Tag: global christianity

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI Volume 529: French revival, gender differences, bogus sociology

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The qui­et surge of France’s evan­gel­i­cals (ENTR, YouTube): twelve min­utes. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, brought to my atten­tion by a stu­dent. The first half is one of the bet­ter (albeit inad­ver­tent) apolo­gias for low-church Protes­tantism you’ll run across.
  2. Male stu­dents show more tol­er­ance for polit­i­cal ene­mies than females show for their own allies (Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, Sub­stack): “…over­all tol­er­ance for oppos­ing views is low among both male and female stu­dents — but the males con­sis­tent­ly dis­play far more tol­er­ance than females, regard­less of their pol­i­tics.… In fact, men are over 3.5 times more like­ly than women to be ‘per­fect­ly tol­er­ant’ of oppos­ing views, mean­ing they would def­i­nite­ly allow any cam­pus speak­er.”
    • One of the embed­ded charts is actu­al­ly stun­ning. And this sen­tence: “Amaz­ing­ly, it turns out men are often more tol­er­ant of the oppo­site side than women are of their own side.”
  3. Debunk­ing “When Prophe­cy Fails” (Thomas Kel­ly, Jour­nal of the His­to­ry of the Behav­ioral Sci­ences) : “In 1954, Dorothy Mar­tin pre­dict­ed an apoc­a­lyp­tic flood and promised her fol­low­ers res­cue by fly­ing saucers. When nei­ther arrived, she recant­ed, her group dis­solved, and efforts to pros­e­ly­tize ceased. But When Prophe­cy Fails (1956), the now-canon­i­cal account of the event, claimed the oppo­site: that the group dou­bled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psy­cho­log­i­cal mech­a­nism, cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance. Draw­ing on new­ly unsealed archival mate­r­i­al, this arti­cle demon­strates that the book’s cen­tral claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false.”
    • The author has a PhD in polit­i­cal sci­ence from Cal and now works at a think­tank in biose­cu­ri­ty. The excerpt is from the abstract.
    • I am over­whelmed by how absolute­ly insane this is and that the lies have endured for sev­en decades. SEVEN DECADES. I care because this study is some­times used by skep­tics to argue against Chris­tian­i­ty. As the author says: “When Prophe­cy Fails spread its influ­ence across psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, New Tes­ta­ment stud­ies, and reli­gious stud­ies. Iron­i­cal­ly, some [skep­ti­cal] New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars whose rai­son d’être and spe­cial­iza­tion is piec­ing togeth­er events from thou­sands of years ago, eager­ly embraced a false nar­ra­tive that was triv­ial to fact check.”
  4. The Edi­tor Got a Let­ter From ‘Dr. B.S.’ So Did a Lot of Oth­er Edi­tors. (Gina Kola­ta, New York Times): “Let­ters to the edi­tor from writ­ers using chat­bots are flood­ing the world’s sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, accord­ing to new research and jour­nal edi­tors.… There’s a rea­son authors might turn to A.I., Dr. Rubin not­ed in an inter­view. Let­ters to the edi­tor pub­lished in sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals are list­ed in data­bas­es that also list jour­nal arti­cles, and Dr. Rubin said that ‘they count as much as an arti­cle. For doing a very small amount of work, some­one can get an arti­cle in The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine on their C.V.,’ he said. ‘The incen­tive to cheat is high,’ he added.”
    • The open­ing anec­dote is pret­ty fun­ny.
  5. Some stuff on anti­semitism and Zion­ism:
    • Why Anti­semitism Is ‘Moral Pornog­ra­phy’ (Mary Eber­stadt, The Free Press): “Online anti­semitism is the new pornog­ra­phy. It is moral pornog­ra­phy. And pornog­ra­phy it is—because like pornog­ra­phy, inter­net anti­semitism is most­ly engaged in secret­ly; like pornog­ra­phy, it deliv­ers illic­it thrills to degrad­ed users; and like pornog­ra­phy, its con­sump­tion embar­rass­es users when it comes to light, as is seen when­ev­er peo­ple are exposed in pub­lic for spew­ing Jew-hatred online. Chris­tians who were in the fore­front of under­stand­ing that pornog­ra­phy caus­es harm should be in the fore­front of oppos­ing the moral pornog­ra­phy of anti­semitism.”
      • This is an adap­ta­tion of a speech giv­en by a Catholic at a Catholic event, which explains some of the lan­guage.
    • Tuck­er Carl­son Is Wrong About Chris­t­ian Zion­ism (Samuel Gold­man, The Free Press): “Begin­ning in the 1980s, a whole genre of books and arti­cles con­tend­ed that Amer­i­can Chris­tians’ enthu­si­asm for Israel was based on an ‘end-times’ sce­nario derived from the Vic­to­ri­an the­olo­gian John Nel­son Dar­by, and main­streamed by Scofield in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.… [In real­i­ty, the] his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian Zion­ism in Amer­i­ca is far longer and more var­i­ous than that.”
  6. Chi­na’s Chris­tians Are Amer­i­ca’s Allies (Elisa Zhai Autry, Sub­stack): “Since its incep­tion, the Com­mu­nist Par­ty has viewed Chris­tian­i­ty as a desta­bi­liz­ing force that under­mines par­ty author­i­ty and opens doors to for­eign inter­fer­ence. Yet, from Mao Zedong to Xi Jin­ping, every effort to stamp it out has failed. Chris­tian­i­ty has flour­ished amid wars, famine, polit­i­cal purges, the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the Tianan­men Square mas­sacre, and mod­ern cen­sor­ship. Today, Chi­nese Chris­tians are esti­mat­ed to num­ber as high as 100 mil­lion. The par­ty frames Chris­tian­i­ty as ‘for­eign,’ but his­to­ry dis­putes that.… Chris­tians were pil­lars of China’s mod­ern­iza­tion long before the par­ty claimed cred­it. Their con­tri­bu­tion was indige­nous, not foreign—rooted deeply in Chi­nese tra­di­tions and dri­ven by Chi­nese believ­ers.”
    • This is the Sub­stack of Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  7. Some stuff on con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, pre­sent­ed in a non­par­ti­san man­ner. I am not endors­ing the per­spec­tives of the authors, I am mere­ly say­ing that I found their argu­ments intrigu­ing:
    • 16 take­aways from Democ­rats’ big night (Jerusalem Dem­sas, Jor­dan Weiss­mann, Lak­shya Jain , & Kelsey Piper, The Argu­ment): “Anti-Trump­ism is a real­ly, real­ly pow­er­ful force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. espe­cial­ly in non-pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. In Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nees were tied to a very, very unpop­u­lar pres­i­dent — and some­times by choice. Yes, 2026 is going to have high­er turnout than 2025 did, but it won’t be on the lev­el of 2024, and from the evi­dence we have, the drop-off is like­ly to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Repub­li­can.”
    • The cos­mopoli­tan con­ser­v­a­tive (Janan Ganesh, Finan­cial Times): “There is such a thing as a cos­mopoli­tan con­ser­v­a­tive. When I want to dis­cuss Dubai — and when do I not? — I have to turn to apo­lit­i­cal or right-lean­ing acquain­tances.….  Often, it is fear of caus­ing offence that stops lib­er­al-mind­ed peo­ple engag­ing with vast tracts of the world. And so cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty turns into its own kind of parochial­ism.”
      • A fas­ci­nat­ing (and very brief) arti­cle.
    • Inside the DSA’s Hos­tile Takeover of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (Olivia Rein­gold, The Free Press): “The Free Press reviewed thou­sands of pages of inter­nal Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA) doc­u­ments, which show that the organization’s lead­ers view Mam­dani as a tool in their agen­da to abol­ish pris­ons and bor­ders, and ulti­mate­ly end in [sic] what they call the ‘bar­bar­ic order of cap­i­tal­ism.’ The DSA, found­ed in 1982, is a polit­i­cal body ded­i­cat­ed to the doc­trine of demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, which is a vari­ety of social­ism that sim­ply spec­i­fies how it would like rev­o­lu­tion to occur: peace­ful­ly, through the sub­ver­sion of democ­ra­cy. Mam­dani, a dues-pay­ing DSA mem­ber since 2017, is the tip of that spear.”
    • The Toc­queville Para­dox (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “I am 35, one year old­er than Mam­dani, and I can tell you that Mil­len­ni­als and Gen Zers have not real­ly been taught about the fail­ures of social­ism. I will point out, with a bit of hyper­bole, that in US high schools we get 155 hours on Hitler, three min­utes on Stal­in, zero on Mao and zero on Pol Pot. And social­ism is an idea that sounds good on face val­ue. It promis­es to take from the rich and give to the poor. That means not only ‘free stuff’ for every­one, but also a sense of fair­ness.”
    • Pro­gres­sives Can’t Bear Preg­nan­cy (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “There’s a sense on the left that the act of giv­ing birth is an insane, trau­mat­ic thing to do, an infringe­ment on all women’s bod­i­ly auton­o­my.… My most pro­gres­sive friends talk in hushed tones about want­i­ng kids, as if con­fess­ing a vice. One of them, after a few glass­es of wine, told me she dreams of being a stay-at-home moth­er. She couldn’t tell her boyfriend. She couldn’t even tell her clos­est friend. To say it aloud would feel like a betray­al of every­thing she is sup­posed to believe. Extreme pro­gres­sives turn on women who express entire­ly ordi­nary wish­es about fam­i­ly.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 527: beyond adolescent atheism, counterproductive peer review, and Girls Gone Bible

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 501: college students, colleges, and youth in general



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.

I’ve had a scat­tered week, so a lil’ less con­tent than usu­al here. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sec­u­lar Col­lege Stu­dents Find Ordi­nary Chris­tian­i­ty Per­sua­sive (Dylan Muss­er, The Gospel Coali­tion): “I serve as a cam­pus min­is­ter at one of the most pres­ti­gious and sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties in the South, and I’ve noticed that many stu­dents have become dis­en­chant­ed with sec­u­lar­ism.… The vis­i­ble beau­ty of ordi­nary Chris­t­ian liv­ing is a per­sua­sive apolo­getic for today’s stu­dents. It may encour­age even skep­ti­cal stu­dents to recon­sid­er a faith they’ve dis­missed.”
    • The author does cam­pus min­istry at Van­der­bilt.
  2. How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Gen­er­a­tion (Cather­ine Kim, Politi­co): “It’s a star­tling real­i­ty about Gen Z, backed up by mul­ti­ple stud­ies and what we can all see for our­selves: The most online gen­er­a­tion is also the worst at dis­cern­ing fact from fic­tion on the inter­net.”
  3. The Road to Cam­pus Serf­dom (John O. McGin­nis, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Today’s cir­cum­stances stark­ly illus­trate how expan­sive fed­er­al con­trol over civ­il soci­ety, orig­i­nal­ly cel­e­brat­ed by pro­gres­sives, returns to haunt its archi­tects. The left’s out­rage ought to focus not on this par­tic­u­lar admin­is­tra­tion but on its own reck­less empow­er­ment of the state.”
    • The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern.
  4. The Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Israelis Pro­tect­ing West Bank Pales­tini­ans (Jill Nel­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jonathan Pex is con­cerned about his Pales­tin­ian Bedouin neigh­bors in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills. They’re sheep­herders who live in an expan­sive cave out­fit­ted with solar elec­tric­i­ty, ten min­utes from Pex’s home. The region has seen an uptick in Israeli set­tler vio­lence against Pales­tini­ans since the Octo­ber 2023 Hamas attacks, and the Pales­tin­ian fam­i­ly is afraid they may be next on the set­tlers’ hit list, as they’ve had sev­er­al dis­putes with their neigh­bors over graz­ing rights.… ‘I’m going to do what­ev­er I can to sup­port them,’ Pex said. ‘Jesus would have real­ly had a heart for these peo­ple.’”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry.
  5. Make Chris­tian­i­ty cool again: Why Gen Z is flock­ing to church (Helen Cof­fey, The Inde­pen­dent): “Inter­est­ing­ly, a major piece of research on teenage well­be­ing con­duct­ed by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford and Swansea Uni­ver­si­ty last year found that just three ele­ments strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with bet­ter ado­les­cent men­tal health: get­ting enough sleep, reg­u­lar exer­cise and – wait for it – attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices.”
    • A British per­spec­tive on reli­gious renew­al among young peo­ple.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 499: OCD, Morality, and Tariffs



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.

Next week is vol­ume 500. I can’t decide whether it will be just anoth­er issue or some­thing a lil’ dif­fer­ent.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. In his own words: Colts RT Braden Smith’s des­per­ate, life-threat­en­ing fight vs OCD (Joel A. Erick­son, Indi­anapo­lis Star): “Smith has always gone to church, but he’d com­mit­ted ful­ly to his Chris­t­ian faith, and an obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der began to warp his faith into some­thing sin­is­ter. From the out­side, it looked like Smith was div­ing deep into his faith. He devoured the Bible, quot­ed Scrip­ture, sought out believ­ers for con­ver­sa­tions. He prayed con­stant­ly and start­ed lis­ten­ing to Chris­t­ian music exclu­sive­ly. Inter­nal­ly, a dis­or­der Smith didn’t real­ize he had was twist­ing the words. ‘There’s the actu­al, real, true, liv­ing God,’ Smith said. ‘And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this con­demn­ing (deity). It’s like every wrong move you make, it’s like smack­ing the ruler against his hand. “Anoth­er bad move like that and you’re out of here.“ ‘”
    • A grip­ping sto­ry.
  2. Appeal­ing to Moral Sen­ti­ments in an Amoral Age (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “…the moral sen­ti­ments peo­ple have can be real indi­ca­tions of spir­i­tu­al real­i­ties.
    The anx­i­ety a young woman feels about her iden­ti­ty may be a real indi­ca­tion that expres­sive indi­vid­u­al­ism is hol­low. The lone­li­ness a young woman feels in vapid, greedy sex­u­al rela­tion­ships may be a real indi­ca­tion that sex was cre­at­ed for union (and pro­cre­ation). Instead of treat­ing emo­tions as ran­dom or irrel­e­vant or con­ced­ing that neg­a­tive emo­tions are exclu­sive­ly the purview of the ther­a­pist and psy­chi­a­trist, we acknowl­edge that the felt expe­ri­ences of young women are a sign point­ing them to who they were cre­at­ed to be. And this isn’t just true for young women. I think there are many young men who need to hear this approach as well.”
  3. About the tar­iffs:
    • Trade deficits do not make a coun­try poor­er (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “Does using your cred­it card to buy a wash­ing machine from Tar­get mean that Tar­get has ripped you off? No. Does it make you poor­er when you use your cred­it card to buy a wash­ing machine from Tar­get? Nope. You now have less mon­ey, but you have more stuff. In just the same way, a trade deficit means that the U.S. has less mon­ey and more stuff. It does not mean Amer­i­ca is poor­er, or that it has been ripped off by for­eign­ers.”
      • This is a help­ful explain­er of some key con­cepts which are in the news.
    • Don­ald Trump’s eco­nom­ic mas­ter­plan (Yanis Varo­ufakis, Unherd): “Though we risk the abyss star­ing back when we attempt to gaze into Trump’s mind, we do need a grasp of his think­ing on three fun­da­men­tal ques­tions: why does he believe that Amer­i­ca is exploit­ed by the rest of the world? What is his vision for a new inter­na­tion­al order in which Amer­i­ca can be ‘great’ again? How does he plan to bring it about? Only then can we pro­duce a sen­si­ble cri­tique of Trump’s eco­nom­ic mas­ter­plan.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus. The things I find most inter­est­ing about this one is (a) it’s by a for­eign expert [an econ­o­mist who served as the Greek min­is­ter of finance] and (b) although writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary it antic­i­pat­ed the type of tar­iff that was imple­ment­ed (trade imbal­ance tar­iffs) instead of what had been expect­ed (rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs).
    • There’s a Method to Trump’s Tar­iff Mad­ness (Jen­nifer Burns, New York Times): “Mr. Trump’s tar­iffs aren’t real­ly about tar­iffs. They are the open­ing gam­bit in a more ambi­tious plan to smash the world’s eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal order and replace it with some­thing intend­ed to bet­ter serve Amer­i­can inter­ests. This plan is often referred to as the Mar-a-Lago Accord.”
      • The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford.
  4. What Age Do Peo­ple Around the World Think Is Best to Reach Major Life Mile­stones? (Janell Fet­terolf et al, Pew Research): “When is the right time in life to get mar­ried or have a child? What is the best age to buy a home? Is there an ide­al age for retire­ment? We asked adults in 18 most­ly mid­dle-income coun­tries what they think is the best age to reach these life mile­stones. Over­all, there is a lot of agree­ment around the world. On aver­age across the coun­tries sur­veyed, peo­ple say it is best to get mar­ried and have a first child around 26 years old.… Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple across the 18 coun­tries sur­veyed think it’s best to get mar­ried in one’s mid-20s. Aver­age ide­al ages range from 21.2 in Bangladesh to 28.9 in Argenti­na.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  5. Why Pales­tin­ian Chris­tians Feel Betrayed by Amer­i­can Chris­tians (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Few­er than 2 per­cent of West Bank Pales­tini­ans today are Chris­t­ian, but they are an influ­en­tial minor­i­ty who endure the same land grabs and hard­ships as the major­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.”
    • It is a short col­umn, but one thing I wish Kristof had parsed out were the dif­fer­ences between Pales­tin­ian evan­gel­i­cals and Pales­tin­ian Catholics and Pales­tin­ian main­line Protes­tants. I think they each have dif­fer­ent things to say.
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. Near­ly 300 Stu­dents Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Depor­ta­tion (Vimal Patel, Miri­am Jor­dan & Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “Near­ly 300 inter­na­tion­al stu­dents were abrupt­ly stripped of their abil­i­ty to stay in the Unit­ed States in recent days, accord­ing to uni­ver­si­ties and media reports, sow­ing fear among stu­dents and con­fu­sion at schools scram­bling to help stu­dents fac­ing deten­tion and pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion.… In some cas­es, immi­gra­tion offi­cers have arrest­ed inter­na­tion­al stu­dents relat­ed to their involve­ment in pro-Pales­tin­ian caus­es. In oth­er cas­es, stu­dents had com­mit­ted legal infrac­tions, such as dri­ving over the speed lim­it or while intox­i­cat­ed, often years ago, sev­er­al immi­gra­tion lawyers said in inter­views. But lawyers said the Trump admin­is­tra­tion had often giv­en no rea­son at all, leav­ing them to guess why stu­dents were tar­get­ed.… The Unit­ed States issued more than 400,000 visas to stu­dents in 2024.”
    • While I am sure almost all inter­na­tion­al stu­dents find the poli­cies dis­tress­ing, they should find the data in this arti­cle reas­sur­ing. To date few­er than one tenth of one per­cent of inter­na­tion­al stu­dents have had their visas revoked. 300/400000 = .00075 
  7. Insti­tu­tions Don’t Main­tain Them­selves (James Did­dams, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jesus told Peter to for­give the broth­er or sis­ter who sins against him ‘not sev­en times, but sev­en­ty-sev­en times’ (Matt. 18:21–22). I’ve come to think Chris­tians have some oblig­a­tion of for­give­ness to our insti­tu­tions, too—some duty of love and sac­ri­fice to pre­serve and repair these right­ful­ly time-hon­ored ways of orga­niz­ing and shap­ing our lives.… Where did we ever get the idea that these insti­tu­tions would some­how main­tain them­selves? That they would always be there for us, meet­ing all our hopes, in per­fect work­ing order, with­out repair or for­give­ness from us?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 492: suffering, plane crashes, and near death experiences

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 Best Argu­ment Against Hav­ing Faith in God (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “One inter­est­ing point about [suf­fer­ing] is that while it’s often fold­ed into the briefs for athe­ism that claim to rely pri­mar­i­ly on hard evi­dence and sci­ence, it isn’t prop­er­ly speak­ing an argu­ment that some cre­at­ing pow­er does not exist. Rather it’s an argu­ment about the nature of that pow­er, a claim that the par­tic­u­lar kind of God envi­sioned by many believ­ers and philoso­phers — all pow­er­ful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find our­selves, and there­fore that this kind of God does not exist. The oth­er inter­est­ing point about this argu­ment is that while its core evi­dence is empir­i­cal, in the sense that ter­ri­ble forms of suf­fer­ing obvi­ous­ly exist and can be exten­sive­ly enu­mer­at­ed, its pow­er fun­da­men­tal­ly rests on an intu­ition about just how much suf­fer­ing is too much. By this I mean that many peo­ple who empha­size the prob­lem of evil would con­cede that a good God might allow some form of pain and suf­fer­ing with­in a mate­r­i­al cre­ation for var­i­ous good rea­sons.”
  2. Why Are So Many Planes Crash­ing? (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “Now let’s zoom out and just ask: are inci­dents of any cause get­ting more com­mon? They aren’t.… [Also] I don’t see any mean­ing­ful uptick over time in fatal­i­ty inci­dents. Actu­al­ly they’ve clear­ly declined since the ear­ly 1990s or even ear­ly 2000s. Which is wild, since total amounts of flights have mas­sive­ly increased! Note that I am includ­ing known inci­dents through Feb­ru­ary 18, 2025 in those fig­ures above!”
    • Empha­sis removed. Lots of charts.
  3. It’s Going To Take More Than An Exec­u­tive Order To Tru­ly Pro­tect Women’s Sports (Kate Bier­ly, Dai­ly Caller): “Since the 1990s, Con­gress has steadi­ly abdi­cat­ed its respon­si­bil­i­ty to leg­is­late, opt­ing instead to let the exec­u­tive branch take the polit­i­cal heat. Mem­bers of Con­gress, more con­cerned with reelec­tion than with the duty to gov­ern, pre­fer to pass the buck. An exec­u­tive order com­mands only the exec­u­tive branch, requir­ing fed­er­al agen­cies to com­ply. But its pow­er is inher­ent­ly lim­it­ed. Reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty has been reined in, espe­cial­ly after the Supreme Court’s recent deci­sion to over­turn Chevron def­er­ence. No longer can agen­cies broad­ly inter­pret con­gres­sion­al statutes to impose sweep­ing reg­u­la­tions. Now, their author­i­ty is con­fined strict­ly to what Con­gress has explic­it­ly grant­ed them. This lim­its the scope of what Trump’s lat­est exec­u­tive order can achieve. His direc­tive to the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion to restrict women’s sports to bio­log­i­cal females is bound by statu­to­ry inter­pre­ta­tion, which blue states can chal­lenge.… This is why con­gres­sion­al action is nec­es­sary, because reliance on exec­u­tive orders and judi­cial inter­pre­ta­tion fos­ters legal insta­bil­i­ty.”
    • Writ­ten by one of our alum­ni.
  4. 70 Chris­tians found behead­ed in church in DRC (Open Doors): “Accord­ing to field sources, at around 4am last Thurs­day (13 Feb­ru­ary) sus­pect­ed mil­i­tants from the Allied Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces (ADF) – a group with ties to so-called Islam­ic State (IS) – approached homes in May­ba in the ter­ri­to­ry of Lubero, say­ing: ‘Get out, get out and don’t make any noise.’ Twen­ty Chris­t­ian men and women came out and were cap­tured. Shak­en by this inci­dent, peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty in May­ba lat­er gath­ered to work out how to release those held cap­tive. How­ev­er, ADF mil­i­tants sur­round­ed the vil­lage and cap­tured a fur­ther 50 believ­ers.”
  5. The ker­nel of truth in gen­der stereo­types: Con­sid­er the avo­ca­do, not the apple (Eagly & Hall, Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Social Psy­chol­o­gy): “…in 85% of [the 673] com­par­isons [from across the 43 stud­ies], par­tic­i­pants got the direc­tion [of gen­der dif­fer­ence] right.… Our review sug­gests that All­port’s (1954/1988, p. 190) clas­sic and wide­ly cit­ed ker­nel of truth metaphor is incor­rect for gen­der stereo­types unless this ker­nel is more like the seed of an avo­ca­do than an apple.”
    • The authors are pro­fes­sors at North­west­ern and North­east­ern, a com­bi­na­tion I found fun­ny.
  6. Learn­ings from 1,000+ Near-Death Expe­ri­ences — Dr. Bruce Greyson, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia (Tim Fer­riss, per­son­al blog): “I start­ed out as a mate­ri­al­ist skep­tic. After 50 years, I’m still skep­ti­cal, but I’m no longer a mate­ri­al­ist. I think that’s a dead end when it comes to explain­ing near-death expe­ri­ences and oth­er phe­nom­e­na like this.… About five per­cent of the gen­er­al population—or one to every 20 people—has had a near-death expe­ri­ence. Sec­ond­ly, they are not asso­ci­at­ed in any way with men­tal ill­ness. Peo­ple who are per­fect­ly nor­mal have these NDEs in abnor­mal sit­u­a­tions that can hap­pen to any­body.”
  7. Miran­da July’s Lucra­tive Fan­tasies (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “The anti-monogamists con­stant­ly insist that monogamy is just too roman­tic to build a life on, that it’s con­trary to human nature. But what could pos­si­bly be more roman­tic, in the most child­ish sense, than the belief that you’ll stay attrac­tive and roman­ti­cal­ly desir­able for your entire life? That you’ll sim­ply cycle end­less­ly between will­ing part­ners who you find attrac­tive and who feel the same about you and who you’ll hap­pi­ly let go of as soon as you’re bored, and you’ll keep doing that in a state of bliss until you die? You’d call that, what, real­is­tic?”
    • deBoer, as I often remind peo­ple, an athe­ist social­ist who is nonethe­less very clear-mind­ed on some top­ics. He is near­ly always enter­tain­ing to read.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 488

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. Spec­u­la­tion: Phys­i­cal Pain Might Not Be Very Bad? (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “But it seems like chron­ic pain is not as strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with sui­cide as the (biased) lit­er­a­ture sug­gests, that high pain-tol­er­ance is mod­est­ly asso­ci­at­ed with sui­cide, and that phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions reduc­ing pain don’t decrease and actu­al­ly increase sui­cide. So it real­ly seems like pain doesn’t cause sui­cide, and it almost seems like lack of pain caus­es sui­cide.”
    • Stone with anoth­er banger. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
    • I would like to go on record as say­ing I am not a fan of pain. Indeed, since Rev­e­la­tion 21:4 informs us that there will be no pain in heav­en I do not think I am going too far in being unen­thused about pain gen­er­al­ly: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heav­en.” That being said, I like Stone’s argu­ment a lot.
  2. The Courage To Com­mit (Freya India, Sub­stack): “It’s strange because my gen­er­a­tion talks so much about empow­er­ment, agency, inde­pen­dence, and fear of los­ing our­selves, yet we will will­ing­ly offer our­selves up to the algo­rithm. We will sur­ren­der our souls to the machine with­out a sec­ond thought…but are ter­ri­fied to sur­ren­der any­thing in a human rela­tion­ship. Part­ly because we are young, yes, but also because that’s the mes­sage we hear every­where: be care­ful not to com­mit to any one thing, nev­er nar­row your options, don’t allow your­self to be vul­ner­a­ble. It’s fun­ny because I was talk­ing to a friend recent­ly about how if you get engaged young now, or do any­thing that sig­nals actu­al com­mit­ment, that’s when fam­i­ly and friends wor­ry for you. It’s like some par­ents are pro­tec­tive only when it comes to com­mit­ment. They wor­ry about you clos­ing down options.”
    • The post is pay­walled past a point, but even the part that is freely avail­able is quite stim­u­lat­ing.
  3. Last Boys at the Begin­ning of His­to­ry (Mana Afsari, The Point Mag­a­zine): “In ear­ly 2017, I asked the ‘sec­u­lar human­ist chap­lain’ at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, where I stud­ied, how I could set myself up for a good life in col­lege and beyond. How could I be hap­py? How could I find a voca­tion or a call­ing? How could I be a good per­son? The chap­lain told me to look around and iden­ti­fy the peo­ple who had lives I want­ed to live, and ask myself what their val­ues were. I quick­ly real­ized those moral exem­plars were not in the sec­u­lar stu­dent group I’d joined, which had become increas­ing­ly moral­ly vacant, pseu­do-ratio­nal­ist and eccen­tric, drawn to effec­tive altru­ism and con­vinced by Sam Har­ris that mur­der was mere­ly a social con­struct. To say noth­ing of love: more and more of my female friends at the time were embrac­ing polyamory as a way to grand­fa­ther in sit­u­a­tion­ships or infi­deli­ties, while being told in spe­cial sem­i­nars that monogamy was a colo­nial con­struct and should be dis­card­ed any­way. As a child of divorce, as a young woman, my pri­ma­ry con­cern was hav­ing mod­els for healthy relationships—not resist­ing colo­nial­ism in my dat­ing life. I had no inter­est in sub­vert­ing things—monogamy, moral norms, courtship, the nuclear fam­i­ly, faith, a clas­si­cal education—that I’d nev­er had or known in the first place. I want­ed a seri­ous boyfriend.”
    • This essay describes some­thing real and under­noticed. It cov­ers a lot of ground, and the excerpt above isn’t real­ly cen­tral.
  4. The ‘Sur­pris­ing Rebirth’ at Oxford: Per­spec­tives from a Grad­u­ate Stu­dent (Car­olyn Mor­ris-Col­lier, Gospel Coali­tion): “While my non­re­li­gious friends here in Oxford are still curi­ous about how I make sense of Christianity’s his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism or how I ratio­nal­ize its creeds, they seem more intrigued by how my faith ori­ents my life, pur­pose, and emo­tion­al world. This shift from ‘Is it true?’ to ‘Does it work?’ reflects a broad­er cul­tur­al change that the church should mind­ful­ly pre­pare to engage.”
  5. The Online Porn Free-for-All Is Com­ing to an End (Marc Novi­coff, The Atlantic): “…since the 1990s, Amer­i­ca has had two sets of laws con­cern­ing under­age access to pornog­ra­phy. In the phys­i­cal world, the law gen­er­al­ly requires young-look­ing cus­tomers to show ID prov­ing they’re 18 before they can access adult mate­ri­als. In the online world, the law has tra­di­tion­al­ly required, well, noth­ing. Under Supreme Court prece­dent estab­lished dur­ing the internet’s infan­cy, forc­ing web­sites to ver­i­fy the age of their users is bur­den­some and inef­fec­tive, if not impos­si­ble, and thus incom­pat­i­ble with the First Amend­ment. That arrange­ment final­ly appears to be crum­bling.”
  6. The Ulti­mate Guide to Trump’s Day 1 Exec­u­tive Orders (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “The White House web­site, at the time of this writ­ing, lists 48 items under ‘pres­i­den­tial actions.’ Among these are dozens of first day exec­u­tive orders.  News reports say that Trump was plan­ning to sign around 100 of them. So while we still wait for the rest, here I’ll review the main things that the exec­u­tive orders released so far do, bro­ken down by top­ic. I then go on to take a big pic­ture per­spec­tive regard­ing what we have seen so far means for the future of the coun­try and what we can expect from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion going for­ward.”
    • This seems like a good sum­ma­ry. It only cov­ers the first orders — you’ll need to look else­where to find reflec­tion on the stuff from sub­se­quent days.
  7. Mer­i­toc­ra­cy’s Blind Spot: How Amer­i­ca Over­looks Its Own Tal­ent (Tom Owens, Sub­stack): “Over­whelm­ing­ly, Nation­al Mer­it Schol­ars matric­u­late to large state schools where they are award­ed gen­er­ous schol­ar­ships. The #1 des­ti­na­tion is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma, which pro­vides… not only a full ride, but free hous­ing, an extra $4,000 per year, and also a 5th year that will allow many stu­dents to com­plete a master’s degree. That last one is extreme­ly strate­gic on Alabama’s part, also build­ing up the com­pet­i­tive­ness of their grad­u­ate pro­grams by keep­ing these stu­dents in the state and their pro­grams. Bama is a smart oper­a­tor here, apply­ing the same prin­ci­ples to aca­d­e­m­ic recruit­ing as they do to their foot­ball pro­gram. Also notable is their match­ing of pageant schol­ar­ships. One won­ders exact­ly what they’re up to in just straight­for­ward­ly recruit­ing a smart, good-look­ing stu­dent body. This is a cun­ning long-term invest­ment in their alum­ni base, as both brains and beau­ty are pre­dic­tive of life suc­cess. Not to men­tion that the medi­an white-col­lar pro­fes­sion­al can live like a king in Huntsville or the nice sub­urbs of Birm­ing­ham com­pared to a hov­el in NYC or SF, even if it means giv­ing up any hope of being elite.”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing essay. I don’t know what per­cent­age of this arti­cle I believe, but it is not 0%. It’s not 100%, but it’s def­i­nite­ly not 0%. Worth a pon­der.

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 468



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 468, which is writ­ten as 3333 in base 5. I find that pret­ty cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Near­ly Half of the World’s Migrants Are Chris­t­ian (Chloë-Ari­zona Fodor, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While Chris­tians make up about 30 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, the world’s migrants are 47 per­cent Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the lat­est data col­lect­ed in 2020.… US migrants are much more like­ly to have a reli­gious iden­ti­ty than the Amer­i­can-born pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al. The influx of reli­gious migrants can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the reli­gious com­po­si­tion of their des­ti­na­tion coun­tries. In the case of the US, ‘immi­grants are kind of putting the brakes on sec­u­lar­iza­tion,’ Kramer said.”
  2. Meet new­ly crowned Miss USA Alma Coop­er M.S. ’25 (Semi­ra Aro­ra, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Before Stan­ford, Coop­er grad­u­at­ed in the top five per­cent of her class at West Point. Cur­rent­ly, she is a part of the high­ly selec­tive Knight-Hen­nessy schol­ar­ship pro­gram, which aims to cul­ti­vate mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lead­ers and offers schol­ars up to three years of fund­ing for grad­u­ate stud­ies.”
  3. A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate (Coltan Scrivn­er, Sub­stack): “Female par­tic­i­pants enjoyed the hor­ror clip the most when watch­ing with a male who dis­played mas­tery, while male par­tic­i­pants enjoyed it most in the pres­ence of a dis­tressed female. For males con­fed­er­ates whose pho­tographs were rat­ed less attrac­tive, dis­play­ing mas­tery increased how attrac­tive they were per­ceived by the female par­tic­i­pant that watched the clip with them. In oth­er words, women enjoyed a scary sit­u­a­tion more when they expe­ri­enced it with a man who dis­played mas­tery of their fear, and those men were, in some cas­es, seen as more attrac­tive than men who dis­played indif­fer­ence or dis­tress.”
    • The author is a Behav­ioral Sci­en­tist at the Recre­ation­al Fear Lab at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­mark and also has an appoint­ment in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. The “Recre­ation­al Fear Lab” — what an amaz­ing name!
  4. New Train­ing and Tougher Rules: How Col­leges Are Try­ing to Tame Gaza Protests (Alan Blind­er, New York Times): “The strate­gies that are com­ing into pub­lic view sug­gest that some admin­is­tra­tors at schools large and small have con­clud­ed that per­mis­sive­ness is per­ilous, and that a hard­er line may be the best option — or per­haps just the one least like­ly to invite blow­back from elect­ed offi­cials and donors who have demand­ed that uni­ver­si­ties take stronger action against pro­test­ers.”
    • Relat­ed: At Michi­gan, Activists Take Over and Shut Down Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment (Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “But last spring, pro-Pales­tin­ian activists, run­ning under the Shut It Down par­ty, won con­trol over the stu­dent gov­ern­ment. They imme­di­ate­ly moved to with­hold fund­ing for all activ­i­ties, until the uni­ver­si­ty com­mit­ted to divest from com­pa­nies that prof­it from Israel’s war in Gaza.… When cam­paign­ing for stu­dent gov­ern­ment, the Shut It Down par­ty did not keep its inten­tions a secret. Its plat­form ‘ran with one sin­gle point: to halt the oper­a­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Cen­tral Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment,’ Ali­fa Chowd­hury, the pres­i­dent of the par­ty, wrote in a state­ment to The Times.”
  5. Gos­sip­ing Is Fun. It’s Nat­ur­al. And These Peo­ple Won’t Do It. (Michal Lei­bowitz, New York Times): “I found the lives and rela­tion­ships described by the abstain­ers com­pelling. I was intrigued by their opti­mism, by their grace, by their com­mit­ment to judg­ing oth­ers by their best fea­tures. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gos­sip entire­ly. But I’ve def­i­nite­ly cut back. And what do you know? The less I judge peo­ple, the less I want to judge peo­ple. The less I com­plain, the less I want to com­plain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to com­plain about.”
  6. How your mind­set could affect your response to vac­cines (Tay­lor Kub­o­ta, Stan­ford News): “It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that our body’s respons­es to any­thing – the med­ica­tions we take, the foods we eat, and the stress we expe­ri­ence – are influ­enced by our mind­sets as well as the objec­tive prop­er­ties of those things. And this is also true of the COVID-19 vac­cine. Our mind­sets about the vac­cine can affect not just how we feel after­ward but also our expe­ri­ence with side effects. And in some instances, your mind­set about the vac­cine’s side effects can poten­tial­ly influ­ence your immune response.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a med­ical doc­tor.
  7. Can We Be a Lit­tle Less Selec­tive With Our Moral Out­rage? (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Of all the world’s injus­tices, per­haps the sad­dest is that so many of them are sim­ply ignored.”
    • A depress­ing list of a bunch of hor­ri­ble gov­ern­ments around the world.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 461



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

This is vol­ume 461, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.