus­ing for min­utes at a time, remains dif­fi­cult. ‘I just couldn’t under­stand it,’ he says. ‘And nev­er will. But my faith in God nev­er wavered. Just, some­times your faith and your feel­ings don’t line up.’” This is the pick of the week. Very pow­er­ful.
  2. When Char­ac­ter No Longer Counts (Alan Jacobs, Nation­al Affairs): “What is required of seri­ous reli­gious believ­ers in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety is the abil­i­ty to code-switch: nev­er to for­get or neglect their own native reli­gious tongue, but also nev­er to for­get that they live in a soci­ety of peo­ple for whom that lan­guage is gib­ber­ish. To speak only in the lan­guage of prag­ma­tism is to bring noth­ing dis­tinc­tive to the table; to speak only a pri­vate lan­guage of rev­e­la­tion and self-pro­claimed author­i­ty is to leave the table alto­geth­er. For their own good, but also for the com­mon good, reli­gious believ­ers need to be always bilin­gual­ly present.” Includ­ing for the sum­ma­ry para­graph. That’s gold.
  3. Count­ing The Cost: DR Con­go Demon­strates Dif­fi­cul­ty of Mea­sur­ing Mar­tyr­dom (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Why do cal­cu­la­tions of Chris­tians killed for their faith world­wide each year range from 1,000 to 100,000? The rea­son large­ly comes down to one coun­try: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (DRC).” Many sur­pris­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion. Worth­while.
  4. Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing.
  5. Chi­na’s Suc­cess Explains Author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s Allure (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…if there is a pow­er­ful sys­tem on the world stage, many of us will be drawn to it and seek to emu­late it, with­out always being con­scious of the rea­sons for those attrac­tions. This process is actu­al­ly not so dif­fer­ent from how neolib­er­al­ism attract­ed greater sup­port dur­ing the 1990s, when it was per­ceived as the major vic­tor on the world stage.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 90

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. The Sto­ry of Those Lit­tle Com­mu­nion Cups, What­ev­er Those Are Tech­ni­cal­ly Called (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “If you’re won­der­ing, there’s actu­al­ly nev­er been a dis­ease out­break traced back to the com­mon com­mu­nion cup. Nor is it like­ly to occur, giv­en the par­tic­u­lars of the ceremony—silver and gold don’t con­sti­tute a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for bac­te­ria, and nei­ther does an alco­holic bev­er­age. And if you come from a tra­di­tion, as I do, that believes Jesus is actu­al­ly present in the wine (and the bread), it seems per­ti­nent to point out that that guy is in the busi­ness of heal­ing dis­ease, not spread­ing it.”
  2. Chance the Rap­per, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Black­ness (Ernest Ezeu­go, New Amer­i­ca): “For dis­en­chant­ed Chris­t­ian millennials—specifically those of color—Chance’s pro­found faith is a reminder that there is a place where we belong, because it was made for us, labored over for us, bled over for us, no mat­ter what the rest of it looks like.”
  3. Black Church­es Mat­ter: Research Ties Atten­dance to Pos­i­tive Out­comes (David Brig­gs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Sev­er­al new stud­ies build on past research to con­tin­ue reveal­ing how faith is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes for black Amer­i­cans amid the real­i­ties of dis­crim­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social inequal­i­ty.”
  4. Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): this is a fun list includ­ing celebri­ties who speak out about pol­i­tics, peo­ple who com­pare events to Har­ry Pot­ter, and pun­dits who failed to pre­dict Trump.
  5. How Pro-Life Move­ment Was Born A Lib­er­al Cause (Charles Camosy, Crux):  “The con­tro­ver­sy over abor­tion orig­i­nat­ed as a con­flict between two dif­fer­ent groups of lib­er­als.  For that rea­son, it has not fol­lowed the polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments.” The title is not a typo, by the way.
  6. The true sto­ry of Army medic Desmond Doss, the soft-spo­ken Chris­t­ian super­hero (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “Work­ing alone, Doss – who refused a weapon, because of his Sev­enth-day Adven­tist con­vic­tions – low­ered at least 75 injured men over a 400-foot cliff dur­ing the World War II Bat­tle of Oki­nawa. He col­lapsed sev­er­al times dur­ing that night, but kept going with these words on his lips: ‘Please Lord, help me get one more.’ A Japan­ese sol­dier lat­er tes­ti­fied that he aimed at Doss sev­er­al times, but his rifle kept jam­ming when he tried to fire.”
  7. Van Jones’ Excel­lent Metaphors About the Dan­gers of Ide­o­log­i­cal Safe­ty (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the link has a com­pelling video of Van Jones talk­ing about how to deal with offen­sive words. There is a tran­script, but the ver­bal deliv­ery is pow­er­ful. It’s under five min­utes and well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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 15

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

  1. From the help­ing-you-get-bet­ter-grades depart­ment: Here’s The Best Way To Guess Cor­rect­ly On A Mul­ti­ple-Choice Test (Justin Couch­man, Quartz): the author, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, describes a tech­nique you can use to tell whether to trust your first instinct or revise the answer. You’re wel­come.
  2. From the kim-davis-no-rela­tion depart­ment:
  3. From the with-this-ring-I-thee-wed depart­ment:
  4. From the rag­ing-debates-which-enrage-peo­ple depart­ment: Hun­gry For Souls: Was Junipero Ser­ra A Saint? (Gre­go­ry Orfalea, Com­mon­weal): this is a help­ful sum­ma­ry of the case for Junipero Ser­ra. I’m not sure — is it J‑Ro that is named after him, Ser­ra, or both?

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 13

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

  1. From the provoca­tive-but-not-ful­ly-explained depart­ment: Maris­sa John­son, Part of a New, Dis­rup­tive Gen­er­a­tion of Activists (Nina Shapiro, Seat­tle Times): turns out that Maris­sa John­son (the Black Lives Mat­ter activist famous for dis­rupt­ing a Bernie Sanders speech) attends an evan­gel­i­cal church and stud­ied the­ol­o­gy in col­lege. Fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file, although it leaves me with many ques­tions.
  2. From the friends-in-high-places depart­ment: The Late, Great Stephen Col­bert (Joel Lovell, GQ): Col­bert has deep faith, and it real­ly comes out in this inter­view. It’s long, so if you just want the faith bit search for the phrase “He lift­ed his arms as if to take in the office” and start read­ing there.
  3. From the spir­i­tu­al insight depart­ment:
    • Faith­ful­ness in Col­lege Is “Life-Wide” (Stephen Lutz, Gospel Coali­tion): what good does it prof­it a per­son to get a 4.0 and lose their soul? This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Keep Your Enthu­si­asm In Check (George Wood, per­son­al blog): very short but help­ful. The author is the leader of the Assem­blies of God, the group which spon­sors Chi Alpha (and which I am ordained by).
  4. From the peo­ple-of-this-world-are-shrewd depart­ment: Effec­tive Altru­ism: Where Char­i­ty and Ratio­nal­i­ty Meet (Tyler Cowen, NY Times): there is noth­ing overt­ly Chris­t­ian about this piece, but the sub­ject should be of great inter­est to Chris­tians. We are called to give to spread the gospel and help the poor — and the Church can do bet­ter at both.
  5. From the pol­i­tics-and-the-pul­pit depart­ment: Ten Things To Remem­ber As the Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paign Sea­son Gets Into Full Swing (Kevin DeY­oung, per­son­al blog): DeY­oung is a well-known pas­tor and author. Points 6, 7, and 8 are espe­cial­ly good.
  6. From the unex­pect­ed bed­fel­lows depart­ment: Scalia Gets It Pret­ty Much Right (Stan­ley Fish, Huff­in­g­ton Post): I share this most­ly because famed post­mod­ern (or anti-foun­da­tion­al­ist) the­o­rist Stan­ley Fish is one of the most unlike­ly defend­ers of the famed orig­i­nal­ist Jus­tice Scalia I can imag­ine. The world is an odd place. Be sure to read the fol­low-up Respond To The Col­umn That Was Actu­al­ly Writ­ten.

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.