Tag: global christianity

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 84

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The World’s Most Out­stand­ing Med­ical Mis­sion­ary (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the fam­i­ly of God fre­quent­ly makes me proud.
  2. ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Jere­my Weber, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Per­se­cu­tion rose glob­al­ly again for the third year in a row, indi­cat­ing how volatile the sit­u­a­tion has become,” stat­ed Open Doors. “Coun­tries in South and South­east Asia rapid­ly rose to unprece­dent­ed lev­els and now rank among such vio­lent areas as the Mid­dle East and Sub-Saha­ran Africa.”
  3. When The Brain Scram­bles Names, It’s Because You Love Them (Michelle Trudeau, NPR): This is my defense to you all. Also, I found this bit fun­ny — in a fam­i­ly “you are much more like­ly to be [acci­den­tal­ly] called the dog’s name than you are to be called the cat’s name.”
  4. It’s inau­gu­ra­tion day, so a lot of the arti­cles relate to the new­ly sworn-in Pres­i­dent.
    • How To Live Under An Unqual­i­fied Pres­i­dent (John Piper, Desir­ing God): this is good.
    • Trump Takes Jezreel (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Polit­i­cal fac­tions want every­thing to be a sim­ple bina­ry choice on the human lev­el. You either are all in for Jezebel or all in for Jehu. What Scrip­ture invites us to is qual­i­fied sup­port, or per­haps qual­i­fied dis­ap­proval. So and so was a good king, but did not remove the high places.”
    • The Church’s Integri­ty in the Trump Years (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Our main polit­i­cal task in this new admin­is­tra­tion is more urgent than ever… we can speak char­i­ta­bly to one anoth­er about our dis­agree­ments, tak­ing the time to find out what each of us real­ly believes and why.”
    • The Pol­i­tics of Answered Prayer (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): sure to dis­qui­et and/or offend.
    • A Bit Of Con­text on Trump, NATO, and Ger­many (Tyler Cowen, per­son­al blog): “I strong­ly favor NATO and I don’t think you can trust the Rus­sians with just about any­thing, or for that mat­ter make much of a deal with them.” (this piece is not about the inau­gu­ra­tion, but I found it very stim­u­lat­ing)
  5. Bon­ho­ef­fer On Why God Does Not Fill The Empti­ness When A Loved One Dies (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coalition): “to the extent the empti­ness tru­ly remains unfilled one remains con­nect­ed to the oth­er per­son through it.”
  6. Author­i­tar­i­ans Dis­tract Rather than Debate (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “it has long been assumed that pro­pa­gan­da posts would sup­port the gov­ern­ment with praise or crit­i­cize crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment. Not so. In fact, pro­pa­gan­da posts active­ly steer away from con­tro­ver­sial issues.”
  7. Men’s Bread­win­ning Still Mat­ters For Mar­riage (Chris­tos Makridis, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): yes, that’s our Chris­tos. “The col­lege-edu­cat­ed may embrace egal­i­tar­i­an ideals of fam­i­ly life, but their behav­ior is more com­pli­cat­ed.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 81

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pas­tor, Am I A Chris­t­ian? (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): Skep­ti­cal but inter­est­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al invites Tim Keller to answer his ques­tions about Chris­tian­i­ty and then pub­lish­es the con­ver­sa­tion. #goals  (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  2. Free Pas­tor Andrew: Chris­tians Ral­ly for Mis­sion­ary Jailed in Turkey (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) : “Turkey has accused mul­ti­ple pas­tors of being ‘a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’”
  3. China’s Great Leap Back­ward (James Fal­lows, The Atlantic): “This assess­ment implies that U.S. atten­tion should be focused on get­ting through an upcom­ing time of dif­fi­cul­ty, which could last years or decades, with­out pan­ick­ing that his­to­ry now seems to favor the repres­sive Chi­nese mod­el of gov­er­nance.” This is a long piece, but the issue is an impor­tant one and it is worth your time. For some sor­ta semi-relat­ed thoughts on Rus­sia, read The Russ­ian Ques­tion by Niall Fer­gu­son: “the Unit­ed States should be clos­er to each of Rus­sia and Chi­na than they are to one anoth­er.”
  4. How Out­ra­geous Are the New North Car­oli­na Laws? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion) is help­ful, and for some per­spec­tive read His­to­ry Can Teach Both Par­ties (John Hood, Car­oli­na Jour­nal). The most alarmist view I have seen is North Car­oli­na Is No Longer Clas­si­fied as a Democ­ra­cy, an op-ed by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at UNC. 
  5. Why the Catholic Church some­times turns to sci­ence to inves­ti­gate mir­a­cles (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): “The patient is still alive, pos­ing an ongo­ing chal­lenge to sci­en­tif­ic researchers. ‘I have zero expla­na­tion for why she’s alive. She does,’ Duf­fin said.”
  6. Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Mat­ters (Ravi Zacharias, Gospel Coali­tion): “There is an ulti­mate cry for jus­tice in every heart. Jus­tice counts on the truth. With­out those two real­i­ties, civ­i­liza­tion will die.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. The Impact of Holy Land Cru­sades on State For­ma­tion: War Mobi­liza­tion, Trade Inte­gra­tion, and Polit­i­cal Devel­op­ment in Medieval Europe (Lisa Blay­des and Christo­pher Paik, Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion): “Areas with high lev­els of cru­sad­er mobi­liza­tion wit­nessed more polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the cen­turies to fol­low. The causal mech­a­nism that we put for­ward is that the depar­ture of rel­a­tive­ly large num­bers of Euro­pean land­ed elites for the Holy Land reduced the absolute num­ber of elites who might serve as chal­lengers to the king.” File away under expla­na­tions I had nev­er con­sid­ered. Blay­des is a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford and Paik at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 74

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Men Are More Like­ly to Be Sex­u­al­ly Attract­ed to Their Oppo­site-Sex Friends (Drake Baer, Sci­ence of Us): “the study found that guys are more like­ly to define a female friend as ‘a mem­ber of the oppo­site sex to whom I am attract­ed and would pur­sue giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty’ and ladies to define their oppo­site-sex friends as sim­ply ‘a friend of the oppo­site sex.’” For an amus­ing take on this idea, see this three-minute video (it’s got over 9 mil­lion views).
  2. The New Evan­gel­i­cal Moral Minor­i­ty (Kele­fa San­neh, New York­er): this is a well-writ­ten essay focus­ing on the South­ern Bap­tist ethi­cist Rus­sell Moore, of whom I am a huge fan and with whom I usu­al­ly agree. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, although the author’s snark shows through occa­sion­al­ly. The author, inci­den­tal­ly, is the son of famed Chris­t­ian mis­si­ol­o­gist Lamin San­neh.
  3. In Love and Mar­riage, Prac­tice Doesn’t Make Per­fect (Scott Stan­ley, Psy­chol­o­gy Today):  “We found that hav­ing more sex­u­al and cohab­it­ing part­ners before mar­riage is asso­ci­at­ed with low­er rela­tion­ship qual­i­ty once mar­ried. In par­tic­u­lar, hav­ing only ever lived with or had sex with one’s spouse was asso­ci­at­ed with high­er mar­i­tal qual­i­ty.” The author is a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver. The research upon which this arti­cle was based is avail­able here.
  4. Pos­i­tive Par­ent­ing is Ide­al, But Many Chil­dren Need Time-Outs, Too (Robert Larzelere, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Yes, the worst out­comes were for the type of author­i­tar­i­an par­ent­ing that Dr. Coul­son oppos­es, which can be defined as strict enforce­ment with­out love. But the sec­ond-worst 10-year out­comes were for over­ly per­mis­sive par­ents…” When we sing that God is a good, good Father we should should remem­ber we are cel­e­brat­ing the fact that he both encour­ages and dis­ci­plines. 
  5. North Kore­a’s War On Chris­tian­i­ty: The Globe’s Num­ber One Reli­gious Per­se­cu­tor (Doug Bandow, Forbes): “[Chris­t­ian Sol­i­dar­i­ty World­wide] reports doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of believ­ers being ‘hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steam­roller, herd­ed off bridges, and tram­pled under­foot.’”
  6. The Case Against Democ­ra­cy (Caleb Craine, The New York­er): I’m a monar­chist, truth be told. In the King­dom I call home we don’t get a vote, but we wel­come any­one who wish­es to immi­grate. Join us! #king­je­sus  

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 70

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

This edi­tion is com­ing out ear­ly in the morn­ing because I’m about to hop on a plane to preach at a retreat in Vir­ginia. Your prayers for fruit­ful min­istry are appre­ci­at­ed!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Red Tape: Chi­na Wants To Con­strict Chris­t­ian Activ­i­ties With 26 New Rules (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): there are inter­est­ing par­al­lels between the way Stan­ford reg­u­lates stu­dents and how states such as Chi­na and Rus­sia reg­u­late their cit­i­zens. #seri­ous­lytho
  2. How Chris­tian­i­ty Flour­ish­es (Jared Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): “I can­not find any­where in the New Tes­ta­ment where it teach­es Chris­tians how to be a major­i­ty pres­ence in the world.”
  3.  Jon­ah Gold­berg On Why He Won’t Vote For Hilary or Trump (Seth Steven­son, Slate): the Solzhen­it­syn quote alone makes the arti­cle worth­while.
  4. Why Believ­ing In Mir­a­cles Could Be Haz­ardous To Your Health (David Brig­gs, Wash­ing­ton Post): if you think med­i­cine and faith are opposed to each oth­er, you have bad the­ol­o­gy. Matthew 9:12 seems rel­e­vant.
  5. Don’t Take A Test On A Hot, Pol­lut­ed Day (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I find both of these results hard to believe which doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that they shouldn’t be believed.”
  6. Is glob­al­iza­tion bad for the glob­al poor? This study ran an exper­i­ment to find out. (Vox): “Some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as glob­al­iza­tion is nev­er going to be just good or just bad. We need to divide the good and the bad, and fig­ure out how to address the lat­ter with­out elim­i­nat­ing the for­mer.”
  7. Undo­ing Insu­lar­i­ty: A Small Study of Gen­der Soci­ol­o­gy’s Big Prob­lem (Char­lot­ta Stern, Econ Jour­nal Watch): “gen­der soci­ol­o­gy insu­lates its sacred beliefs from ideas that chal­lenge those beliefs, even when the chal­leng­ing ideas are very well-ground­ed. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between the sex­es are minor and that the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences between (or among) the gen­ders are the result of social process­es and have lit­tle basis in bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 68

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mis­sion­ar­ies are strug­gling to work under new Rus­sia law ban­ning pros­e­ly­tiz­ing (Michael Ali­son Chan­dler, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A month after the restric­tions went into effect on July 20, at least sev­en peo­ple had been charged under it…  The list includes a Bap­tist preach­er from the Unit­ed States who was charged with hold­ing reli­gious ser­vices in his home and adver­tis­ing them on pub­lic bul­letin boards. He was con­vict­ed and fined, but he is appeal­ing the case.”
  2. ‘Hill­song’ Casts a Sec­u­lar Lens on an Evan­gel­i­cal Band (NY Times, Joe Coscarel­li): “Hillsong’s cre­ative direc­tor… described embrac­ing the rock-star expo­sure as ‘try­ing to draw atten­tion to your­self for the sole premise of draw­ing atten­tion away from your­self’ — to God.”
  3. 7 Books on the White-Black Racial Divide You Should Read (Ivan Mesa, Gospel Coali­tion): because you don’t have enough books to read at Stan­ford.
  4. We Gave Four Good Poll­sters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Dif­fer­ent Results. (NY Times, Nate Cohn): “Well, well, well. Look at that. A net five-point dif­fer­ence between the five mea­sures, includ­ing our own, even though all are based on iden­ti­cal data. Remem­ber: There are no sam­pling dif­fer­ences in this exer­cise.” I didn’t know this at all. Wow. We know less about the elec­tion than we thought.
  5. “If you are a very tal­ent­ed per­son, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Sil­i­con Val­ley.” (Peter Thiel said it, and this link is to an op-ed by Aaron Renn in a Chica­go paper defend­ing it.) For a con­trary take, read this com­ment from Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion.
  6. No, We Should­n’t Start Wor­ry­ing About Glob­al Inequal­i­ty — Pover­ty’s The Prob­lem (Forbes, Tim Worstall): “[Reduc­ing inequal­i­ty is] a bad goal. One rea­son being that rich peo­ple get­ting poor­er reduces inequal­i­ty. And if inequal­i­ty reduc­tion is our goal then we should there­fore wel­come such things as reces­sions.” Found on a student’s twit­ter feed.
  7. What If Evo­lu­tion Bred Real­i­ty Out Of Us? (NPR, Adam Frank): read­ing this called to mind some­thing Chester­ton observed way back in 1908:

    It is idle to talk always of the alter­na­tive of rea­son and faith. Rea­son is itself a mat­ter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any rela­tion to real­i­ty at all. If you are mere­ly a scep­tic, you must soon­er or lat­er ask your­self the ques­tion, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even obser­va­tion and deduc­tion? Why should not good log­ic be as mis­lead­ing as bad log­ic? They are both move­ments in the brain of a bewil­dered ape?” The young scep­tic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old scep­tic, the com­plete scep­tic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” — Ortho­doxy, G. K. Chester­ton

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 58

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

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

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Chi­na’s Chris­t­ian Future (Yu Jie, First Things):  Wow. This is very much worth your time.
  2. The ISIS Cor­re­spon­dent (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): this is time­ly in light of the ter­ror­ist attack in Nice, France. “I think there is an enor­mous amount of mis­un­der­stand­ing about this ques­tion that we get asked over and over again: Does ISIS direct this attack or does ISIS inspire this attack? ISIS-inspired attacks are part of their strat­e­gy; are part of their design; are part of what they’re try­ing to do. That’s what peo­ple miss.”
  3. Ten Thoughts On Speak­ing (And Not) In A Dig­i­tal World (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “A pas­tor does not have time to be a pro­fes­sion­al pun­dit. And even if he did, it’s fair to won­der whether he should be.” DeYoung’s thoughts par­al­lel many of my own. If you won­der why I am often silent on social media, read this.
  4. How High­ly Reli­gious Amer­i­cans’ Lives Are Dif­fer­ent From Oth­ers (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): inter­est­ing — both the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties.
  5. Two Kinds Of Vot­ing, Two Kinds Of Dis­rup­tion, and Two Kinds of Right­eous­ness (Sen­a­tor Ben Sasse, Medi­um): “To us, vot­ing is not mere­ly about 1/130-mil­lionth of decid­ing who should pre­side over 1/3 of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from 2017 to 2021. To us, the act of vot­ing is also a civic duty that tells peo­ple what we think Amer­i­ca means, what we want to teach our kids about moral lead­er­ship, what face we want Amer­i­ca to present to the world, and what sort of can­di­dates we want more of in com­ing years.” I know noth­ing about Sen­a­tor Sasse’s vot­ing record — I just know this is an out­stand­ing essay.
  6. When Cor­re­la­tion Does Imply Cau­sa­tion (Joshua Krisch, Voca­tiv): “Addi­tive noise mod­el test­ing is based on the sim­ple assump­tion that there is always some sta­tis­ti­cal noise cling­ing to the key vari­ables in any experiment—areas where the data becomes fuzzy and unre­li­able due to mea­sure­ment errors. Regard­less of any link, each vari­able will have its own unique noise sig­na­ture, with one caveat: If X caus­es Y, then the noise in X will be able to con­t­a­m­i­nate Y, but the noise in Y will not able to do the same to X. Because a cause can affect an effect, but an effect can­not affect a cause (read that last line a few times). … The key, then, is to fol­low the noise con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.” See the under­ly­ing paper.
  7. These essays by an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Emory are full of prac­ti­cal advice for those of you con­sid­er­ing acad­e­mia. Read them regard­less of your pol­i­tics or your dis­ci­pline.

Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 56

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

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Almost half [of unchurched Amer­i­cans] say they dis­cuss reli­gion freely if the top­ic comes up (47%). A third say they lis­ten with­out respond­ing (31%), while 11 per­cent change the sub­ject. Only about a third say some­one has explained the ben­e­fits of being a Chris­t­ian to them (35%).”
  2. Oberge­fell and the New Gnos­ti­cism (Sherif Gir­gis, First Things): “For decades, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion was sup­posed to be about free­dom. Today, it is about coer­cion. Once, it sought to free our sex­u­al choic­es from restric­tive laws and unwant­ed con­se­quences. Now, it seeks to free our sex­u­al choic­es from oth­er peo­ple’s dis­ap­proval.” Sherif has spo­ken for Chi Alpha before.
  3. As a Psy­chi­a­trist I Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness. And, Some­times, Demon­ic Pos­ses­sion (Richard Gal­lagher, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ques­tions about how a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trained physi­cian can believe ‘such out­dat­ed and unsci­en­tif­ic non­sense,’ as I’ve been asked, have a sim­ple answer. I hon­est­ly weigh the evi­dence.”
  4. Most Amer­i­can Chris­tians Believe They’re Vic­tims of Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Almost half of Amer­i­cans say dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chris­tians is as big of a prob­lem as dis­crim­i­na­tion against oth­er groups, includ­ing blacks and minori­ties.”
  5. Nine Prayers For The Not-Yet-Mar­ried (Mar­shall Segal, Desir­ing God): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, rel­e­vant to many of you.
  6. Man Seeks Euthana­sia To End His Sex­u­al­i­ty Strug­gle (Jonathan Blake, BBC): sanc­tion­ing euthana­sia is unwise and leads to unex­pect­ed out­comes. For a the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment see Is There No Moral Law? (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things).
  7. Russia’s Pro­posed Law: No Evan­ge­liz­ing Out­side of Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To share their faith, cit­i­zens must secure a gov­ern­ment per­mit through a reg­is­tered reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, and they can­not evan­ge­lize any­where besides church­es and oth­er reli­gious sites. The restric­tions even apply to activ­i­ty in pri­vate res­i­dences and online.”
  8. Some more on Brex­it:
    • Why Brex­it Hap­pened And What It Means (Tyler Cowen): “The actu­al prac­ti­cal prob­lems with immi­gra­tion are much greater here in Brus­sels, but the coun­try is much fur­ther from ‘doing any­thing about it,’ whether pru­dent­ly or not, and indeed to this day Bel­gium is not actu­al­ly a mature nation-state and it may splin­ter yet.  That Eng­land did some­thing is one reflec­tion of the fact that Eng­land is a bet­ter-run region than Bel­gium, even if you feel as I do that the vote was a big mis­take…. Most of all, I con­clude that the desire to pre­serve the Eng­lish nation [sic] as Eng­lish is stronger than I or indeed most oth­ers had thought.  There is a pos­i­tive side to that.  And if all along you thought there was no case for Leave, prob­a­bly it is you who is the provin­cial one.” Odd­ly, the [sic] is in the orig­i­nal.
    • A great piece from short­ly before the vote: Reflec­tions Of A Ref­er­en­dum Fence-Sit­ter (David Good­hart, Prospect Mag­a­zine)
    • An inter­est­ing piece on the the­ol­o­gy of Brex­it: For hard-line Protes­tants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of escha­tol­ogy (“Eras­mus”, The Econ­o­mist)

Interesting Research Findings

  • Why Peo­ple With No Reli­gion Are Pro­ject­ed To Decline As A Share Of The World’s Pop­u­la­tion (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): “These pro­jec­tions, which take into account demo­graph­ic fac­tors such as fer­til­i­ty, age com­po­si­tion and life expectan­cy, fore­cast that peo­ple with no reli­gion will make up about 13% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion in 2050, down from rough­ly 16% as of 2010.”
  • The Data On Chil­dren In Same-Sex House­holds Get More Depress­ing (Mark Reg­nerus, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…dur­ing ado­les­cence the chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report­ed mar­gin­al­ly less depres­sion than the chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents. But by the time the sur­vey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their expe­ri­ences had reversed. Indeed, dra­mat­i­cal­ly so: over half of the young-adult chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report ongo­ing depres­sion, a surge of 33 per­cent­age points (from 18 to 51 per­cent of the total). Mean­while, depres­sion among the young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents had declined from 22 per­cent of them down to just under 20 per­cent. A few oth­er find­ings are worth men­tion­ing as well. Obe­si­ty surged among both groups, but the dif­fer­ences became sig­nif­i­cant over time, with 31 per­cent obe­si­ty among young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents, well below the 72 per­cent of those from same-sex house­holds.”
  • Church Atten­dance Linked With Reduced Sui­cide Risk, Espe­cial­ly For Catholics, Study Says (Melis­sa Healy, LA Times): “Com­pared with women who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in reli­gious ser­vices, women who attend­ed any reli­gious ser­vice once a week or more were five times less like­ly to com­mit sui­cide between 1996 and 2010, says a study pub­lished Wednes­day by JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.” See the under­ly­ing study in JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.
  • Researchers Have Found That War Has A Remark­able and Mirac­u­lous Effect (Jeff Guo, Wonkblog): “the expe­ri­ence of wartime vio­lence some­how changes peo­ple for the bet­ter, mak­ing them more coop­er­a­tive and more trust­ing.”
  • Con­crete Prob­lems in AI Safe­ty (mul­ti­ple impres­sive authors, arXiv.org): CS peo­ple please read this, espe­cial­ly in con­junc­tion with AI Downs Fight­er Pilot.

A Quote To Ponder

“Being part of com­mu­ni­ty takes time and involves restric­tions. Mere­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­ty doesn’t. In our cul­tur­al empha­sis and life, we’ve gone from a com­mu­ni­ty focus to an iden­ti­ty focus.” David Brooks (source)

Something Amusing To End On

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 55

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

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Britain vot­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union.
  2. Relat­ed To Orlan­do:
    • Omar Mateen’s Mul­ti­ple Motives (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “Almost as quick­ly as the mas­sacre of inno­cents in Orlan­do unfold­ed, Amer­i­cans retreat­ed to their ide­o­log­i­cal cor­ners to inter­pret the moti­va­tions of the mass mur­der­er, Omar Mateen.”
    • FBI Inves­ti­ga­tors say they have found no evi­dence that Orlan­do shoot­er had gay lovers (Mol­ly Hen­nessy-Fiske, LA Times): huh. This is still a devel­op­ing sto­ry, do not assume this is the final word.
    • The Gun Con­trol We Deserve (Patrick Blanch­field, n+1): “As many crit­ics have observed, we would be naïve to think that heavy-hand­ed gun con­trol mea­sures would not involve the same dis­pro­por­tion­ate racial tar­get­ing and police vio­lence we right­ly con­demn in the War on Drugs and in every­day encoun­ters in places from Bal­ti­more to Fer­gu­son to Cleve­land to Oak­land.” A very thought­ful piece.
  3. Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Liv­ing In A Sim­u­la­tion (Ric­car­do Man­zot­ti and Andrew Smart, Vice): “The world we live in is made of real stuff. Sim­u­la­tions are things made of the same stuff. Musk’s argu­ment does not show that we are get­ting any clos­er to pro­duc­ing an alter­na­tive real­i­ty. Rather it shows that we are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter at shap­ing the phys­i­cal world.” The authors take unwar­rant­ed pot shots at dual­ism, but make very good points over­all. Relat­ed: SMBC “Heap Prob­lem.”
  4. The Sotomay­or and Kagan Dis­sents in Utah vs Stri­eff (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “If out­stand­ing war­rants were few and far between and dis­trib­uted more or less ran­dom­ly the case would have been wrong­ly decid­ed but of lit­tle prac­ti­cal impor­tance. Out­stand­ing war­rants, how­ev­er, are com­mon and much more com­mon in some com­mu­ni­ties than oth­ers. As I wrote in 2014, in Fer­gu­son, MO a major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion had out­stand­ing war­rants and not because of high crime:”
  5. Ban the Box or Require the Box? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sad­ly, a pol­i­cy that was intend­ed to raise the employ­ment prospects of black men ends up hav­ing the biggest pos­i­tive effect on white men with a crim­i­nal record…. Poli­cies like ban the box try to get peo­ple to do the ‘right thing’ by blind­ing peo­ple to cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion. But blind­ed peo­ple tend to use oth­er cues to achieve their inter­ests and when those oth­er cues are less infor­ma­tive that often makes things worse.”
  6. I’m A Sin­gle-Issue Vot­er On Mul­ti­ple Issues And So Are You (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is not the idea that being right on any sin­gle issue qual­i­fies a can­di­date for office. Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is the idea that being wrong on a sin­gle issue may dis­qual­i­fy a can­di­date from office.”
  7. My Holy Land Vaca­tion (Tom Bis­sell, Harpers): “I excuse myself and stroll out­side. I notice that some­one else has also walked out ear­ly: Pas­tor Mar­ty. He tells me that he was trou­bled by the vio­lence of the Israeli Redneck’s speech. I tell Pas­tor Mar­ty that I don’t fault a man who’s fought in four wars for sound­ing like a lunatic. What both­ers me is the way peo­ple were applaud­ing him.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A Quote To Ponder

“Stan­ford stu­dents are good at being good at things. Your Chris­tian­i­ty can’t just be one more thing you’re good at. To be good miss­es the point. The point is not what you do but what Jesus has done.” Seth Vil­le­gas

Something Amusing To End On

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 47

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

  1. Chi­na Reveals What It Wants To Do With Chris­tian­i­ty (Brent Ful­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “how China’s athe­is­tic regime plans to deal with the country’s grow­ing Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion, pro­ject­ed to become the world’s largest with­in the next cou­ple decades.”
  2. After Pas­tor’s Wife Buried Alive, Chi­nese Church Wins Land Bat­tle (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): use­ful to read in con­junc­tion with the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
  3. Radi­ant Zinc Fire­works Reveal Qual­i­ty of Human Egg (Mar­la Paul, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty News): you were formed in a burst of light. For real. “I praise you because I am fear­ful­ly and won­der­ful­ly made” (Psalm 139:14)
  4. You’re More Like­ly To Die In A Human Extinc­tion Event Than A Car Crash (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): but did they fac­tor in the return of Christ?
  5. Relat­ing To The Skep­tics (Robert Mims, PE News): short and encour­ag­ing.
  6. Are History’s “Great­est Philoso­phers” All That Great? (Gre­go­ry Lewis, Dai­ly Nous): inter­est­ing but miss­es a huge point. Socrates is not famous mere­ly for the words he used — he is famous for the life he lived. Great­ness is not a mat­ter of clev­er­ness alone. 
  7. Things that tick­led me:

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.