Tag: identity

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 433

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 433, a prime num­ber.

A reminder as the year draws to a close: this week­ly roundup of links is an over­flow of the donor-fund­ed min­istry I do with Chi Alpha at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. If you’re so inclined, con­sid­er an end-of-year dona­tion.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some Christ­mas con­tent:
    • Los­ing Our Grip on Christ­mas (Mike Glenn, Sub­stack): “In Amer­i­ca, Chris­tian­i­ty isn’t attacked as much as it is usurped. When Chris­tians say, ‘We’d like to cel­e­brate Christ­mas,’ the world says, ‘That’s a great idea. Would you like for us to stay open late so you can buy every­one you love a gift?’ Sud­den­ly, there’s no time to wor­ship. There’s no time to pray. We’re too busy shop­ping.”
    • A Har­mo­ny of the Birth of Jesus: Matthew and Luke (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Here is a sim­ple chronol­o­gy to show how the events of Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2 fit togeth­er and what each of the gospel authors empha­size. Matthew tells things more through the eyes of Joseph and Luke (who per­haps inter­viewed Mary) tells the events large­ly through her eyes.”
    • Beth­le­hem Can­cels Christ­mas, But Local Pas­tors Still Expect a Holy Night (Sophia Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The words peo­ple once asso­ci­at­ed with Christ­mas were San­ta, tree, gifts, car­ols—all ‘roman­ti­cized’ tra­di­tions from the West, Isaac said. Today, he thinks of words from the Christ­mas sto­ry of the Bible: Cae­sar, cen­sus, mas­sacre, and refugee in Egypt—relevant to Pales­tini­ans who have to reg­is­ter to trav­el out­side the West Bank and who seek safe­ty in Egypt.”
    • There’s No Christ­mas Lunch Like a Kore­an Amer­i­can Church Lunch (Eric Kim, New York Times): “…59 per­cent of Kore­an Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian. But that num­ber used to be even high­er. For decades, church lunch­es have been piv­otal spaces for Kore­an immi­grants as they estab­lished them­selves in the Unit­ed States, and these meals con­tin­ue to flour­ish as hubs of com­mu­ni­ty bond­ing for many who are the first gen­er­a­tion to arrive here. More than just a meal, they are a key oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­ver­sa­tion, gos­sip and fel­low­ship.”
      • I liked a lot about this arti­cle, but I found it very New-York-Timesy to say that most Kore­an-Amer­i­cans are Chris­t­ian and then to tell sto­ries about how those who have left the church nonethe­less remem­ber it and its food fond­ly.
  2. The Prob­lem With Every­thing Being Porni­fied (Freya India, Sub­stack): “…I find it so frus­trat­ing to see some pro­gres­sives down­play the dan­gers of all this. Those that dis­miss any­one con­cerned about the porni­fi­ca­tion of every­thing as a stuffy con­ser­v­a­tive. And some­how can’t see how the con­tin­u­al loos­en­ing of sex­u­al norms might actu­al­ly empow­er preda­to­ry men, and put pres­sure on vul­ner­a­ble girls? That seems delu­sion­al to me. Let’s just say I have lit­tle patience for those on the left who loud­ly cel­e­brate women sex­u­al­is­ing them­selves online, sell­ing it as fun, fem­i­nist and risk-free, but are then hor­ri­fied to hear about 12 year-olds doing the same thing. C’mon. No won­der they want to. But I also find it frus­trat­ing to see some on the right approach this with what seems like a com­plete lack of com­pas­sion. I don’t think it helps to relent­less­ly ridicule and blame young women for sex­u­al­is­ing them­selves online. I don’t think it’s fair either. We can’t give girls Insta­gram at 12 and then be sur­prised when as young women they base their self-worth on the approval of strangers.”
  3. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence can find your loca­tion in pho­tos, wor­ry­ing pri­va­cy experts (Geoff Brum­fiel, NPR): “The project, known as Pre­dict­ing Image Geolo­ca­tions (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stan­ford grad­u­ate stu­dents in order to iden­ti­fy loca­tions on Google Street View.… [ACLU’s] Stan­ley wor­ries that com­pa­nies might soon use AI to track where you’ve trav­eled, or that gov­ern­ments might check your pho­tos to see if you’ve vis­it­ed a coun­try on a watch­list. Stalk­ing and abuse are also obvi­ous threats, he says. In the past, Stan­ley says, peo­ple have been able to remove GPS loca­tion tag­ging from pho­tos they post online. That may not work any­more.”
  4. In Gaza, Israelis Dis­play Tun­nel Wide Enough to Han­dle Cars (Ronen Bergman, New York Times): “Two mil­i­tary offi­cials inter­viewed after the tour say that recent­ly gath­ered intel­li­gence indi­cat­ed that Israel has gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the size of the under­ground net­work. The sys­tem, which the army pre­vi­ous­ly esti­mat­ed was about 60 miles long, is now believed to be clos­er to 250 miles long, they said.”
  5. William Wilber­force: Abo­li­tion­ist, Reformer, Evan­gel­i­cal (Richard Turn­bull, Reli­gion & Lib­er­ty Online): “What unites these dis­parate indi­vid­u­als? Per­haps three things. First, a pas­sion for a true and live­ly faith that trans­forms the heart. Sec­ond­ly, a holis­tic view of God’s love for the world that saw no con­tra­dic­tion between per­son­al faith and a trans­formed soci­ety. Third­ly, a tenac­i­ty that drove these indi­vid­u­als nev­er to give up, nev­er to give up for Christ.”
    • A sol­id sum­ma­ry of a con­se­quen­tial Chris­tian’s impact. The author is the for­mer prin­ci­pal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
  6. A Tik-Tok-ing Time­bomb: How Tik­Tok’s Glob­al Plat­form Anom­alies Align with the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s Geostrate­gic Objec­tives (Nation­al Con­ta­gion Research Insti­tute): “We then expand­ed our research into top­ics rel­e­vant to the Chi­nese Government’s geopo­lit­i­cal inter­ests: 1) Ukraine-Rus­sia War; 2) Kash­mir Inde­pen­dence; 3) Israel-Hamas War. The con­clu­sions of our research are clear: Whether con­tent is pro­mot­ed or mut­ed on Tik­Tok appears to depend on whether it is aligned or opposed to the inter­ests of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment. As the sum­ma­ry data graph below illus­trates, the per­cent­ages of Tik­Tok posts out of Insta­gram posts are con­sis­tent­ly range-bound for gen­er­al polit­i­cal and pop-cul­ture top­ics, but com­plete­ly out-of-bounds for top­ics sen­si­tive to the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment.”
    • The link is to a 18 page PDF. The research was con­duct­ed in con­junc­tion with Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. I, for one, am shocked. Who could have pre­dict­ed such a thing from a coun­try oth­er­wise devot­ed to free speech and free mar­kets?
  7. Why Anti­semitism Sprout­ed So Quick­ly on Cam­pus (Jonathan Haidt, Sub­stack): “Com­mon ene­my iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics is arguably the worst way of think­ing one could pos­si­bly teach to young peo­ple in a mul­ti-eth­nic democ­ra­cy such as the Unit­ed States. It is, of course, the ide­o­log­i­cal dri­ve behind most geno­cides. On a more mun­dane lev­el, it can in the­o­ry be used to cre­ate group cohe­sion on teams and in orga­ni­za­tions, and yet the cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic ver­sion of it plunges orga­ni­za­tions into eter­nal con­flict and dys­func­tion. As long as this way of think­ing is taught any­where on cam­pus, iden­ti­ty-based hatred will find fer­tile ground.”
    • Haidt is a social psy­chol­o­gist at NYU.

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 335

spici­er con­tent than nor­mal — you have been warned

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 335. The num­ber 335 is pret­ty cool because it is divis­i­ble by the num­ber of primes below it (335 = 67 · 5, and there are 67 primes less than 335).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. No, Reli­gious Free­dom Doesn’t Send Peo­ple to Hell (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Reli­gious free­dom is a restric­tion on the pow­er of the state to set itself up as a medi­a­tor between God and human­i­ty. It is not an affir­ma­tion of idol­a­try, just as say­ing, ‘The gov­ern­ment shouldn’t take your baby away and raise your chil­dren’ is not an affir­ma­tion of bad par­ent­ing. Say­ing par­ents should raise their chil­dren, instead of the gov­ern­ment, does not mean everyone’s par­ent­ing is good.”
  2. About iden­ti­ty issues
    • No, the Rev­o­lu­tion Isn’t Over (N.S. Lyons, Sub­stack): “In what is rapid­ly becom­ing one of my pre­ferred expla­na­tions for the Rev­o­lu­tion, the evo­lu­tion­ary anthropologist/mathematician/prophet of doom Peter Turchin has iden­ti­fied ‘elite over­pro­duc­tion’ as hav­ing been one of the top dri­vers of rev­o­lu­tion and civ­il con­flict through­out his­to­ry. He points to the ten­den­cy for deca­dent soci­eties to pro­duce far more overe­d­u­cat­ed elites than there are elite-lev­el jobs, lead­ing to large num­bers of under­em­ployed, resent­ful elite-class intel­lec­tu­als of the type who tend pine after the posi­tion and sta­tus they ‘deserve’ and even­tu­al­ly start spend­ing their free time start­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary cells.”
      • This is long and full of insight. And very, very spicy. I have no idea who the author is — N.S. Lyons is a pen name for a DC area ana­lyst with exper­tise in the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. I assume he finds the pen name nec­es­sary to pro­tect his pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion when he writes about Amer­i­can cul­ture. Did I men­tion it was spicy?
    • The Trans Move­ment Is Not About Rights Any­more (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “This week, the writer Col­in Wright posed on Twit­ter the fol­low­ing ques­tion: ‘What rights do trans peo­ple cur­rent­ly not have but want that don’t involve replac­ing bio­log­i­cal sex with one’s sub­jec­tive ‘gender iden­ti­ty’?’ And the response was, of course, crick­ets. The truth is: the 6–3 Bostock deci­sion places trans peo­ple in every state under the pro­tec­tion of the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964. It’s done. It’s built on the stur­dy pro­hi­bi­tion on sex dis­crim­i­na­tion. A Trump nom­i­nee wrote the rul­ing. What the trans move­ment is now doing, after this com­pre­hen­sive vic­to­ry, is not about rights at all. It is about cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion.”
    • Why I am no longer a tenured pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to (Jor­dan Peter­son, Nation­al Post): “My stu­dents are also part­ly unac­cept­able pre­cise­ly because they are my stu­dents. I am aca­d­e­m­ic per­sona non gra­ta, because of my unac­cept­able philo­soph­i­cal posi­tions. And this isn’t just some incon­ve­nience. These facts ren­dered my job moral­ly unten­able. How can I accept prospec­tive researchers and train them in good con­science know­ing their employ­ment prospects to be min­i­mal?”
    • Being Jew­ish in an Unrav­el­ing Amer­i­ca (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “The bad guy was killed. The good guys were saved. It doesn’t often turn out that way. All the Jews I know—even the atheists—are thank­ing God.  But why, despite my grat­i­tude, do I feel so much rage? Why does it feel like there is so lit­tle com­fort to be found? What has changed? I did not feel this way in the hor­rif­ic after­math of the Tree of Life massacre—the most lethal in all of Amer­i­can Jew­ish his­to­ry.… What I now see is this: In Amer­i­ca cap­tured by trib­al­ism and dehu­man­iza­tion, in an Amer­i­ca swept up by ide­olo­gies that pit us against one anoth­er in a zero-sum game, in an Amer­i­ca enthralled with the poi­so­nous idea that some groups mat­ter more than oth­ers, not all Jews—and not all Jew­ish victims—are treat­ed equal­ly. What seems to mat­ter most to media pun­dits and politi­cians is not the Jews them­selves, but the iden­ti­ties of their attack­ers. And it scares me.”
  3. The Pro-Life Move­men­t’s Moral Dou­ble­s­peak (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “But the mod­ern Chris­t­ian church has put forth a fake real­i­ty in which women are almost always the vic­tim except in rare, extreme cas­es. They seem inca­pable of admit­ting that women who abort their babies know what they are doing. They can’t bring them­selves to even acknowl­edge that women ini­ti­ate about 70% of all divorces. When pas­tors write entire books about mar­riage and nev­er once men­tion the basic and well known fact that women file for the vast major­i­ty of divorces – and that’s every Chris­t­ian mar­riage book I’ve ever read – they aren’t seri­ous peo­ple. They jus­ti­fy and excuse almost any female behav­ior, and even twist real­i­ty to some­how blame men for it.” There are sev­er­al uncom­fort­able insights in this essay.
  4. China’s Births Hit His­toric Low, a Polit­i­cal Prob­lem for Bei­jing (Steven Lee Myers and Alexan­dra Steven­son, New York Times): “The num­ber of births fell to 10.6 mil­lion in 2021, com­pared with 12 mil­lion the year before, accord­ing to fig­ures report­ed on Mon­day by the Nation­al Bureau of Sta­tis­tics. That was few­er even than the num­ber in 1961, when the Great Leap For­ward, Mao Zedong’s eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, result­ed in wide­spread famine and death.”
  5. Buy Things, Not Expe­ri­ences (Harold Lee, per­son­al blog):  “…the focus on min­i­mal­ism sounds like a new form of con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion. Now that even the poor can afford mate­r­i­al goods, let’s den­i­grate goods while high­light­ing the remain­ing lux­u­ries that only the afflu­ent can enjoy and show off to their friends.”
    • This is a short, well-argued con­trar­i­an take. Stuff like this is cat­nip to me.
  6. About the pan­dem­ic:
    • Hong Kongers Rebel Against Order to Hand Over Ham­sters (Rob Quinn, News­er): “After a woman and 11 ham­sters in the pet shop she worked in test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID, author­i­ties said Tues­day that any­body who bought a ham­ster on or after Dec. 22 should hand it in to be euth­a­nized. But while the ter­ri­to­ry gen­er­al­ly has a high lev­el of com­pli­ance with COVID orders, the ham­ster order was wide­ly seen as a step too far…”
    • To Fight Covid, We Need to Think Less Like Doc­tors (Aaron E. Car­roll, New York Times): “Car­ing for an indi­vid­ual and pro­tect­ing a pop­u­la­tion require dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties, prac­tices and ways of think­ing. While it may sound coun­ter­in­tu­itive, to heal the coun­try and put our Covid-19 response on the right track, we need to think less like doc­tors.” The author is both a physi­cian and also the chief health offi­cer at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Omi­cron opti­mist, pes­simist or fatal­ist – which are you? (Tim Har­ford, per­son­al blog): “Is this the point at which we should shrug our shoul­ders and give up? Omi­cron has prompt­ed three kinds of reac­tion: opti­mism, pes­simism and fatal­ism.… What’s con­fus­ing is that all three views may be right. Omi­cron is quite plau­si­bly mild, cat­a­stroph­ic and inevitable all at once.” The author is a British economist. 
    • Lying About Covid For ‘International Har­mony’ (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Inch by painful inch, the truth is being dragged out about how this pan­dem­ic start­ed. It is just about under­stand­able, if not for­giv­able, that Chi­nese sci­en­tists have obfus­cat­ed vital infor­ma­tion about ear­ly cas­es and their work with sim­i­lar virus­es in Wuhan’s lab­o­ra­to­ries: they were sub­ject to fierce edicts from a ruth­less, total­i­tar­i­an regime. It is more shock­ing to dis­cov­er in emails released this week that some west­ern sci­en­tists were also say­ing dif­fer­ent things in pub­lic from what they thought in pri­vate.” Con­tains excerpts from a pay­walled arti­cle.
    • School Clo­sures Were a Cat­a­stroph­ic Error. Pro­gres­sives Still Haven’t Reck­oned With It. (Jonathan Chait, NY Mag­a­zine): “It is always eas­i­er to diag­nose these patholo­gies when they are tak­ing place on the oth­er side. You’ve prob­a­bly seen the raft of papers show­ing how vac­cine uptake cor­re­lates with Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ing and COVID deaths cor­re­late with Repub­li­can vot­ing. Per­haps you have mar­veled at the spec­ta­cle of Repub­li­can elites active­ly harm­ing their own audi­ence. But the same thing Fox News hosts were doing to their elder­ly sup­port­ers, pro­gres­sive activists were doing to their side’s young ones.” It may not be obvi­ous, but this arti­cle dove­tails very nice­ly with the Dreher arti­cle about elites not being truth­ful and not reck­on­ing with mis­takes.
  7. The long-term effects of protes­tant activ­i­ties in Chi­na (Yuyu Chen, Hui Wang, Se Yan, Jour­nal of Com­par­a­tive Eco­nom­ics): “Our find­ings imply that late-nine­teenth- and ear­ly-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Protes­tant mis­sion­ar­ies pio­neered that mod­ern­iza­tion move­ment by dis­sem­i­nat­ing, along with Chris­tian­i­ty, West­ern sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy to even the most remote regions of Chi­na. Such efforts accel­er­at­ed the pace of mod­ern­iza­tion, con­tributed to the accu­mu­la­tion of human cap­i­tal, and reshaped the social val­ues of local peo­ple. Although these his­tor­i­cal lega­cies of mis­sion­ar­ies’ under­tak­ings were sup­pressed dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, they rapid­ly resurged and began to con­tribute to socioe­co­nom­ic devel­op­ments when Chi­na began to open up and reform.” The authors appear to be schol­ars at Peking Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas (Jonathan Parks‐Ramage, Medi­um): “How, in famous­ly lib­er­al Hol­ly­wood and among sta­tis­ti­cal­ly pro­gres­sive mil­len­ni­als, had good old‐fashioned evan­ge­lism [sic] gained pop­u­lar­i­ty? In this con­text, a church like Real­i­ty L.A. seemed like some­thing that could nev­er work. But that evening, as I reflect­ed on the trou­bled actress and the psy­chic bru­tal­i­ties inflict­ed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try, it occurred to me that I had under­es­ti­mat­ed Hollywood’s biggest prod­uct: lost souls.” First shared in vol­ume 192 

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 265

lots about race and racial ten­sion

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. Here are the things about race and racial ten­sion that stood out to me.
    • Why Did the Police Shoot Jacob Blake? (Trevor Noah, The Dai­ly Show): “I could tell you this sto­ry with my eyes closed by now. If I want­ed to I could pre­re­cord five of these seg­ments and go on vaca­tion and you would nev­er know.” Ten worth­while min­utes.
    • The Kenosha shoot­ing did­n’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um (Denise Lock­wood, CNN): “I am remind­ed of what Rod­ney Prunty, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Unit­ed Way of Racine Coun­ty, said to me dur­ing an inter­view: ‘If you have a pond full of fish and a few of them die, you ask what’s wrong with the fish. But when the pond full of fish dies, we ask what’s wrong with the pond.’ In Wis­con­sin, it’s time we talked about what’s wrong with the pond.”
    • Riots in John Piper’s Neigh­bor­hood (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Gospel Coali­tion): “Piper’s peo­ple moved in with­out a mas­ter plan, which was both con­fus­ing (‘What should we do?’) and exact­ly what When Help­ing Hurts authors would lat­er advise (start with build­ing rela­tion­ships, watch­ing, and learn­ing). Every­one end­ed up doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. But for decades, they’ve kept at it, work­ing through dis­ap­point­ments and chal­lenges, loot­ing and riots, bro­ken glass and home­less tent cities in the parks. They’re still doing it.” This is an out­stand­ing sto­ry.
    • Feel Good or Do Good (George Yancey, Patheos): “To gain the sup­port of real con­vic­tion we need the type of con­ver­sa­tions where we lis­ten to oth­ers as much as dis­cuss our point of view with them. We con­nect with oth­ers and get at the core of why they dis­agree with us. We under­stand their argu­ments and con­sid­er how to deal with the issues they bring up. We admit the valid­i­ty of those issues even if we dis­agree with them. Does this sound like any­thing that is hap­pen­ing with antiracism?” The author, who is black, is a soci­ol­o­gist at Bay­lor whom I have ref­er­enced sev­er­al times. 
    • Rule of Law Imper­iled (R. R. Reno, First Things): “The destruc­tion of prop­er­ty is not just an attack on another’s pos­ses­sions. It is a vio­la­tion of jus­tice. This is why riot­ing and loot­ing affects far more than those whose stores are burned. Cit­i­zens begin to wor­ry that they do not live in a soci­ety com­mit­ted to jus­tice. As we know from blacks who resent mis­treat­ment by the police, which is also unjust, this wor­ry can become explo­sive, even among those not per­son­al­ly affected.”
    • Kyle Rit­ten­house, Pop­ulist Hero (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “If I were a polling firm, I would run a nation­al poll ask­ing peo­ple who have heard of Kyle Rit­ten­house whether they think he’s a vil­lain, a hero, or don’t know. That would tell us a lot about the mood of the country.”
  2. Unbe­com­ing Amer­i­can (Johann N. Neem, Hedge­hog Review): “A shared cul­ture is not a total­iz­ing one; indeed, it makes real plu­ral­ism pos­si­ble by giv­ing us some­thing larg­er to share regard­less of our many dif­fer­ences. Or so I believed. But when that shared world was rede­fined as white—and when white peo­ple, threat­ened by its loss, reclaimed it—I found myself an exile. A per­son los­ing his coun­try. I felt myself unbe­com­ing in more than one sense. On col­lege cam­pus­es, includ­ing the one where I now teach, the left impos­es new bound­aries on thought and speech in its effort to chal­lenge his­tor­i­cal bound­aries, while, in pol­i­tics, the right embraces bound­aries that we had hoped nev­er to see again.” The author, a man of Indi­an descent, is a his­to­ri­an at West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
    • Fol­low-up inter­view: An Immi­grant’s Plea: “Don’t Con­vert to White­ness” (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “My biggest fear, actu­al­ly, is vio­lence. We for­get that social order is frag­ile. You don’t have to look far to see how preva­lent eth­nic or reli­gious vio­lence is around the world. If we form tribes, we will respond in hate­ful ways to each oth­er. Right­ly or wrong­ly, peo­ple will feel belea­guered. We will get angri­er and angri­er. There will be less empathy.” I share his con­cern. 
  3. Advice For Stu­dents In a Time of Strife (a whole pas­sel of Prince­ton pro­fes­sors, First Things): “Remember, as an Amer­i­can col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent you are one of the luckiest—most privileged—people on plan­et earth. Do not fall into the trap of think­ing of your­self as a vic­tim or build­ing an iden­ti­ty for your­self around that idea. You can avoid the trap while strong­ly stand­ing up for your right to fair and equal treat­ment and bold­ly work­ing for reform where there are dou­ble stan­dards need­ing to be rectified.” Tech­ni­cal­ly not a whole pas­sel, which con­notes a large but uncer­tain num­ber. I count 16 sig­na­to­ries!
  4. Chi­na Secret­ly Built A Vast New Infra­struc­ture To Imprison Mus­lims (Megha Rajagopalan, Ali­son Killing, and Chris­to Buschek, Buz­zfeed): “Downloading What­sApp, which is banned in Chi­na, main­tain­ing ties with fam­i­ly abroad, engag­ing in prayer, and vis­it­ing a for­eign web­site are all offens­es for which Mus­lims have been sent to camps, accord­ing to pre­vi­ous­ly leaked doc­u­ments and inter­views with for­mer detainees. Because the gov­ern­ment does not con­sid­er intern­ment camps to be part of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and none of these behav­iors are crimes under Chi­nese law, no detainees have been for­mal­ly arrest­ed or charged with a crime, let alone seen a day in court.” I’ve shared sim­i­lar news this before. This arti­cle is fresh and espe­cial­ly damn­ing.
    • Part 2: What They Saw: Ex-Pris­on­ers Detail The Hor­rors Of Chi­na’s Deten­tion Camps (Buz­zfeed): “More than a dozen for­mer detainees con­firmed to Buz­zFeed News that pris­on­ers were divid­ed into three cat­e­gories, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by uni­form col­ors. Those in blue, like Pari­da and the major­i­ty of the peo­ple inter­viewed for this arti­cle, were con­sid­ered the least threat­en­ing. Often, they were accused of minor trans­gres­sions, like down­load­ing banned apps to their phones or hav­ing trav­eled abroad. Imams, reli­gious peo­ple, and oth­ers con­sid­ered sub­ver­sive to the state were placed in the strictest group — and were usu­al­ly shack­led even inside the camp.”
    • Part 3: Blanked-Out Spots On Chi­na’s Maps Helped Us Uncov­er Xin­jiang’s Camps (Buz­zfeed): “Our break­through came when we noticed that there was some sort of issue with satel­lite imagery tiles load­ing in the vicin­i­ty of one of the known camps while using the Chi­nese map­ping plat­form Baidu Maps. The satel­lite imagery was old, but oth­er­wise fine when zoomed out — but at a cer­tain point, plain light gray tiles would appear over the camp loca­tion…. We ana­lyzed the masked loca­tions by com­par­ing them to up-to-date imagery from Google Earth, the Euro­pean Space Agency’s Sen­tinel Hub, and Plan­et Labs.” This one will be par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to CS peo­ple. 
  5. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez talks about trust­ing the news (Twit­ter): “…when you see a FACT that is report­ed, cit­ed, and ver­i­fied by sev­er­al rep­utable out­lets, 99.999% it’s going to be true. HOWEVER! There is a big dif­fer­ence between a fact and the STORY. And the STORY (often the head­line) that’s sur­round­ing the fact is fre­quent­ly stretched, mis­char­ac­ter­ized, or dra­ma­tized to get you to click.” She and I have a remark­ably sim­i­lar per­spec­tive on the media.
    • Relat­ed: Giv­en my time again, I would­n’t choose jour­nal­ism (Sarah Ditum, Unherd): “Being mad was impor­tant because the eco­nom­ics of this kind of con­tent required fast out­put (since time­li­ness is crit­i­cal) and high engage­ment (since this is how edi­tors, and writ­ers, mea­sure suc­cess). I write quick­ly when I’m angry, and anger begets more anger, so peo­ple are more like­ly to share and react. Not every­thing I wrote when this was my main form of jour­nal­ism was bad, but only some of it was good, and the worst of it had a dis­hon­esty that made me feel ashamed…” 
  6. Do Pro-Lif­ers Who Reject Trump Have ‘Blood on their Hands’? (David French, The DIs­patch): “Decades of data and decades of legal, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al devel­op­ments have com­bined to teach us a few, sim­ple real­i­ties about abor­tion in the Unit­ed States: 1. Pres­i­dents have been irrel­e­vant to the abor­tion rate; 2. Judges have been forces of sta­bil­i­ty, not change, in abor­tion law; 3. State leg­is­la­tures have had more influ­ence on abor­tion than Con­gress; 4. Even if Roe is over­turned, abor­tion will be most­ly unchanged in the U.S.; and 5. The pro-life move­ment has an enor­mous cul­tur­al advantage.“ Chock-full of insights. Despite the title, it is less about par­ti­san pol­i­tics and more about abor­tion in Amer­i­ca.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Facts Are Not Self‐Interpreting (Twit­ter) — this is a short, sound­less video. Rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 184.

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 262

Hon­est­ly, this week’s col­lec­tion of arti­cles has some of the best I’ve seen in some time.

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 Bib­li­cal Cri­tique of Sec­u­lar Jus­tice and Crit­i­cal The­o­ry (Tim Keller, Gospel In Life): “In the Bible Chris­tians have an ancient, rich, strong, com­pre­hen­sive, com­plex, and attrac­tive under­stand­ing of jus­tice. Bib­li­cal jus­tice dif­fers in sig­nif­i­cant ways from all the sec­u­lar alter­na­tives, with­out ignor­ing the con­cerns of any of them. Yet Chris­tians know lit­tle about bib­li­cal jus­tice, despite its promi­nence in the Scriptures.” The read of the week.
  2. The Church Forests of Ethiopia (YouTube): nine min­utes. This com­men­tary by Rod Dreher was what brought the video to my atten­tion. Watch the video before you read the com­men­tary. These forests are a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the way the Church bless­es the world around it, and what the Church must do to thrive in the envi­ron­ment we find our­selves in.
  3. Lis­ten to Thomas Sow­ell (Cole­man Hugh­es, City Jour­nal): “…people pre­dictably line up on oppo­site sides of polit­i­cal issues that seem­ing­ly have noth­ing in com­mon. For instance, know­ing someone’s posi­tion on cli­mate change some­how allows you to pre­dict their views on tax­ing the rich, gun con­trol, and abor­tion. It’s tempt­ing to dis­miss this as mere polit­i­cal trib­al­ism. But Sow­ell con­tends that more is at work: that there are two fun­da­men­tal ways of think­ing about the social world, two sets of basic assump­tions about human nature, and two con­flict­ing ‘visions,’ from which most polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments follow.” Sow­ell is a senior fel­low at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  4. Some reflec­tions on the media:
    • The Truth Is Pay­walled But The Lies Are Free (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “You want ‘Portland Pro­test­ers Burn Bibles, Amer­i­can Flags In The Streets,’ ‘The Moral Case Against Mask Man­dates And Oth­er COVID Restrictions,’ or an arti­cle sug­gest­ing the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health has admit­ted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infil­trat­ing Ger­man insti­tu­tions, the rea­sons con­tact trac­ing is fail­ing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s under­cut­ting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the web­site a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.”
      • This is a good arti­cle. For the record, I agree with his assess­ment of the New York Times: it often con­tains the facts, but some­times incor­rect­ly framed with fool­ish infer­ences built upon them. That burn­ing Bibles and flags thing Robin­son knocks, though? That real­ly hap­pened: Did Port­land Pro­test­ers Burn Bibles and Amer­i­can Flags? (Snopes)
    • How the Media Could Get the Elec­tion Sto­ry Wrong (Ben Smith, New York Times): “The coro­n­avirus cri­sis means that states like Penn­syl­va­nia may be count­ing mail-in bal­lots for weeks, while Pres­i­dent Trump tweets false alle­ga­tions about fraud. And the last bar­ri­ers between Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and a deep polit­i­cal cri­sis may be tele­vi­sion news and some ver­sion of that mad­den­ing nee­dle on The New York Times website.”
      • This is ter­ri­fy­ing and is 100% worth using up one of your pay­wall arti­cles for.
    • How the Media Led the Great Racial Awak­en­ing (Zach Gold­berg, Tablet): “During this same peri­od, while exot­ic new phras­es were enter­ing the dis­course, uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­niz­able words like ‘racism’ were being rad­i­cal­ly rede­fined. Along with the new lan­guage came ideas and beliefs ani­mat­ing a new moral-polit­i­cal frame­work to apply to pub­lic life and Amer­i­can society.”
  5. On the divi­sions in Amer­i­ca:
    • To unite the coun­try, we need hon­esty and courage (Robert George and Cor­nell West, Boston Globe): “Honesty and courage alone can save our wound­ed, dis­unit­ed coun­try now. We need the hon­esty and courage to speak the truth — includ­ing painful truths that unset­tle not only our foes but also our friends and, most espe­cial­ly, ourselves.” The authors (both Chris­t­ian) are pro­fes­sors at Prince­ton and Har­vard, respec­tive­ly. 
    • Remem­ber­ing John Lewis, and the Polit­i­cal The­ol­o­gy that Changed a Nation (David French, The Dis­patch): “What looks inevitable in hind­sight was any­thing but cer­tain. In fact, if you were plac­ing con­tem­po­rary bets on a polit­i­cal out­come, would you guess that some ver­sion of a three-cen­tu­ry sta­tus quo would pre­vail, or that the civ­il rights move­ment would achieve a legal rev­o­lu­tion near­ly on par with eman­ci­pa­tion itself? At the same time, can we even recall a mod­ern Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal move­ment so con­sis­tent with the upside-down log­ic of bib­li­cal Christianity?”
    • This is Not The Amer­i­can Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Americans are extreme­ly fond of exag­ger­at­ing the threat their polit­i­cal ene­mies pose. Histri­on­ics about Don­ald Trump end­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy are every­where to be found; read­ers will no doubt remem­ber the pro­tes­tors who claimed that Dick Cheney was the sec­ond com­ing of Hitler, or that Barack Oba­ma was a stealth author­i­tar­i­an socialist.” This is a reas­sur­ing essay.
    • Sec­u­lar­ism Can­not Sus­tain Lib­er­ty, a Response to Greg Forster (Al Mohler, Law & Lib­er­ty): “I believe that the project of civ­i­liza­tion in the West, and in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in par­tic­u­lar, has brought the great­est flow­er­ing of lib­er­ties and the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties for human flour­ish­ing in human his­to­ry. I also believe that this civ­i­liza­tion­al project has arrived at this moment of max­i­mum dan­ger after decades of both neglect and mount­ing oppo­si­tion. The most fun­da­men­tal prob­lem is the loss of the intel­lec­tu­al and moral pre­con­di­tions that make the project of ordered lib­er­ty possible.”
    • Could Amer­i­ca split up? (Damon Link­er, The Week): “I often catch myself pon­der­ing exact­ly what it is that keeps our coun­try togeth­er. What do we hold in com­mon? What do we share?” 
  6. Church­es and the pan­dem­ic:
    • How Two Cal­i­for­nia Megachurch­es Kept Wor­ship­ing (Kate Shell­nutt and Nicole Shanks, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Cal­i­for­nia church­es were so eager to meet last week­end that when their ser­vices began, wor­shipers erupt­ed in applause. In Sun Val­ley, con­gre­gants fill­ing Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church’s 3,500-seat sanc­tu­ary rose and cheered, some doc­u­ment­ing the moment with their iPhones, when pas­tor John MacArthur opened the sec­ond week in a row of in-per­son ser­vices…. An hour away in River­side, Cal­i­for­nia, wor­ship­pers at Har­vest Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship were greet­ed with cheeky pink and pur­ple signs that said, ‘Smile with your eyes (and wear a mask)’ and ‘Just leave room for your Bible—and anoth­er 5½ feet.’ It was the third Sun­day that Har­vest met in a white tent half the size of a foot­ball field to com­ply with state orders restrict­ing indoor worship.”
    • Should Church­es in Cal­i­for­nia Defy Gov­ern­ment Restric­tions? A Response to John MacArthur (Gavin Ortlund, per­son­al blog): “To my mind, there are at least four bib­li­cal val­ues that should inform our deci­sion-mak­ing in this sit­u­a­tion: 1. the impor­tance of wor­ship (Hebrews 10:25), 2. love for neigh­bor (Mark 12:31), 3. obe­di­ence to gov­ern­ment (Romans 13:1–7), and 4. main­tain­ing a good wit­ness (Colos­sians 4:5–6). What con­cerns me about defy­ing the state order right now is that it seems to pri­or­i­tize 1 at the expense of 2–4.”
    • Mask­ing and Masks: A Hypo­thet­i­cal Inter­view (Doug Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “A free peo­ple should be jeal­ous of their lib­er­ty. And one of the best ways to be jeal­ous of your lib­er­ty is to require the gov­ern­ment, when­ev­er it exer­cis­es its author­i­ty coer­cive­ly, to be able to give a very spe­cif­ic rea­son. A gen­er­al rea­son is not good enough. The law should pro­hib­it steal­ing, for exam­ple, and when the cops arrest a thief, they should be able to say that they arrest­ed him because he was ‘stealing.’ Neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions are the foun­da­tion of civic lib­er­ty, and broad, gen­er­al feel-good direc­tives are the foun­da­tion of tyranny.“ I am not opposed to manda­to­ry masks, but this is a good defense of the oppo­si­tion. 
  7. Con­cern­ing Chi­na:
    • The Tik­Tok War (Ben Thomp­son, Strat­e­ch­ery): “TikTok’s algo­rithm, unmoored from the con­straints of your social net­work or pro­fes­sion­al con­tent cre­ators, is free to pro­mote what­ev­er videos it likes, with­out any­one know­ing the dif­fer­ence. Tik­Tok could pro­mote a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date or a par­tic­u­lar issue in a par­tic­u­lar geog­ra­phy, with­out any­one — except per­haps the can­di­date, now indebt­ed to a Chi­nese com­pa­ny — know­ing. You may be skep­ti­cal this might hap­pen, but again, Chi­na has already demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to cen­sor speech on a plat­form banned in Chi­na; how much of a leap is it to think that a Par­ty com­mit­ted to ide­o­log­i­cal dom­i­nance will for­ev­er leave a route direct­ly into the hearts and minds of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans untouched?”
    • Books pulled from the library shelves, songs banned…it’s the new nor­mal in Hong Kong (Louisa Lim, The Guardian): “Put sim­ply, with­in a sin­gle month, Bei­jing has dis­man­tled a par­tial­ly free soci­ety and is try­ing to use its new law to enforce glob­al cen­sor­ship on speech regard­ing Hong Kong.”
    • Chris­tians Wor­ry Hong Kong’s New Law Will Ham­per Mis­sions (D. Cheng, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…Christians liv­ing out­side of Chi­na now won­der: Is it still safe for them to com­mu­ni­cate open­ly with friends and col­leagues in Hong Kong? For years, the ter­ri­to­ry has served as a stag­ing ground for min­istry orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing across the region. But now, will they face pres­sure or per­se­cu­tion, as those in the main­land do? If they are crit­i­cal of Bei­jing on social media or in an arti­cle such as this, will they be denied entry to Hong Kong—or worse, detained and pos­si­bly impris­oned upon land­ing in Hong Kong?”
    • ‘Clean Up This Mess’: The Chi­nese Thinkers Behind Xi’s Hard Line (Chris Buck­ley, New York Times): “While China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty has long nur­tured legions of aca­d­e­mics to defend its agen­da, these author­i­tar­i­an thinkers stand out for their unabashed, often flashily eru­dite advo­ca­cy of one-par­ty rule and assertive sov­er­eign­ty, and their turn against the lib­er­al ideas that many of them once embraced.”
    • Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Penal­izes Chi­nese Offi­cials for Hong Kong Crack­down (Pran­shu Ver­ma and Edward Wong, New York Times): “The action is anoth­er in a series of mea­sures the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en in recent months to ratch­et up pres­sure on Bei­jing. Last month, the admin­is­tra­tion imposed sanc­tions on the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, includ­ing a senior mem­ber of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, over human rights abus­es against the large­ly Mus­lim Uighur minority.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have What Is It Like to Be a Man? (Phil Christ­man, The Hedge­hog Review): “I live out my mas­culin­i­ty most often as a per­verse avoid­ance of com­fort: the refusal of good clothes, mois­tur­iz­er, painkillers; hard phys­i­cal train­ing, pur­sued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of phys­i­cal pain or self‐imposed dis­ci­pline that I owe the universe.” Very well‐written. Every­one will like­ly find parts they res­onate with and parts they reject. The author is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and based on his CV seems to be a fair­ly devot­ed Epis­co­palian. First shared in vol­ume 178.

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 189

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. Bio­hack­ers Encod­ed Mal­ware In A Strand Of DNA (Andy Green­berg, Wired): “…a group of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton has shown for the first time that it’s pos­si­ble to encode mali­cious soft­ware into phys­i­cal strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer ana­lyzes it the result­ing data becomes a pro­gram that cor­rupts gene-sequenc­ing soft­ware and takes con­trol of the under­ly­ing computer.”
    • WHOA. Also, the term “biohacker” is much cool­er than “hacker.”
  2. The Nature of Sex (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “It’s no acci­dent that some of the most homo­pho­bic soci­eties, like Iran, for exam­ple, are big pro­po­nents of sex-reas­sign­ment surgery for gen­der-non­con­form­ing kids and adults (the gov­ern­ment even pays for it) while being homo­sex­u­al war­rants the death penal­ty…. If you aban­don biol­o­gy in the mat­ter of sex and gen­der alto­geth­er, you may help trans peo­ple live fuller, less con­flict­ed lives; but you also under­mine the very mean­ing of homosexuality.”
  3. How A Demon-Slay­ing Pen­te­costal Bil­lion­aire Is Ush­er­ing In A Post-Catholic Brazil (Alexan­der Zaitchik and Christo­pher Lord, The New Repub­lic): “When Mace­do com­plet­ed his $249 mil­lion head­quar­ters in 2014, his point of com­par­i­son wasn’t John Hagee’s megachurch or Pat Robertson’s TV stu­dio. It was the Christ the Redeemer stat­ue atop Mount Cor­co­v­a­do, over­look­ing Rio de Janeiro, the sym­bol of Catholic dom­i­nance since 1921. In inter­views, Mace­do made sure to note that his Solomon­ic church was near­ly twice as tall.”
  4. E Pluribus Unum? (Stacey Abrams, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “…minorities and the mar­gin­al­ized have lit­tle choice but to fight against the par­tic­u­lar meth­ods of dis­crim­i­na­tion employed against them. The mar­gin­al­ized did not cre­ate iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics: their iden­ti­ties have been forced on them by dom­i­nant groups, and pol­i­tics is the most effec­tive method of revolt.”
    • I don’t see many straight­for­ward defens­es of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Worth reading.  This is a rebut­tal to an arti­cle by Fran­cis Fukuya­ma. Fur­ther down the page a few oth­ers respond as well, and then he offers a rejoin­der.
    • Abrams is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian, cur­rent­ly out of office. She was the one cho­sen to give the Demo­c­ra­t­ic response to Trump’s State of the Union address.
    • A  vague­ly relat­ed arti­cle by one of my stu­dents: Failed and Racist: Why Stan­ford Should Ditch Affir­ma­tive Action (Anni­ka Nordquist and Jose Anto­nio Ava­l­os, Stan­ford Review): “African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion at elite uni­ver­si­ties is actu­al­ly low­er than it was 35 years ago, and the minor­i­ty stu­dents who attend appear to be pri­mar­i­ly upper class…. Elite uni­ver­si­ties are able to pat them­selves on the back and pad their pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als with pic­tures of a diverse stu­dent body, while leav­ing minor­i­ty stu­dents gen­uine­ly trapped in cycles of pover­ty almost untouched.”
    • Con­fes­sion: it’s not real­ly all that relat­ed, but I try to lim­it myself to 7 main bul­let points. I also have a com­mit­ment to post­ing stuff that my stu­dents get pub­lished. This is my best com­pro­mise. :)  Also, if you’re in Chi Alpha and get some­thing pub­lished be sure that I know about it.
  5. The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not necessary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. A tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. This Black His­to­ry Month, don’t pre­tend racism has dis­ap­peared from the church (Jemar Tis­by, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many peo­ple, includ­ing Chris­tians, like to believe that if they were alive dur­ing the 1960s, they would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the civ­il rights move­ment. If Chris­tians refuse to acknowl­edge racism and fight against it today, then it is clear where they would have stood half a cen­tu­ry ago, too.”
    • Tis­by is a Ph.D. can­di­date in his­to­ry and grad­u­at­ed from Reformed The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
    • Relat­ed: a thought­ful review of Tisby’s book by George P. Wood, an acquain­tance of mine.
    • Relat­ed: To All The White Friends I Could­n’t Keep (Andre Hen­ry, per­son­al blog): “I thought that if you heard from a black per­son you trusted—me—that racism is alive and well in our times, that you would come to under­stand that what hap­pened to Mr. Castile, to Mr. Mar­tin, Ms. Bland, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Ster­ling, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gar­ner, Mr Grey, Ms. Shirley, Ms. Gaines, and so many oth­ers were not unique, iso­lat­ed inci­dents but parts of a pattern.”
  7. The State of Amer­i­can Fact-Check­ing Is Com­plete­ly Use­less (David Harsanyi, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are plen­ty of legit­i­mate­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments wor­thy of fact-check­er­s’ atten­tion. Yet, with a veneer of impar­tial­i­ty, fact-check­ers often engage in a unique­ly dis­hon­est style of partisanship.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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 153

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. Fed­er­al Agen­cies Lost Track of Near­ly 1,500 Migrant Chil­dren Placed With Spon­sors (Ron Nixon, New York Times): “…the agency had lost track of near­ly 1,500 migrant chil­dren it placed with spon­sors in the Unit­ed States, rais­ing con­cerns they could end up in the hands of human traf­fick­ers or be used as labor­ers by peo­ple pos­ing as relatives.” This is an arti­cle from April about kids who arrive alone at the bor­der, but I can’t help but think of it when I hear sto­ries about new poli­cies sep­a­rat­ing kids from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der. If I am read­ing this cor­rect­ly, they lost track of 20% of the minors they placed. Out­ra­geous­ly unacceptable. 
  2. The Wrath of God Poured Out — The Humil­i­a­tion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (Albert Mohler, per­son­al blog): this is pure fire. I pray lead­ers in the Assem­blies of God will act with sim­i­lar courage should it become nec­es­sary.  
  3. What Our Iden­ti­ty Search­es Real­ly Reveal (Eric Park­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in under­stand­ing per­son­al iden­ti­ty is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Whose am I?’… This one turn of phrase might be the most sig­nif­i­cant turn of thought we could ever make. But since many of us haven’t made that turn of thought, we inhab­it con­struct­ed iden­ti­ties rather than received identities.”
  4. Chi­na’s social cred­it sys­tem has blocked peo­ple from tak­ing 11 mil­lion flights and 4 mil­lion train trips (Tara Fran­cis Chan, Busi­ness Insid­er): “a for­mer offi­cial, Hou Yunchun, is quot­ed as say­ing the sys­tem needs to be improved so ‘discredited peo­ple become bankrupt.’”
  5. Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Individuals have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances.
  6. Mar­riage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name? (Phys.org): “[The study] found that among men with less than a high school degree, 10.3 per­cent report­ed chang­ing their sur­name. Among men with a high school degree but no col­lege, it was 3.6 per­cent, and among men with any col­lege, only 2 per­cent. None of the men sur­veyed who had an advanced degree changed their name.”
  7. The Racism Tread­mill (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “In an econ­o­my increas­ing­ly based on cog­ni­tive labor, it’s hard to imag­ine a cul­tur­al fea­ture more harm­ful than a social­ly-enforced taboo on aca­d­e­m­ic striv­ing. But wor­ries about the harm caused by the ‘acting white’ epi­thet have been met with skep­ti­cism by progressives.” The author is an under­grad at Colum­bia University. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.