Tag: how the church is perceived

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 113

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. I Don’t Under­stand Chris­tians Watch­ing Game of Thrones (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Does any­one real­ly think that when Jesus warned against look­ing at a woman lust­ful­ly (Matt. 5:27), or when Paul told us to avoid every hint of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and not even to speak of the things the world does in secret (Eph. 4:3–12), that some­how this meant, go ahead and watch naked men and women have (or pre­tend to have) sex?” I don’t always agree with every­thing I share here, but for the record I am 100% in agree­ment with the author. Soft­core porn doesn’t cease to be soft­core porn just because it has grip­ping dia­log and cool spe­cial effects. For anoth­er (unper­sua­sive to me) per­spec­tive, read Seri­ous­ly, ‘Game of Thrones’ made me a bet­ter Bible read­er (Caryn Rivadeneira, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. News­wor­thy Deaths (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): just a reminder that the view we have of  what’s hap­pen­ing in the world is always a dis­tort­ed one.
  3. You’ve no doubt heard about the Google memo sug­gest­ing new ways to pur­sue gen­der diver­si­ty in tech which got the author fired. There has been a TON of fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary. Here are a few pieces that stood out to me.
    • Here’s the memo itself: Google’s Ide­o­log­i­cal Echo Cham­ber (James Damore). It’s short and easy to read. Def­i­nite­ly skim it if you’ve only heard oth­er peo­ple describe it.
    • Google’s War Over The Sex­es (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “I strong­ly sus­pect that more than a few Sil­i­con Val­ley high­er-ups agreed with the broad themes of Damore’s memo. But just as tech titans accept some cen­sor­ship and oppres­sion as the price of doing busi­ness in Chi­na, they accept per­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sivism as the price of hav­ing nice cam­pus­es in the most lib­er­al state in the union and recruit­ing their employ­ees from its most elite and lib­er­al schools.” If you only read one thing this week, read this one. The last six or so para­graphs in par­tic­u­lar are quite good.
    • I’m a woman in com­put­er sci­ence. Let me ladys­plain the Google memo to you. (Cyn­thia Lee, Vox): “At the out­set, it must be con­ced­ed that, despite what some of the com­men­tary has implied, the man­i­festo is not an unhinged rant. Its qua­si-pro­fes­sion­al tone is a big part of what makes it so beguil­ing (to some) and also so dan­ger­ous.” The author is a CS lec­tur­er at Stan­ford.
    • As a Woman in Tech, I Real­ized: These Are Not My Peo­ple (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “James Damore, an engi­neer at Google, wrote a memo sug­gest­ing that maybe there weren’t so many women at Google because women are less inter­est­ed in sit­ting around and star­ing at code all day. The inter­net erupt­ed. James Damore is no longer work­ing at Google. As a woman work­ing in the bro­tas­tic atmos­phere of IT, I ulti­mate­ly came to a con­clu­sion sim­i­lar to his.”
    • What the Google Engineer’s Man­i­festo Missed About Dis­crim­i­na­tion at Work (Paula Eng­land, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies blog): “Damore’s memo missed one huge thing: Abun­dant and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic studies—by soci­ol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and economists—have demon­strat­ed that gen­der and race bias­es adverse­ly affect women and peo­ple of col­or in the work­place.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at NYU.
    • The Google Memo: Four Sci­en­tists Respond (Quil­lette Mag­a­zine): four schol­ars with rel­e­vant exper­tise large­ly back up the memo author’s claims about gen­der dif­fer­ences.
      1. Lee Jus­sim, pro­fes­sor of social psy­chol­o­gy at Rut­gers: “The author of the Google essay on issues relat­ed to diver­si­ty gets near­ly all of the sci­ence and its impli­ca­tions exact­ly right.”
      2. David Schmitt, who has a Ph.D. in per­son­al­i­ty psy­chol­o­gy: “In the case of per­son­al­i­ty traits, evi­dence that men and women may have dif­fer­ent aver­age lev­els of cer­tain traits is rather strong.… But it is not clear to me how such sex dif­fer­ences are rel­e­vant to the Google work­place.”
      3. Geof­frey Miller, pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co: “Grad­ed fair­ly, his memo would get at least an A- in any mas­ters’ lev­el psy­chol­o­gy course.”
      4. Debra W Soh, who has a Ph.D. in sex­u­al neu­ro­science: “With­in the field of neu­ro­science, sex dif­fer­ences between women and men—when it comes to brain struc­ture and func­tion and asso­ci­at­ed dif­fer­ences in per­son­al­i­ty and occu­pa­tion­al preferences—are under­stood to be true, because the evi­dence for them (thou­sands of stud­ies) is strong.”
    • The Google Memo: What Does the Research Say About Gen­der Dif­fer­ences? (Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): A sum­ma­ry of meta-analy­ses on the sub­ject of gen­der dif­fer­ences. “Gen­der dif­fer­ences in math/science abil­i­ty, achieve­ment, and per­for­mance are small or nil.… Gen­der dif­fer­ences in inter­est and enjoy­ment of math, cod­ing, and high­ly ‘sys­tem­iz­ing’ activ­i­ties are large.”
    • Googling Moral Puri­ty (R.R. Reno, First Things):  “Our rul­ing class relies on ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion’ to legit­i­mate its super­em­i­nence. This makes the atten­dant ide­ol­o­gy sacro­sanct. Any pub­lic dis­sent becomes explo­sive, because it threat­ens the legit­i­ma­cy of our cur­rent social sys­tem, which is char­ac­ter­ized by an increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er among just a few at the tip­py-top.”
    • Quote of the week goes to Rod Dreher: “Gen­der non-essen­tial­ists are the young earth cre­ation­ists of the Left.” (source)
  4. Relat­ed in a weird way: The Tox­ic Dra­ma on YA Twit­ter (Kat Rosen­field, Vul­ture): “One author and for­mer diver­si­ty advo­cate described why she no longer takes part: ‘I have nev­er seen social inter­ac­tion this [messed] up,’ she wrote in an email. ‘And I’ve been in prison.’”
  5. Why Are There No New Major Reli­gions? (Joe Emont, The Atlantic): “State per­se­cu­tion, aid­ed by reli­gious author­i­ties, is in fact a major rea­son why new faiths fail in parts of the world where gov­ern­ment polices reli­gious doc­trine.” The author fails to acknowl­edge the potent new reli­gion in North Amer­i­ca that is a brew of envi­ron­men­tal­ism and sex­u­al auton­o­my with New Age super­sti­tion thrown in. Also, he doesn’t real­ly con­sid­er that maybe some reli­gions are legit­imized by miracles/divine sanc­tion. Inter­est­ing stuff nonethe­less.
  6. Hype­priests: The Grail-Wear­ing Pas­tors Who Dress Like Justin Bieber (Sam Schube, GQ): “I wish Justin Bieber the best. ‘Love Your­self’ is among the finest pop songs of this short cen­tu­ry, and I find his Insta­gram account deeply charm­ing in its utter lack of guile. But even if he weren’t Justin Bieber, he’d deserve the guid­ance, spir­i­tu­al or oth­er­wise, he’s seek­ing. We all deserve that. All I mean to say is this: It is rather remark­able that the men Justin Bieber has entrust­ed to deliv­er that guid­ance have decid­ed to dress like Justin Bieber.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

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 96

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Suc­cess­ful than an Email (Vanes­sa Bohns, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): “you need to ask six peo­ple in per­son to equal the pow­er of a 200-recip­i­ent email blast. Still, most peo­ple tend to think the email ask will be more effec­tive.”
  2. What Would Jesus Dis­rupt? (Mya Fra­zier, Bloomberg): “As the prod­uct takes shape and Foust pre­pares to move from the con­cept phase to fundrais­ing, a more explic­it­ly spir­i­tu­al ques­tion begins to nag at him: ‘How do you raise mon­ey like Jesus?’ Foust has attend­ed Cross­roads for five years, but his evan­gel­i­cal faith began when he was a child grow­ing up in a devout house­hold on a tree farm in Paris, a town in north­east Ohio. He’s heard from oth­er entre­pre­neurs how bru­tal fundrais­ing can be. You’re going to have to sell your soul, they warn. You’re going to have to lie.”
  3. Five Stages of Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing (Dave Fer­gu­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I dis­like the labels he chose. I would term them (1) yearn­ing for mean­ing, (2) expe­ri­enc­ing regret, (3) acknowl­edg­ing need, (4) per­ceiv­ing Christ’s love, and (5) receiv­ing eter­nal life. It’s worth ask­ing where your friends are on this jour­ney and engage them on that top­ic.
  4. Why Prison?: An Eco­nom­ic Cri­tique (Peter Sal­ib, Berke­ley Jour­nal of Crim­i­nal Law): “If our jew­el thief must pay $100,000 to be opti­mal­ly deterred but has only $50,000 in cash, the cho­sen mon­e­tary sanc­tion must mere­ly be capa­ble of mak­ing him worse off by the equiv­a­lent of anoth­er $50,000. As such, this paper does not endorse any par­tic­u­lar non­mon­e­tary sanc­tion. His­to­ry presents a star­tling array of options, includ­ing: flog­ging, pil­lo­ry, run­ning the gaunt­lope, tar­ring and feath­er­ing, brand­ing, and many more. Mod­ern judges have con­coct­ed sim­i­lar­ly cre­ative sanc­tions, includ­ing: forc­ing crim­i­nals to pub­licly car­ry embar­rass­ing signs, man­dat­ing that they sleep in dog­hous­es, or requir­ing them to under­go unwant­ed hair­cuts. If one objects to all of these, as-yet unimag­ined pun­ish­ments could be sub­sti­tut­ed.” This is very long. Skim the table of con­tents and jump to any parts you find inter­est­ing.
  5. Social ecol­o­gy of sim­i­lar­i­ty (Bahns, Pick­ett & Cran­dall, Group Process­es & Inter­group Rela­tions): “Dyads were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sim­i­lar on atti­tudes, beliefs, and health behav­iors in the large cam­pus than in the small col­leges sam­ple. Our find­ings reveal an irony—greater human diver­si­ty with­in an envi­ron­ment leads to less per­son­al diver­si­ty with­in dyads.” In oth­er words, small­er uni­ver­si­ties lead to more diverse friend­ships.

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 48

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. The dis­claimers are espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for many of today’s links.

  1. This first sec­tion is a lot — buck­le up if you’re inter­est­ed. Two pas­tors recent­ly debat­ed guns — both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.
  2. The Mer­cy Girls (Jen­nifer Miller, Slate): a very inter­est­ing piece about a Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing min­istry. One sig­nif­i­cant bit buried with­in it: “Nine­ty-four per­cent of respon­dents on 2013 sur­veys (com­mis­sioned by Mer­cy and con­duct­ed by inde­pen­dent firms) answered ‘yes’ to the ques­tion, ‘Did Mer­cy Min­istries help you trans­form your life and restore your hope?’ Eighty-two per­cent said they were ‘well adjust­ed to life’ after leav­ing the pro­gram. And 85 per­cent said they had spent time at oth­er treat­ment cen­ters before Mer­cy, with­out long-term results.” Those sta­tis­tics should have been even more cen­tral to the sto­ry.
  3. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty May Help HIV Patients Sur­vive Longer (Emma Green, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing. The last para­graph is a reminder that one’s assump­tions great­ly influ­ence one’s inter­pre­ta­tions.
  4. Why Has There Been An Exo­dus Of Black Res­i­dents From West Coast Lib­er­al Hubs? (Aaron Ren, LA Times): “Though results vary to some extent, the broad trend is clear: West Coast pro­gres­sive enclaves are either see­ing an exo­dus of blacks or are fail­ing to attract them. Mid­west­ern and North­east­ern urban areas are attract­ing blacks to the extent that they are afford­able or pro­vid­ing mid­dle class eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. And South­ern cities are now expe­ri­enc­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant gains.” I expect wild­ly diver­gent reac­tions to this. I found it very inter­est­ing. A relat­ed line of think­ing: why col­leges are the way they are.
  5. 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.

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 44

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. How Covenants Make Us (David Brooks, NYT): “A con­tract pro­tects inter­ests, Pal­ly notes, but a covenant pro­tects rela­tion­ships. A covenant exists between peo­ple who under­stand they are part of one anoth­er. It involves a vow to serve the rela­tion­ship that is sealed by love: Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your peo­ple shall be my peo­ple. Peo­ple in a con­tract pro­vide one anoth­er ser­vices, but peo­ple in a covenant delight in offer­ing gifts.”
  2. When Reli­gious Groups Do What the Gov­ern­ment Won’t (Alana Semuels, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing through­out.
  3. Let’s Make Foot­ball A Col­lege Major (David John­son, Aeon): I am large­ly per­suad­ed. If a per­for­mance art can be a major, then why not a sport such as foot­ball? At least give ath­letes aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it for the work they put in.
  4. Is It Time for Amer­i­can Chris­tians to Dis­obey the Gov­ern­ment? (David Koyzis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the piece is much less alarmist than the title sug­gests. Worth read­ing.
  5. PIN Analy­sis (Nick Berry, blog): this is a pret­ty cool analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four dig­it PIN codes.
  6. Final­ly, some arti­cles by stu­dents in or alum­ni from our min­istry. If you get some­thing pub­lished, be sure to let me know!

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. Your sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

 

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 33

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. What Would Cool Jesus Do? ( Taffy Brodess­er-Akn­er, GQ): this is a long and amaz­ing piece. Jew­ish reporter goes to Hill­song in NYC, likes it but doesn’t buy it. Fun to read and inter­est­ing through­out.
  2. When Abor­tion Sud­den­ly Stopped Mak­ing Sense (Fred­er­i­ca Matthews-Green, Nation­al Review): unusu­al­ly insight­ful. Today is the 43rd anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade. Vague­ly relat­ed: 43 years lat­er, a look at Nor­ma McCor­vey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade, the pro-choice poster child turned abor­tion oppo­nent (Keri Blakinger, NY Dai­ly News). The lat­ter arti­cle is a use­ful reminder that peo­ple are com­pli­cat­ed.
  3. Is “Slave” A Good Eng­lish Trans­la­tion? (Andy Nasel­li, per­son­al blog): there is a 4 minute BBC video embed­ded at this link which is worth watch­ing about the com­plex­i­ties of Bible trans­la­tion, fol­lowed by many good links for dig­ging deep­er.
  4. No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an).
  5. To The Per­son Who Tried To Pray My Dis­abil­i­ty Away (Madylin Ullmin, The Mighty): a min­is­ter friend of mine with cere­bral pal­sy  shared this on Face­book. He prays for the sick and has seen mir­a­cles. He added this when he shared the arti­cle: “I have also expe­ri­enced more than a few times in my life where a per­son asked to pray for my heal­ing and if it did­n’t hap­pen, they felt they had to explain to me why God did­n’t heal me right there and then. It got to the point where the per­son pray­ing for me was often more dis­ap­point­ed than I was , which made me won­der if the per­son cared about me as a per­son, or were more con­cerned about a cer­tain result. I have no doubt almost every­one means well and wants to see God heal but the way that it hap­pens is some­times jar­ring for a per­son who needs heal­ing.”

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.

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.