Tag: generosity

TGFI, Volume 539: a free book plus Schrödinger’s cat draws closer

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. I Might Owe My Stu­dents an Apol­o­gy About Jose­phus (John Dick­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Flav­ius Jose­phus was a Jew­ish aris­to­crat (AD 37–100) who wit­nessed first­hand the great Jew­ish war with Rome.… I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in sec­u­lar set­tings like Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney, and now at Wheaton Col­lege. But Jose­phus and Jesus: New Evi­dence for the One Called Christ by T. C. Schmidt, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a con­tro­ver­sial pas­sage about Jesus’s res­ur­rec­tion might be orig­i­nal after all.”
    • A donor has spon­sored free PDF down­loads of the book the above review is about. You can get your copy at https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/ (fol­low the link on the page to a free down­load, it will take you to the OUP book web­site where you’ll need to click the PDF link above the abstract and save it to your com­put­er after it opens in your brows­er tab). This is a great deal — the book retails for $130!
    • My hope for all is that the schol­ar­ship in the book gives you even greater con­fi­dence that your hope in Christ is firm­ly ground­ed.
  2. Dying to Give (Justin Pow­ell, Sub­stack): “Mon­ey doesn’t car­ry the same pow­er in every decade. Most fam­i­lies give it at the stage of life when it accom­plish­es the least. A dol­lar at 25 can change a des­tiny. A dol­lar at 55 bare­ly moves the nee­dle.… The fam­i­lies who stew­ard wealth well think longer, plan ear­li­er, and talk more open­ly. They treat resources as some­thing to be shep­herd­ed across gen­er­a­tions, not hid­den behind emo­tion­al walls or released only after the funer­al. And because of that clar­i­ty, their chil­dren make wis­er deci­sions, ear­li­er, with bet­ter out­comes.”
  3. a gen z guide to fix­ing your doom-pilled brain (Steph Stin­er, Sub­stack): “when­ev­er i hear a young per­son con­fi­dent­ly assert that human­i­ty is cooked, my first instinct is to ask for their screen time report. because, yes, if you spend more time scrolling than you do par­tic­i­pat­ing in real life, it’s actu­al­ly quite rea­son­able to con­clude that we’re hang­ing on by a thread.”
    • Lack of cap­i­tal­iza­tion in orig­i­nal. The author appears to be 0% Chris­t­ian, but offers some very prac­ti­cal wis­dom.
    • I appre­ci­ate the above arti­cle so much that I looked for some of her oth­er con­tent and this one was also sol­id. a gen z guide to enjoy­ing dat­ing (Steph Stin­er, Sub­stack): “a wise woman once said nev­er to go gro­cery shop­ping while you’re hun­gry, or you’ll end up with a cart full of junk food. or maybe i made that up? who’s to say. regard­less, the prin­ci­ple still stands: don’t date while you’re des­per­ate for some­one else to ful­fill you, or you’ll end up with noth­ing but high cor­ti­sol.”
  4. Moral­ly judg­ing famous and semi-famous peo­ple (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I know some rea­son­able num­ber of famous peo­ple, and I just do not trust the media accounts of their fail­ings and flaws. I trust even less the barbs I read on the inter­net. I am not claim­ing to know the truth about them (most of them, at least), but I can tell when the peo­ple writ­ing about them know even less.… If by any chance you are won­der­ing how to make your­self smarter, learn how to appre­ci­ate almost every­body, and keep on cul­ti­vat­ing that skill.”
  5. Wikipedia Edi­tors Are Help­ing Iran Rewrite His­to­ry (Ash­ley Rinds­berg, The Free Press): “An inves­ti­ga­tion into Wikipedia edit­ing pat­terns reveals a years­long, coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign to san­i­tize the Islam­ic Republic’s human rights record. Accord­ing to a 2024 Times inves­ti­ga­tion, entries have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly edit­ed to down­grade Iran­ian atroc­i­ties.”
    • Wikipedia is a case study in nerd naivete, and I speak as one of the pre­vi­ous­ly-naive nerds. If you cre­ate some­thing influ­en­tial, peo­ple will seek to co-opt that influ­ence. That means that what­ev­er rules you cre­ate will be gamed. Wikipedia is still use­ful, but you have to know that it is rife with agen­da-dri­ven edi­tors. Vir­tu­al­ly every­thing reli­gious­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, or moral­ly charged is being edit­ed so as to give you a biased per­spec­tive.
  6. Schrödinger’s cat just got big­ger: quan­tum physi­cists cre­ate largest ever ‘super­po­si­tion’ (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “A team based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na put indi­vid­ual clus­ters of around 7,000 atoms of sodi­um met­al some 8 nanome­tres wide into a super­po­si­tion of dif­fer­ent loca­tions, each spaced 133 nanome­tres apart. Rather than shoot through the exper­i­men­tal set up like a bil­liard ball, each chunky clus­ter behaved like a wave, spread­ing out into a super­po­si­tion of spa­tial­ly dis­tinct paths and then inter­fer­ing to form a pat­tern researchers could detect.”
  7. The lure of Rome (Emma Freire, World): “When young Protes­tants move to Wash­ing­ton, it’s usu­al­ly not long before they start meet­ing smart, influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives who believe Rome is the one true church. Like many of her peers, Smith began to ask her­self: Should I swim the Tiber? Roman Catholics exit­ing their church are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dri­ving declin­ing rates of Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. And far more Catholics con­vert to Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions than vice ver­sa. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked only at places like Wash­ing­ton and some influ­en­tial uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. A small but vocal group of Protes­tants is con­vert­ing to Catholicism—and in even small­er num­bers to East­ern Ortho­doxy. They tend to be ambi­tious, high­ly edu­cat­ed, and well con­nect­ed.”
    • I believe I have men­tioned this before, but I intend to write a defense of low-church Protes­tantism for XA some­time. It may wait until I fin­ish my doc­tor­al stud­ies, though.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Helped a Mis­sion­ary Talk About Jesus (Jen­nifer Park, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Kore­an and Kore­an Amer­i­can Chris­tians CT inter­viewed appre­ci­ate how KPop Demon Hunters’ wide­spread acclaim has enabled them to share the gospel more effec­tive­ly.… Intro­duc­ing Christ to peo­ple in the Mus­lim-major­i­ty South­east Asian coun­try has also felt eas­i­er thanks to increas­ing inter­est in Kore­an cul­ture, Park said. Once, his church held a sum­mer event in its court­yard where a short-term mis­sions team from South Korea taught local youth sim­ple K‑pop dance moves and how to cook Kore­an dish­es.”
  • Lorem Ipsum Final­ly Trans­lat­ed, And It Is Shock­ing­ly Prob­lem­at­ic (Stan­ford Flip­side)
  • Pen­te­costal Church Does­n’t Notice Riot Is Occur­ring (Baby­lon Bee): “Church mem­ber­ship at Gol­go­tha Holy Fire Vic­to­ry Pen­te­costal was report­ed­ly over­joyed at the influx of vis­i­tors who joined them to speak in strange tongues, shove each oth­er, and roll all over the floor. Church lead­er­ship called it the most suc­cess­ful ser­vice they’d ever had.”
    • As a Pen­te­costal this made me laugh. Nor­mal­ly with the Bee I just read the head­lines. The text of this one has got some zing as well.
  • Pres­i­dent Trump’s Cho­sen Artist? A Chris­t­ian Speed Painter. (Zachary Small, New York Times): “The painter, Vanes­sa Horabue­na, spent the next 10 min­utes mak­ing an image inspired by the Shroud of Turin, con­tour­ing Jesus’s eye­brows and nose from a yel­low cross that she ini­tial­ly paint­ed at the cen­ter of her black can­vas. The pres­i­dent returned to the stage, promised to sign the art­work him­self, and the paint­ing was quick­ly auc­tioned for $2.75 mil­lion to a cou­ple who promised to split their dona­tion between St. Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal and the local sheriff’s depart­ment. The artwork’s sale eas­i­ly set a new bench­mark for speed paint­ing, a once-obscure com­pet­i­tive art form that has gained pop­u­lar­i­ty over the last decade in South­ern beau­ty pageants, Mid­west cor­po­rate events, bas­ket­ball half­time shows and church gath­er­ings.”
    • If you’ve nev­er seen some­one do this live, it’s actu­al­ly quite stun­ning.

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 484



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.

As the year comes to a close, remem­ber that this post is the over­flow of a non­prof­it min­istry. Com­pil­ing these links is some­thing I do for the stu­dents I min­is­ter to at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, shar­ing it here is just me mak­ing it avail­able more broad­ly. You can donate to sup­port the min­istry if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock). Don’t give to pay for the con­tent — it only takes me five min­utes a week to take the email I send to the Chi Alpha stu­dents and refor­mat it for this plat­form. If you choose to give, give because you believe in the mis­sion of reach­ing Stan­ford stu­dents with a thought­ful gospel mes­sage.

And that’s the last time I’ll share about that until next Decem­ber.

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email bless­es you and helps you think about God and our world more clear­ly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Tom Hol­land on How Chris­tian­i­ty Remade the World (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): “It is very dif­fi­cult to overem­pha­size how com­plete­ly mad it was for every­body in the ancient world that some­one who suf­fers cru­ci­fix­ion could in any way be the Mes­si­ah, let alone part of the one God.… The fact that such a per­son could con­ceiv­ably be raised up by cit­i­zens of the Roman Empire as some­one greater than Cae­sar him­self, greater than Augus­tus, is a com­plete­ly shock­ing maneu­ver. Judeans, Greeks, Romans—it’s shock­ing to them all. The rad­i­cal mes­sage of the cru­ci­fix­ion is that, in Christ’s own words, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”
  2. How his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son became a reli­gious believ­er (Greg Sheri­dan, The Week­end Aus­tralian): “I have embraced Chris­tian­i­ty,” he tells me. “We were all bap­tised, Ayaan and our two sons, togeth­er in Sep­tem­ber (2023). It was the cul­mi­na­tion of a quite pro­tract­ed process. My jour­ney was from athe­ism. My par­ents had left the Church of Scot­land, I think even before I was born. I grew up in a house­hold of sci­ence-mind­ed reli­gious scep­tics. I didn’t go to church and felt quite sure of the wis­dom of that when I was young. How­ev­er, in two phas­es, I lost my faith in athe­ism.… The first phase was that as a his­to­ri­an I realised no soci­ety had been suc­cess­ful­ly organ­ised on the basis of athe­ism. All attempts to do that have been cat­a­stroph­ic. That was an insight that came from study­ing 18th, 19th and 20th-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry. But then the next stage was real­is­ing that no indi­vid­ual can in fact be ful­ly formed or eth­i­cal­ly secure with­out reli­gious faith. That insight has come more recent­ly and has been born of our expe­ri­ence as a fam­i­ly.”
    • Fer­gu­son is a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
    • I heard this arti­cle was pay­walled but I was able to access it with no prob­lem. If it is pay­walled, you can see Fer­gu­son talk­ing about his con­ver­sion on Twit­ter.
  3. Why Giv­ing Mat­ters (Arthur C. Brooks, Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty): “Specif­i­cal­ly, here’s what I found. If you have two fam­i­lies that are exact­ly identical—in oth­er words, same reli­gion, same race, same num­ber of kids, same town, same lev­el of edu­ca­tion, and everything’s the same—except that one fam­i­ly gives a hun­dred dol­lars more to char­i­ty than the sec­ond fam­i­ly, then the giv­ing fam­i­ly will earn on aver­age $375 more in income than the non­giv­ing family—and that’s sta­tis­ti­cal­ly attrib­ut­able to the gift.… I final­ly went to a col­league who spe­cial­ized in the psy­chol­o­gy of char­i­ta­ble giv­ing, and I said, ‘I’m get­ting this result I can’t under­stand. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the hand of God or some­thing on the econ­o­my, and I can’t believe it’s true.’ And the first thing he asked was, ‘Why don’t you believe it’s true? You’re a Chris­t­ian, aren’t you?’”
    • This is a few years old (2009), and fea­tures a Catholic speak­ing to Mor­mons. At the time of the speech Brooks was pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and cur­rent­ly teach­es at Har­vard.
    • Towards the end he sug­gests some causal mech­a­nisms, one of which is that peo­ple per­ceive gen­eros­i­ty to be a lead­er­ship qual­i­ty.
  4. How Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry A.I. Helps Sci­ence Dream Up Big Break­throughs (William J. Broad, New York Times): “In Octo­ber, David Bak­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton shared the Nobel Prize in Chem­istry for his pio­neer­ing research on pro­teins — the knot­ty mol­e­cules that empow­er life. The Nobel com­mit­tee praised him for dis­cov­er­ing how to rapid­ly build com­plete­ly new kinds of pro­teins not found in nature, call­ing his feat ‘almost impos­si­ble.’ In an inter­view before the prize announce­ment, Dr. Bak­er cit­ed bursts of A.I. imag­in­ings as cen­tral to ‘mak­ing pro­teins from scratch.’ The new tech­nol­o­gy, he added, has helped his lab obtain rough­ly 100 patents, many for med­ical care.”
  5. Bring­ing Elon to a knife fight (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Sub­stack): “A lot of the [left-lean­ing] gov­ern­ment tech com­mu­ni­ty is skip­ping the hand wring­ing; they’ve basi­cal­ly just grabbed a bag of pop­corn and are watch­ing in real time as Elon and Vivek learn all the things they’ve known, lived, and absolute­ly hat­ed for their entire time in pub­lic ser­vice. They don’t see DOGE as their sav­ior, but they are feel­ing vin­di­cat­ed after years of shout­ing into the void. I am struck by how dif­fer­ent the tone of the DOGE con­ver­sa­tion is between polit­i­cal lead­ers on the left and the peo­ple who’ve been fight­ing in the imple­men­ta­tion trench­es. One group is ter­ri­fied they’ll suc­ceed. The oth­er is start­ing to ask a sur­pris­ing ques­tion (or at least I am): What if even bil­lion­aires can’t dis­rupt the sys­tem we have built?”
    • The first com­ment is a nec­es­sary com­ple­ment to this essay.
  6. House Mem­ber in Senior Liv­ing Facil­i­ty Draws Fresh Scruti­ny to Aging Con­gress (Catie Edmond­son, New York Times): “Sen­a­tor Charles E. Grass­ley, Repub­li­can of Iowa, is Congress’s eldest mem­ber at 91 years old. In 2023, The New York Times tal­lied 20 law­mak­ers who were at least 80 years old. While the Con­sti­tu­tion lays out a floor for age require­ments for those run­ning for Con­gress, it does not man­date a ceil­ing. That has cre­at­ed a bevy of awk­ward sit­u­a­tions for lead­ers in both par­ties, who have been thrust into the del­i­cate posi­tion of try­ing to nudge out aging law­mak­ers who refuse to release their grip on pow­er.”
  7. Engage Bespoke Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty: Reflec­tions from Con­ver­sa­tions on Cam­pus (Mark Legg, The Gospel Coali­tion): “I often encoun­tered the view of faith some­times called ‘bespoke spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,’ a way of engag­ing with reli­gion by pick­ing and choos­ing beliefs and prac­tices that ‘vibe’ with you per­son­al­ly. The stu­dents I met were authen­ti­cal­ly open-mind­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty. How­ev­er, they resist­ed (or often strug­gled to under­stand) the claim that Jesus is the only ‘way,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘life,’ and that ‘no one comes to the Father except through [him]’ (John 14:6).”
    • I did­n’t know it had a label, but it’s every­where at Stan­ford. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy Final­ly Leaves The Sta­ble And Oh No! Here Comes Lit­tle Bag­pipe Boy! (Baby­lon Bee)
  • Big Jack — a great short sto­ry told in com­ic form. I real­ly enjoyed it. I may have shared it before — I know I’ve read it before.
  • It Pays to Have Long Hair and a Beard in Utah—Jesus Mod­els Are in Demand (Bradley Olson, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Mod­els who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. That’s because for a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple in the state, a pic­ture isn’t com­plete with­out Him. They are hir­ing Jesus look-alikes for fam­i­ly por­traits and wed­ding announce­ments. Mod­els are show­ing up to walk with a new­ly engaged cou­ple through a field, play with young chil­dren in the Bon­neville Salt Flats, and cram in with the fam­i­ly for the annu­al Christ­mas card.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry.
    • This bit made me laugh: “Find­ing a mod­el can be dif­fi­cult. Areas of Utah with high con­cen­tra­tions of Mormons—who also call them­selves Lat­ter-day Saints or LDS—tend to lack poten­tial Jesus dop­pel­gängers. Some men who work or vol­un­teer for the church, one of the state’s largest employ­ers, are required to shave every day and keep their hair short.”
  • My Neigh­bor Won’t Stop Pray­ing for Me. What Should I Do? (Kwame Antho­ny Appi­ah, New York Times): “The only rea­son you give for object­ing to her prayers is that she has failed to com­ply with your wish­es. Yet I don’t find that she has there­by treat­ed you with dis­re­spect, because I don’t see that you have the right to have those wish­es com­plied with. You seem to be ask­ing her not to do some­thing she thinks there are com­pelling rea­sons to do. I’d have thought that this was dis­re­spect­ful.”
    • This also made me laugh. Chor­tle, even.
  • A 1,000-Year-Old Seed Grows in Israel (Franz Lidz, New York Times): “In 2010, Dr. Sal­lon obtained a mys­te­ri­ous seed from the archae­o­log­i­cal archives of Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty, hop­ing that it could ger­mi­nate. The seed had been dis­cov­ered in a cave dur­ing a 1980s exca­va­tion at Wadi el-Makkuk, a win­ter water chan­nel in the north­ern Judean desert, and was lan­guish­ing in stor­age. After deter­min­ing that the seed was still viable, Dr. Sallon’s research team plant­ed, sprout­ed and care­ful­ly tend­ed it. When the husk was car­bon-dat­ed to between A.D. 993 and A.D. 1202, a thought occurred to Dr. Sal­lon. ‘I won­dered if what ger­mi­nat­ed could be the source­of the balm of Gilead,’ she said. On the hunch that it was, she named the spec­i­men She­ba. Since then, the 1,000-year-old seedling has grown into a stur­dy 12-foot-tall tree with no mod­ern coun­ter­part. Sheba’s painstak­ing revival — kept secret from the pub­lic for 14 years — is detailed in a study that was pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber in the jour­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Biol­o­gy.”

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 291

fas­ci­nat­ing links from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives

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

This is vol­ume 291, which is not a very inter­est­ing num­ber. It’s 3 · 97, which I guess is some­thing.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State (Ben Mauk, New York­er): “On his sec­ond day of deten­tion, a mem­ber of the camp admin­is­tra­tion came to see him. Kok­teubai asked when he would learn what he was accused of doing. He was sur­prised to learn that he wouldn’t be ques­tioned at all. ‘If you hadn’t com­mit­ted a crime, you wouldn’t have end­ed up here,’ the admin­is­tra­tor told him. ‘So there is some­thing you are here for.’ ” The graph­ics inter­fere with the read­ing expe­ri­ence, but it’s worth­while.
  2. On The Expe­ri­ence of Being Poor-ish, For Peo­ple Who Aren’t (Anony­mous, Sub­stack): “When some­one is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m try­ing to deter­mine how poor exact­ly they were, there’s one ever­green ques­tion I ask that has nev­er failed to give me a good idea of what kind of sit­u­a­tion I’m deal­ing with. That ques­tion is: ‘How many times have they turned off your water?’.” Fol­low up: Being Poor-ish Revis­it­ed: Read­er Ques­tions These are both real­ly good.
  3. David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP and How Dems Can Win in 2022 (Eric Levitz, New York Mag­a­zine): “But when I look at the 2020 elec­tion, I see that we ran against the most unpop­u­lar Repub­li­can ever to run for pres­i­dent — and we ran lit­er­al­ly the most pop­u­lar fig­ure in our par­ty whose last name is not Oba­ma — and we only nar­row­ly won the Elec­toral Col­lege. If Biden had done 0.3 per­cent worse, then Don­ald Trump would have won reelec­tion…” This is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly fas­ci­nat­ing in a very non­par­ti­san way (although the inter­vie­wee is extreme­ly par­ti­san).
  4. In pan­dem­ic news:
    • 5 Pan­dem­ic Mis­takes We Keep Repeat­ing (Zeynep Tufek­ci, The Atlantic): “One of the most impor­tant prob­lems under­min­ing the pan­dem­ic response has been the mis­trust and pater­nal­ism that some pub­lic-health agen­cies and experts have exhib­it­ed toward the pub­lic.… And yet, from the begin­ning, a good chunk of the pub­lic-fac­ing mes­sag­ing and news arti­cles implied or claimed that vac­cines won’t pro­tect you against infect­ing oth­er peo­ple or that we didn’t know if they would, when both were false.” Watch­ing peo­ple reject accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the pan­dem­ic because high-sta­tus peo­ple rail against it has been like watch­ing my skep­ti­cal friends reject the gospel because of peer pres­sure. IT’S GOOD NEWS — BELIEVE IT! The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UNC.
    • Pan­dem­ic Approach­es: The Dif­fer­ences Between Flori­da, Cal­i­for­nia (Noel King, Greg Allen, & Eric West­er­velt, NPR): “In Decem­ber, Cal­i­for­nia had a spike, and Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som reim­posed a stay-at-home order and a busi­ness lock­down order that was recent­ly lift­ed. At the same time, cas­es were spik­ing in Flori­da. But every­thing stayed open, includ­ing schools. So which approach works?” Spoil­er: Flori­da is look­ing pret­ty good.
    • Stop Say­ing We Can’t Go Back to Nor­mal After Vac­cines (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, Rea­son): “Nor­mal­cy is the whole point of vac­ci­na­tion, and these vac­cines can get us there. So when pub­lic health advice says “no” to nor­mal­cy even after vac­ci­na­tion, it mis­leads the pub­lic and wild­ly under­sells the vac­cines. A year into this, that’s cru­el and dispir­it­ing.… there must be a firm end date to those pub­lic mea­sures for every­one. I can’t say exact­ly when it should be, nor do I think a sin­gle nation­al date would make sense. I’m envi­sion­ing some­thing like six weeks after vac­cines have become avail­able (as in, you can eas­i­ly get an appoint­ment) to all who want them in a giv­en city, coun­ty, or state.”
    • Not Gath­er­ing with the Church Hurts You Spir­i­tu­al­ly (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Jesus designed Chris­tian­i­ty and the progress of our dis­ci­ple­ship to cen­ter around gath­er­ings. The math is there­fore sim­ple: Gath­er­ing with the church is spir­i­tu­al­ly good for you. Not phys­i­cal­ly gath­er­ing with the church spir­i­tu­al­ly hurts you.”
    • The Secret Life of a Coro­n­avirus (Carl Zim­mer, New York Times): “With sci­en­tists adrift in an ocean of def­i­n­i­tions, philoso­phers have rowed out to offer life­lines.” What a glo­ri­ous sen­tence. Also, I began the arti­cle sym­pa­thet­ic to the idea that virus­es are alive and we draw our bound­aries too tight­ly, which is what the author wants me to believe. But his argu­ments were so weak that I’ve flipped to: “not alive, mere­ly inter­ac­tive.”
    • The rise of the nox­ious con­tract (David B. Grusky et al, Stan­ford Cen­ter On Pover­ty and Inequal­i­ty): “We observed that many peo­ple ‘com­pare down­ward’ by empha­siz­ing their priv­i­lege rel­a­tive to those less for­tu­nate, that oth­ers ‘look out­ward’ in recog­ni­tion that times of cri­sis require band­ing togeth­er, and that yet oth­ers ‘look inward’ as they cope with unusu­al­ly stress­ful chal­lenges. Although many ways of cop­ing are there­fore in play, none of them entail invid­i­ous com­par­isons that then lead to resent­ment or con­flict.” An analy­sis of whether peo­ple who have to work in-per­son are resent­ful of those who telecom­mute. Spoil­er: not so much. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. On Ryan Ander­son­’s book being dropped by Ama­zon:
    • Ryan T. Ander­son Was Made For This Moment (Rod Dreher inter­view­ing Ryan T. Ander­son, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…most every­one agrees that a hos­pi­tal shouldn’t refuse to treat some­one for Covid because they iden­ti­fy as LGBT. But, thank God, that doesn’t seem to have actu­al­ly ever hap­pened. Still when peo­ple hear about a law that bans LGBT dis­crim­i­na­tion, that’s what they have in mind. They don’t real­ize what it means for sex-reas­sign­ment pro­ce­dures in gen­er­al, let alone what it means for chil­dren with gen­der dys­pho­ria in par­tic­u­lar. So activists pull on people’s heart­strings by say­ing we need a law ban­ning tru­ly unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion (which is vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent) and then that law isn’t nuanced and mea­sured, but a rad­i­cal bill impos­ing a rad­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. A law that is sold as a shield pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble minori­ties ends up being a sword to per­se­cute peo­ple who don’t embrace a new sex­u­al ortho­doxy.”
    • Book Ban­ning in an Age of Ama­zon (Abi­gail Shri­er, Sub­stack): “Remem­ber where you were in Feb­ru­ary of 2021. Con­gress fought over a sec­ond impeach­ment of an ex-pres­i­dent. The states debat­ed whether forced tru­an­cy would make life eas­i­er for America’s teach­ers. And earth’s largest bookseller—(Internal mot­to: ‘Work Hard. Have Fun. Make his­to­ry.’)—began qui­et­ly delet­ing books.”
  6. Killing The SAT Means Hurt­ing Minori­ties (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “There’s a rea­son why white Hol­ly­wood celebs cheat the sys­tem. It’s the only way their less gift­ed kids can win out over the dis­ad­van­taged. Want to max­i­mize priv­i­lege? Make admis­sions depen­dent sole­ly on teacher rec­om­men­da­tions, school grades, and per­son­al essays. Want to min­i­mize it? Abol­ish lega­cy admis­sions, and use the SAT.” I gen­uine­ly do not under­stand how this is con­tro­ver­sial. The data is clear and over­whelm­ing.
  7. Ele­vat­ing the Role of Faith-Inspired Impact in the Social Sec­tor (Jeri Eck­hart Queenan, Peter Grunert, and Devin Mur­phy, The Bridges­pan Group): “Giv­ing to reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions (which includes dona­tions to con­gre­ga­tions) rep­re­sents near­ly one-third of all giv­ing in the Unit­ed States. Rough­ly a third of the 50 largest non­prof­its in the coun­try have a faith ori­en­ta­tion. And, 40 per­cent of inter­na­tion­al non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions are faith-inspired.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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 255

Again, the stand­alone stuff is up top and the cur­rent news items are towards the end.

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 Ditch­ing Insta­gram Earned me the Podi­um (Madi­son Fis­ch­er, per­son­al blog): “I cared so much about what every­one thought of me that it became out­sourced con­fi­dence…. Pride in my accom­plish­ments made me con­tent, and con­tent­ed­ness is poi­son to a young ath­lete who has to stay hun­gry if she wants to stay com­pet­i­tive.”
  2. The Finan­cial Fin­ish Line (Christi­na Dar­nell, Min­istry Watch): “Giv­ing has always been anoth­er bedrock prin­ci­ple for the Barn­harts. The com­pa­ny com­mit­ted to giv­ing half of their prof­its to min­istry. The oth­er half goes to grow­ing the busi­ness. The first year, they gave away $50,000. The next year, it was $150,000. It grew to $1 mil­lion a year—then $1 mil­lion a month.” An inspir­ing sto­ry.
  3. On Cul­tures That Build (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “In the 21st cen­tu­ry, the main ques­tion in Amer­i­can social life is not ‘how do we make that hap­pen?’ but ‘how do we get man­age­ment to take our side?’ This is a learned response, and a cul­ture which has inter­nal­ized it will not be a cul­ture that ‘builds.’”
    • Relat­ed: Why Amer­i­ca’s Insti­tu­tions Are Fail­ing (Derek Thomp­son, The Atlantic): “What­ev­er the true cause for our fail­ure, when I look at the twin cat­a­stro­phes of this annus hor­ri­bilis, the plague and the police protests, what strikes me is that America’s safe­keep­ing insti­tu­tions have for­got­ten how to prop­er­ly see the threats of the 21st cen­tu­ry and move quick­ly to respond to them. Those who deny his­to­ry may be doomed to repeat it. But those who deny the present are just doomed.”
  4. Is There a Reli­gious Left? (Casey Cep, New York­er): “The daugh­ter of a Bap­tist preach­er who was once the dean of the Howard Uni­ver­si­ty School of Divin­i­ty, New­some came by her faith and her preach­ing hon­est­ly, yet almost all of the pub­lic­i­ty that fol­lowed her act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence [tak­ing down the Con­fed­er­ate flag] stripped her protest of its the­o­log­i­cal tenor. Such is the fate of much of the activism of the so-called reli­gious left: if it is suc­cess­ful, it is sub­sumed by broad­er caus­es and coali­tions; if it fails, it is for­got­ten.” 
  5. Race in Amer­i­ca
    • Most US Pas­tors Speak Out in Response to George Floy­d’s Death (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Near­ly all US pas­tors (94%) agree that ‘the church has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to denounce racism,’ and most (62%) say their church has made a state­ment on the unrest stem­ming from the May 25 death of George Floyd, accord­ing to a Bar­na Church Pulse Poll released today. The poll, con­duct­ed over the past week, also found that 76 per­cent of pas­tors say the church should sup­port peace­ful protests occur­ring in response to Floyd’s killing.”
    • What the Bible Has to Say About Black Anger (Esau McCauley, New York Times): “Jesus expe­ri­enced the real­i­ty of state-spon­sored ter­ror. That is why the black Chris­t­ian has always felt a par­tic­u­lar kin­ship with this cru­ci­fied king from an oppressed eth­nic group. The cross helps us make sense of the lynch­ing tree.” The author is a New Tes­ta­ment pro­fes­sor at Wheaton. 
    • On the Unjust Death of George Floyd and Racism in Amer­i­ca (Mar­co Rubio, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Like before, the lat­est unrest has giv­en rise to voic­es argu­ing that the foun­da­tions of our repub­lic are built on sys­temic racism and must there­fore be brought down. The only dif­fer­ence is that this time claims like these don’t just come from the fringes of our pol­i­tics. Like before, we also have voic­es who say that today race is a fac­tor only in indi­vid­ual cas­es, dis­tinct from our soci­ety at large. Both of these views are wrong.” This was a speech giv­en on the floor of the Sen­ate.
    • Racist Police Vio­lence Recon­sid­ered (John McWhort­er, Quil­lette): “…these fig­ures are not nec­es­sar­i­ly evi­dence of police racism. Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post‘s data­base, over 95 per­cent of the peo­ple fatal­ly shot by police offi­cers in 2019 were male, and no seri­ous-mind­ed per­son argues that this is evi­dence of sys­temic misandry. So what, then, accounts for the dis­pro­por­tion­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black men among those killed by cops?” McWhort­er is a pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics at Colum­bia. 
    • Sto­ries and Data (Cole­man Hugh­es, City Jour­nal): “…the basic premise of Black Lives Matter—that racist cops are killing unarmed black people—is false. There was a time when I believed it.” The author is a fel­low at the Man­hat­tan Insti­tute.
    • A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Polic­ing (Felipe Goncalves & Steven Mel­lo, SSRN): “Using a bunch­ing esti­ma­tion design and data from the Flori­da High­way Patrol, we show that minori­ties are less like­ly to receive a dis­count on their speed­ing tick­ets than white dri­vers. Dis­ag­gre­gat­ing this dif­fer­ence to the indi­vid­ual police offi­cer, we find that 40% of offi­cers explain all of the aggre­gate dis­crim­i­na­tion.” 40% is HUGE!
    • Why I Stopped Talk­ing About Racial Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Start­ed Talk­ing About White Suprema­cy (Erna Kim Hack­ett, Inher­i­tance Mag­a­zine): “The term white suprema­cy labels the prob­lem more accu­rate­ly. It locates the prob­lem on white­ness and its sys­tems. It focus­es on out­comes, not inten­tions. It is col­lec­tive, not indi­vid­ual. It makes white­ness uncom­fort­able and respon­si­ble. And that is impor­tant.” Shared with me by a stu­dent.
  6. On Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism:
    • The Amer­i­can Sovi­et Men­tal­i­ty (Izabel­la Tabarovsky, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “The mobs that per­form the unan­i­mous con­dem­na­tion rit­u­als of today do not fol­low orders from above. But that does not dimin­ish their pow­er to exert pres­sure on those under their influ­ence. Those of us who came out of the col­lec­tivist Sovi­et cul­ture under­stand these dynam­ics instinc­tive­ly.” The author is a schol­ar with the Wil­son Cen­ter.
    • Is There Still Room for Debate? (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “Lib­er­al­ism is not just a set of rules. There’s a spir­it to it. A spir­it that believes that there are whole spheres of human life that lie beyond ide­ol­o­gy — friend­ship, art, love, sex, schol­ar­ship, fam­i­ly. A spir­it that seeks not to impose ortho­doxy but to open up the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the human mind and soul.”
    • The Amer­i­can Press Is Destroy­ing Itself (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “It isn’t the whole sto­ry, but it’s demon­stra­bly true that vio­lence, arson, and riot­ing are occur­ring. How­ev­er, because it is polit­i­cal­ly unten­able to dis­cuss this in ways that do not sug­gest sup­port, reporters have been twist­ing them­selves into knots. We are see­ing head­lines pre­vi­ous­ly imag­in­able only in The Onion, e.g., ‘27 police offi­cers injured dur­ing large­ly peace­ful anti-racism protests in Lon­don.’”
    • The woke rev­o­lu­tion in Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism has begun (Damon Link­er, The Week): “In place of dif­fi­cul­ty, com­plex­i­ty, and com­pli­ca­tion, today’s jour­nal­is­tic rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies crave tidy moral lessons with clear vil­lains and heroes. They cham­pi­on sim­plic­i­ty, embrace moral uplift, and seek out evil­do­ers to demo­nize.” See also his ear­li­er col­umn Don’t will­ful­ly ignore the com­plex­i­ty of what’s hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca right now

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 a com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” First shared in vol­ume 156.

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 244

The­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives on the pan­dem­ic, some inter­est­ing news tid­bits, the state of Stan­ford ath­let­ic fan­dom, and a good reminder that Mor­monism is not a Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.

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. Chris­t­ian Coro­n­avirus Per­spec­tives
    • Chris­tian­i­ty Offers No Answers About the Coro­n­avirus (N.T. Wright, Time): “Sup­pos­ing real human wis­dom doesn’t mean being able to string togeth­er some dodgy spec­u­la­tions and say, ‘So that’s all right then?’ What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot rec­og­nized in the ear­ly 1940s, when the only advice is to wait with­out hope, because we’d be hop­ing for the wrong thing? Ratio­nal­ists (includ­ing Chris­t­ian ratio­nal­ists) want expla­na­tions; Roman­tics (includ­ing Chris­t­ian roman­tics) want to be giv­en a sigh of relief. But per­haps what we need more than either is to recov­er the bib­li­cal tra­di­tion of lament.”
      • Please remem­ber that authors do not usu­al­ly pick the head­lines for their arti­cles. In this case espe­cial­ly the lev­el of mis­match between the title and the arti­cle is strik­ing.
    • Sur­prised by Hope­less­ness: A Response to NT Wright (Andy Davis, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Despite what T. S. Eliot says, Chris­tians know exact­ly what to hope for. We’ve been clear­ly instruct­ed by God’s prophet­ic Word, and there­fore, we should be radi­ant with hope—an unshak­able con­vic­tion that the future is inde­scrib­ably bright. The world is ‘with­out hope and with­out God’ (Eph. 2:14); so when Chris­tians radi­ate hope, the world notices and is moved to ask us to give a rea­son for the hope with­in us (1 Pet. 3:15).”
    • Like the Mer­chants of Baby­lon (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “The Bible tells us that God’s deal­ings with mankind are often mys­te­ri­ous, and so we should nev­er rush to glib expla­na­tions. But His works are not absolute­ly inscrutable. When Jesus rebuked the peo­ple for mis­read­ing the col­lapse of the tow­er of Siloam, and for the inci­dent where Pilate killed the men of Galilee (Luke 13:1–5), He rebuked them, not for read­ing mean­ing into the sto­ry, but for hav­ing read the wrong mean­ing into the sto­ry.”
    • How An Evil Virus Points to the Crush­ing Weight of the Fall (David French, The Dis­patch): “Last night, my wife and I were walk­ing through our neigh­bor­hood and saw a pas­tor friend in his back­yard. We stopped him and had a love­ly con­ver­sa­tion while main­tain­ing prop­er social dis­tanc­ing from the side­walk. As we shared our own bur­dens and stress­es, he made an impor­tant obser­va­tion – this moment demon­strates so clear­ly our need for a sav­ior. By that, he meant far, far more than the idea that we need some of that ‘old-time reli­gion’ before we meet our mak­er. No, he meant that a bro­ken world eager­ly awaits the redemp­tion declared in Rev­e­la­tions 21, when the Lord declares, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
    • The Book of Com­mon Prayer: Prayers for Plagues and Times of Great Sick­ness (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Have pity upon us mis­er­able sin­ners, who now are vis­it­ed with great sick­ness and mor­tal­i­ty; that like as thou didst then accept of an atone­ment, and didst com­mand the destroy­ing Angel to cease from pun­ish­ing, so it may now please thee to with­draw from us this plague and griev­ous sick­ness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
    • The Apoc­a­lypse as an ‘Unveil­ing’: What Reli­gion Teach­es Us About the End Times (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “For peo­ple of many faiths, and even none at all, it can feel late­ly like the end of the world is near. Not only is there a plague, but hun­dreds of bil­lions of locusts are swarm­ing East Africa. Wild­fires have rav­aged Aus­tralia, killing an untold num­ber of ani­mals. A recent earth­quake in Utah even shook the Salt Lake Tem­ple to the top of its icon­ic spire, caus­ing the gold­en trum­pet to fall from the angel Moroni’s right hand.”
  2. Gen­er­al Coro­n­avirus Com­men­tary
    • Tips from some­one with 50 years of social dis­tanc­ing expe­ri­ence (Rae Ellen Bichell, Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio): “Keep track of some­thing…. In the era of COVID-19, he sug­gests track­ing what you can — or can’t — find at the gro­cery store. Or, bet­ter yet, par­tic­i­pat­ing in some cit­i­zen sci­ence, like a project called CoCo­RaHS that tracks rain­fall across the coun­try.”
    • It’s Time to Face Facts, Amer­i­ca: Masks Work (Fer­ris Jabr, Wired): “The col­lec­tive evi­dence makes a strong case for uni­ver­sal mask wear­ing dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. Masks are not a sub­sti­tute for oth­er inter­ven­tions; they must always be used in com­bi­na­tion with social dis­tanc­ing and hand hygiene.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. 
    • The Coro­n­avirus and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Mind (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the sup­posed con­ser­v­a­tive mind is more attuned to exter­nal threat and inter­nal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, more inclined to sup­port author­i­ty and hier­ar­chy, and fear sub­ver­sion and dis­sent. And so the polit­i­cal respons­es to the pan­dem­ic have put these psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries to a very inter­est­ing test.” This is an angle that nev­er would have occurred to me but which is obvi­ous­ly worth explor­ing. 
    • Coro­n­avirus maps and charts show COVID-19 symp­toms, spread, death rate (Busi­ness Insid­er): “These 22 charts and graph­ics lay out what you need to know as the out­break con­tin­ues to progress.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. This is only mar­gin­al­ly about the coro­n­avirus: An inside look at the hos­pi­tal going up in Cen­tral Park (Tony Carnes, A Jour­ney Through NYC Reli­gions): “The heart of Cen­tral Park is Bethes­da Foun­tain, which was built to com­mem­o­rate the heal­ing pow­er of Jesus at the Pool of Bethes­da in Israel. Fred­er­ic Law Olm­st­ed, the park’s design­er, hoped that the park would pro­vide spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment to urban mass­es from their tra­vails. Now, a Chris­t­ian min­istry is real­iz­ing the sym­bol­ism in the 21st Cen­tu­ry by erect­ing a crit­i­cal care hos­pi­tal at the park’s 97th Street Trans­verse and Fifth Avenue…. Samaritan’s Purse med­ical per­son­nel use the twen­ty sec­onds while they wash their hands to pray for each of their patients by name. It is fit­ting that they do that at their present loca­tion.”
    • What a heart­warm­ing sto­ry. Who could be opposed?
    • Oh, wait. De Bla­sio “Very Con­cerned” About Anti-Gay Evan­gel­i­cal Group Run­ning Cen­tral Park Coro­n­avirus Hos­pi­tal (Jake Offen­hartz, The Gothamist): “May­or Bill de Bla­sio said the city will keep a close eye on the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist group oper­at­ing a field hos­pi­tal in Cen­tral Park, amid grow­ing fears that some New York­ers could face dis­crim­i­na­tion and sub­stan­dard care from the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion.”
    • And New York­ers Are Right to Be Skep­ti­cal of Evan­gel­i­cal-Run Coro­n­avirus Ward in Cen­tral Park (Jonathan Mer­rit, The Dai­ly Beast): “The vast major­i­ty of New York­ers are not Chris­t­ian, and if they find them­selves wheez­ing for air due to COVID-19, they don’t want to be pros­e­ly­tized while receiv­ing treat­ment. They too have rea­son to be skep­ti­cal of the organization’s makeshift hos­pi­tal.” 
    • Some amus­ing com­ments I saw in response, “I think they’re actu­al­ly afraid that the vol­un­teers will give away Chick-Fil‑A sand­wich­es” and “If the may­or had been as con­cerned about the coro­n­avirus as he is about the Chris­tians then New York would look very dif­fer­ent today.” Ouch.
  4. Dona­tions: From Bribery to Benev­o­lence (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “A spec­trum exists between bribery and benev­o­lence, and dona­tions fall in var­i­ous places along that con­tin­u­um. Oper­a­tion Var­si­ty Blues high­light­ed the most cor­rupt ‘dona­tions’; for­mer Stan­ford sail­ing coach John Van­de­mo­er plead­ed guilty to accept­ing a bribe, not an altru­is­tic con­tri­bu­tion to ath­let­ics.” Jas­mine is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
    • I shared an arti­cle that dis­cussed phil­an­thropy from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive back in vol­ume 213.
  5. At least the seats are red: Why is Stan­ford Sta­di­um often emp­ty? (Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As nation­al Heis­man vot­ers did not vote for Chris­t­ian McCaf­frey ’18 because they could not both­er to watch his games, Stan­ford stu­dents would not bike over to Stan­ford Sta­di­um for [his] games. ‘I will nev­er for­get this,’ McCaf­frey told The Ath­let­ic. ‘My sopho­more year against UCLA, I had a heck of a game. I biked back to my dorm, I’m kind of on a high horse. I walk in, and six or sev­en peo­ple asked where I was! I think I had some­thing like 243 yards rush­ing, four touch­downs. And they didn’t know where I was!’”
  6. 3 Types of Skep­tics (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “1. Those who need answers…. 2. Those who don’t like the answers…. 3. Those who need heal­ing.”
  7. Are Mor­mons Chris­tians?: A Review of “The Saints of Zion: An Intro­duc­tion to Mor­mon The­ol­o­gy” (Tim Miller, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “He makes clear that Mor­mons are not Chris­tians, but does so by point­ing out that this has been the claim of the Mor­mon church itself through­out his­to­ry (despite recent attempts to argue dif­fer­ent­ly).”

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). 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 214

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 Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” This is a very good piece.
  2. Skillet’s John Coop­er on Apos­ta­sy Among Young Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (George Brahm, Cogent Chris­tian­i­ty: “I’ve been say­ing for 20 years (and seemed prob­a­bly quite judg­men­tal to some of my peers) that we are in a dan­ger­ous place when the church is look­ing to 20 year old wor­ship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church cul­ture that learns who God is from singing mod­ern praise songs rather than from the teach­ings of the Word.”
  3. Jef­frey Epstein and When to Take Con­spir­a­cies Seri­ous­ly (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Most con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are false. But often some of the things they’re try­ing to explain are real.” Refresh­ing san­i­ty.
  4. Depor­ta­tion of a Chaldean Chris­t­ian to Iraq, and where he died, gets some decent cov­er­age (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “The more you look into this sto­ry, the more dis­turb­ing it gets. Mindy Belz, report­ing for World, wrote that a third coun­try had offered to take Aldaoud but that U.S. immi­gra­tion author­i­ties refused. Putting him on a plane to Najaf was an inten­tion­al twist of cru­el­ty. Appar­ent­ly, it was not an acci­dent that he was sent there instead of Bagh­dad.”
  5. The Last Days of John Allen Chau (Alex Per­ry, Out­side Mag­a­zine): “.…to those who know the tribes best, John’s mis­sion did not spell the end of the Sen­tine­lese. To them, he rep­re­sent­ed a pos­si­ble means of sur­vival.“ Chi Alpha makes an appear­ance in this arti­cle. Relat­ed links back in vol­umes 179 and 180.
  6. Jeff Bezos is qui­et­ly let­ting his char­i­ties do some­thing rad­i­cal — what­ev­er they want (Theodore Schleifer, Vox Recode): “Giv­ing $100 mil­lion to non­prof­its based on lit­tle pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion and then let­ting them run with it sounds, on its face, like a recipe for dis­as­ter. It con­jures the image of fat-and-hap­py char­i­ty lead­ers milk­ing extrav­a­gant salaries from oth­ers’ gen­eros­i­ty, or prof­li­gate spend­ing on extra­ne­ous over­head — or even out­right fraud…. Well, here’s the sur­prise: Mul­ti­ple experts told Recode this strat­e­gy actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense. They think phil­an­thropies should give non­prof­its sub­stan­tial­ly more lee­way.”
    1. Related(ish): Mis­sion­al Mis­con­cep­tion #1 (Sup­port Fig­ures) (Seth Calla­han, per­son­al blog): “If the [Post Office] were a non-prof­it, faith-based orga­ni­za­tion, with all of their employ­ees being respon­si­ble to cov­er their own oper­at­ing costs… then each employ­ee would need to have a month­ly sup­port lev­el of $11,837.69. That fig­ure does not rep­re­sent what your mail­man gets PAID, mind you. It is how much it COSTS for your mail­man to per­form the ser­vices that are required of him: trans­porta­tion and stor­age of goods, pack­ing sup­plies, vehi­cle main­te­nance, health­care, retire­ment, social security…etc. His take-home pay (what he lives off of) is a small per­cent­age of those oper­at­ing costs.”
  7. The Reli­gious Hunger of the Rad­i­cal Right (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, New York Times): “Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online com­mu­ni­ties of incels, white suprema­cists and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists make no meta­phys­i­cal truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an after­life or reward. But they ful­fill the func­tions that soci­ol­o­gists gen­er­al­ly attribute to a reli­gion: They give their mem­bers a mean­ing­ful account of why the world is the way it is.” 

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 Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” First shared in vol­ume 161.

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 110

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 First Church of Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty (Eliz­a­beth C. Corey, First Things): “Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is, then, a qua­si-reli­gious gnos­tic move­ment, which appeals to peo­ple for pre­cise­ly the rea­sons that all reli­gions do: It gives an account of our bro­ken­ness, an expla­na­tion of the rea­sons for pain, a sav­ing sto­ry accom­pa­nied by strong eth­i­cal imper­a­tives, and hope for the future. In short, it gives life mean­ing.”
  2. Nondi­crim­i­na­tion For All (Jonathan Rauch, Nation­al Affairs): “The land­mark civ­il-rights bills that broke the back of racial seg­re­ga­tion in the 1960s were not abso­lutist. They pro­vid­ed exemp­tions for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions. They exempt­ed ‘Mrs. Mur­phy,’ the land­la­dy rent­ing a room in her own house. At the time, civ­il-rights advo­cates in Con­gress made the prag­mat­ic argu­ment that exemp­tions were need­ed to pass the bill, but they also made the polit­i­cal­ly prin­ci­pled argu­ment that excep­tions would increase social com­fort with the leg­is­la­tion while still cov­er­ing the vast major­i­ty of cas­es — a trade they deemed worth mak­ing…. In fact, the pop-cul­ture ide­al of zero-tol­er­ance nondis­crim­i­na­tion is pos­si­ble only because of the under­ly­ing real­i­ty of ubiq­ui­tous accom­mo­da­tion.”
  3. The Wast­ed Mind of Ben Sasse (Ben Math­is-Lil­ley, Slate): “What is most mad­den­ing about Sasse is not his par­ty feal­ty per se—I’m not expect­ing a Repub­li­can sen­a­tor to sup­port left-wing poli­cies; that’s not the stan­dard we should hold him to—but the way he has out­lined the basis for a path he has yet to take him­self.” This is more par­ti­san than most things I share, but since I high­light­ed Sasse as one of my two favorite Sen­a­tors back in issue 107 it seems appro­pri­ate. I still like both Sasse and Book­er, by the way.
  4. Some ques­tions I’m ask­ing while off to my white evan­gel­i­cal church (Lisa Robin­son, per­son­al blog): “Has all this atten­tion on white suprema­cy maybe pushed down cen­tral issues to being part of the king­dom of God togeth­er, with its dis­ci­ple­ship man­dates and being salt and light in the world? Because it seems to me, based on what I read in Scrip­ture any­way, that only through him can true rec­on­cil­i­a­tion hap­pen.”
  5. Meet Five Men Who All Think They’re The Mes­si­ah (Jonas Bendik­sen, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic)  “If Christ were to come back to com­plete his work today, I’ve thought, what would he think of the world we’ve cre­at­ed? And what would we think of him? With these thoughts tum­bling around in my head, I decid­ed to start look­ing for mes­si­ahs. I found them the way you find every­thing these days: through Google.”
  6. “Main­line” Church­es Are Emp­ty­ing. The Polit­i­cal Effects Could Be Huge (Lyman Stone, Vox): “While pro­gres­sives are keen to see in the decline of labor unions an impor­tant com­po­nent in the rise of con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal pow­er, they rarely con­sid­er the impact of los­ing their movement’s soul. Despite main­line denom­i­na­tions com­mand­ing as much or more pop­u­lar sup­port and mem­ber­ship as labor unions, their decline seems to be unmourned with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment they birthed; the con­se­quences of that decline like­wise go uncon­sid­ered.”
  7. Get­ting the Rich and Pow­er­ful to Give (SSRN, Kessler, Milk­man & Zhang): “Con­sis­tent with past psy­chol­o­gy research, we find that the rich and pow­er­ful respond dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­ers, to being giv­en a sense of agency over the use of donat­ed funds. Gifts from rich and pow­er­ful alum­ni increase by 200–300 per­cent when they are giv­en a sense of agency.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la), the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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.