Tag: jesus

TGFI, Volume 545: holistic ministry and cringe evangelicals

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Math Behind Christ’s Care for Our Flourishing (Bruce Wydick, Christianity Today): “I decided to go through the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ interactions with people—conversations, teachings, and healings—and digitally categorize all 171 recorded interactions (as delineated by New International Version subchapter headings) based on which of the following five different facets of human need he was addressing: (1) purely spiritual, (2) physical needs, (3) social inclusion, (4) mental health, and (5) economic needs.… all of Christ’s miracles could have simply been spiritual displays of power, miracles of the shock-and-awe variety, like calming storms or walking on water. But they weren’t. Instead, most of his miracles involve meeting various human needs: people’s physical ailments (restoring sight, mobility), their social inclusion (healing of lepers), their economic shortages (loaves and fishes), and maybe even their mental health—‘Peace be with you,’ (John 20:21). His miracles show how much the God of the universe cares about all these different facets of us that make us happy, healthy human beings.” 
    • Cool findings in here with some nice charts. The author is a development economist at USF, UC Davis, and Notre Dame. I did some digging and he is an evangelical. One of us!
  2. Missiles and Moments of Clarity (Ryan Currie, The Gospel Coalition): “It’s 5 a.m. in Dubai. I’m awakened by a loud bang and my bedroom windows shaking. My wife also wakes with a start and sits up. My half-sleeping brain tries to process: _What was that?_ The adrenaline kicks in and reminds me of the nightmare of chaos and fear that spreads in the Middle East.… It’s strange how moments of crisis bring clarity. Each defensive burst clarifies realities I was already aware of but had hidden under the hum and drum of everyday life. These missiles provide moments of clarity into what’s most important.” 
    • I found this both interesting and moving.
  3. Why America needs evangelicals on the Supreme Court — and more (Aaron Renn, Washington Post): “Evangelicals are 23 percent of U.S. adults and one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs, with 81 percent backing Donald Trump in 2024. Yet despite six of the nine Supreme Court justices being appointed by Republican presidents, there are no evangelicals on the Supreme Court.… As a minority in a country that has become post-Christian in many respects, evangelicals can’t and shouldn’t seek to dominate national leadership roles. A diverse society will draw its talent from all quarters. But for that very reason, it can’t be healthy when nearly one-quarter of the national population is failing to contribute its fair share.” 
    • Gift link. Renn sees much but also has a few blind spots. Worth a ponder.
  4. 10 Reasons Evangelicals are Cringe (Matthew Loftus, Mere Orthodoxy): “I don’t lose sleep over evangelicalism’s cringeiness (at least not nearly as much as I did when I was a teenager and being cringe was more offensive to me) because God did not let being cringe stop him from getting stuff done culturally back when the Church was mostly made up of illiterate fishermen and he will bring about his work in the world regardless of whether or not there are sufficient numbers of evangelicals among the elites. This is the most important reason, but it’s worth talking about the issues Renn raises because some of the reasons are actually good things that we should celebrate and others are bad things that we should do something about if we can.”
  5. My Criticism of the Ivy League Isn’t Hypocrisy (Rob K. Henderson, Wall Street Journal): “If you went to an elite school, informed dissent is seen as a kind of betrayal. If you didn’t, you might be written off as someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation. Benefiting from a system, though, doesn’t mean you forfeit the right to critique it. In most walks of life, insider knowledge makes a critic more credible, not less. Experience counts for something. Who is better placed to criticize an institution than someone who has seen it from the inside?”
  6. How the Decision to Start a War Became the President’s (Charlie Savage, New York Times): “It is supposed to be a foundational principle of American democracy that unless the United States is under attack, the power to declare war is vested in Congress. But especially since the start of the Cold War, presidents of both parties have chipped away at that by claiming a right to order the military into various limited hostile situations.… Successive administrations built on their predecessors’ innovations, a one-way ratchet expanding the circumstances in which presidents had claimed and demonstrated that they could by themselves deploy troops into combat.”
  7. SEIU Delenda Est (Scott Alexander, Astral Code Ten): “California lets interest groups propose measures for the state ballot. Anyone who gathers enough signatures (currently 874,641) can put their hare-brained plans before voters during the next election year… The SEIU is known in California political circles for pioneering and perfecting the art of extortion via ballot initiative.… SEIU seems to have found a bug in direct democracy: it incentivizes interest groups to search for the most destructive possible ballot initiative that might nevertheless get approved by low-information voters, since this gives them leverage over anyone willing to bribe them into withdrawing their poison pill.” 

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 480

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 Give Thanks in the Bright Darkness (Christina Gonzalez Ho, Christianity Today): “It seems that, historically, Thanksgiving was not meant to be a purely celebratory day, a time to luxuriate in self-satisfaction, but rather a day to hold gratitude in tension with sorrow, suffering, and sin—to acknowledge the brightness and darkness that always exist simultaneously in the world.” 
    • Christina is an alumnus of Chi Alpha.
  2. The Conquest of Canaan Explained in 6 Minutes (Gavin Ortlund, YouTube). Recommended by a student. This is a topic I think I explain pretty well, but Ortlund does it better. Worth your time if the destruction of the Canaanite cultures bothers you.
  3. And They Began to Be Merry (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch): “The miracle at Cana isn’t water becoming wine—any old magician could do that sort of thing. Whatever it was that Jesus was about, it wasn’t stupid party tricks. The miracle is that the Ruler of the Universe cared about such a little thing as the social anxieties of a bunch of nobodies in an obscure little corner of the world of no particular importance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his disposal, the very best?… The supernatural stuff is one thing, but consider the magnificence of that gesture, the sheer audacious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cynical atheist walking the Earth—it is impossible not to admire the panache. He bends reality into a new shape, makes the universe follow new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what happened except for the waiters.”
  4. What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Motherhood (Daniela J. Lamas, New York Times): “For my generation— and, I’d argue, especially for women in my generation — the decision of whether to have a child has become highly fraught. It’s tied up with our desires for fulfilling careers, our willingness to risk a shift in the identities and lives we have built. It’s tied up in an understanding of all that went into making motherhood a choice that we get to make. With so much at stake, it is so easy to become paralyzed by indecision. But perhaps what I would have wanted to hear when I was dithering was something like this: Having a child has been extraordinary.… And for some reason, I feel almost embarrassed to admit how much I love being a mother. I spent my adult life until now with this idea that I was different from — and maybe even a little superior to — my peers who chose to spend time building their families. I was so worried about what a child would mean for my career. But what I did not anticipate was that what I would want itself would change.”
  5. This Maverick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time (Christopher Caldwell, New York Times): “Mr. Streeck has a clear vision of something paradoxical about the neoliberal project: For the global economy to be ‘free,’ it must be constrained. What the proponents of neoliberalism mean by a free market is a deregulated market. But getting to deregulation is trickier than it looks because in free societies, regulations are the result of people’s sovereign right to make their own rules. The more democratic the world’s societies are, the more idiosyncratic they will be, and the more their economic rules will diverge. But that is exactly what businesses cannot tolerate — at least not under globalization. Money and goods must be able to move frictionlessly and efficiently across borders. This requires a uniform set of laws. Somehow, democracy is going to have to give way.” 
    • Caldwell is an interesting thinker, so as soon as I saw his byline I knew I had to read the article. Worth a ponder.
  6. ‘A God Who Continually Surprises Us’: A Q&A With a Theologian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Marriage (Peter Wehner, New York Times): “…I would say that the way I was appealing to the Bible or the way I was interpreting the Bible was too narrowly focused on the few texts in Scripture that do say something explicitly about homosexual relationships. The dictum in Leviticus is that for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is an abomination. And those texts had a certain impact on my opinion. But I think I was I was far too narrow in the way I thought about how the Bible speaks to issues like this. What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some isolated proof texts or isolated statements of law, but it shows us a much bigger picture of God as a God who continually surprises us, continually surprises his people with the scope of generosity and grace and mercy.” 
    • This is one of many revealing moments in this interview. Hays stopped believing what the Bible actually says in favor of what he takes the deeper message of the Bible to be. It’s as though he subordinates the real text of the Bible to the hypothetical text of the Bible in his head.
    • This article makes me sad. Sharing because it’s a clearer-than-usual presentation of an argument that I often encounter, and its clarity makes the weaknesses of the revisionist position more evident.
  7. How Universities Cracked Down on Pro-Palestinian Activism (Isabelle Taft, New York Times): “Universities have seen just under 950 protest events this semester so far, compared to 3,000 last semester, according to a log at the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Ash Center. About 50 people have been arrested so far this school year at protests on higher education campuses, according to numbers gathered by The New York Times, compared to over 3,000 last semester. When students have protested this fall, administrators have often enforced — to the letter — new rules created in response to last spring’s unrest. The moves have created scenes that would have been hard to imagine previously, particularly at universities that once celebrated their history of student activism.”

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.