Tag: lust

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 361

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 361, which is also the num­ber of inter­sec­tions on a Go board.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Actu­al­ly Good AI-Gen­er­at­ed Bible Art with DALL·E 2 (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “The GPT‑3 prompts I used evolved over time, but this one is emblem­at­ic: Sug­gest 5 unique con­cept ideas for a work of visu­al art inspired by Luke 14:7–11 (do not pick the place of hon­or) in the Bible. Include art direc­tion and a spe­cif­ic medi­um and artist to emu­late. Include artists from a vari­ety of eras, styles, and media. Try for an unusu­al per­spec­tive. Title, year, medi­um. Descrip­tion.”
    • Some of these are stun­ning. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Reli­gion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It (Byron R. John­son & Jeff Levin, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Data from five recent U.S. pop­u­la­tion sur­veys point to the vibran­cy, ubiq­ui­ty and growth of reli­gion in the U.S. Amer­i­cans are becom­ing more reli­gious, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions are thriv­ing. Con­sis­tent with some pre­vi­ous stud­ies but con­trary to wide­ly held assump­tions, many peo­ple who report no reli­gious affiliation—and even many self-iden­ti­fied athe­ists and agnostics—exhibit sub­stan­tial lev­els of reli­gious prac­tice and belief.”
    • The authors are pro­fes­sors of social sci­ence and epi­demi­ol­o­gy, respec­tive­ly. I one hun­dred per­cent believe this report. The so-called “rise of the nones” is most­ly the result of con­fir­ma­tion bias by sec­u­lar aca­d­e­mics and jour­nal­ists who find reli­gious­ly com­mit­ted peo­ple annoy­ing.
    • This WSJ arti­cle (which I think is pay­walled) is based on the freely avail­able schol­ar­ly arti­cle: Are Reli­gious “Nones” Real­ly Not Reli­gious?: Revis­it­ing Glenn, Three Decades Lat­er (Levin et al, Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Jour­nal of Research on Reli­gion): “The use of words and phras­es such as none, no reli­gion, and not reli­gious to describe this group of unaf­fil­i­at­ed indi­vid­u­als is thus inap­pro­pri­ate, inac­cu­rate, and mis­lead­ing.”
  3. Which Sins Are Feed­ing Your Sin of Lust? (David Powli­son, Cross­way): “Tom con­cen­trat­ed all his atten­tion on one mar­quee sin that sur­faced spo­rad­i­cal­ly, defin­ing and ener­giz­ing all his guilty feel­ings. But that nar­row­ing of atten­tion served to mask far more seri­ous, per­va­sive sins. As a pas­tor, friend, or oth­er coun­selor, you don’t want to con­cen­trate all your ener­gies in the same place Tom did. There were oth­er, deep­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for grace and truth to rewrite the script of this man’s life.”
  4. A Media-Fueled Social Pan­ic Over Unmarked Graves (Jonathan Kay, Quil­lette): “It’s now been 14 months since the orig­i­nal announce­ment was made about pre­sumed graves in Kam­loops, and no phys­i­cal evi­dence has been unearthed. No graves. No corpses. No human remains.… I’ve been in jour­nal­ism for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry, and have wit­nessed plen­ty of bizarre con­tro­ver­sies with­in my trade. But I’ve nev­er wit­nessed any­thing sim­i­lar to this phe­nom­e­non. It’s like one of those case-stud­ies in mass hys­te­ria and pop­u­lar delu­sion that you read about in his­to­ry books.”
    • This is not a claim that bad things did­n’t hap­pen. It’s more of a claim that the spe­cif­ic bad things that are alleged did­n’t hap­pen or that they did­n’t hap­pen on the scale wide­ly report­ed.
  5. Chi­na relat­ed:
  6. NHS will SHUT its con­tro­ver­sial Tavi­s­tock trans­gen­der clin­ic for chil­dren after damn­ing report warned it was ‘not safe’ (John Ely and Lau­rence Dol­limore, The Dai­ly Mail): “It fol­lows an announce­ment last month that every child treat­ed for gen­der dys­pho­ria in the last decade will have their med­ical records scru­ti­nised to see if NHS care is caus­ing them more harm than good.”
  7. Hot Takes Don’t Belong in Church (Chris Nye, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “So long as we are cre­at­ing a palat­able state­ment for social media or Sunday’s ser­mon, we are not pray­ing, wor­ship­ing, or orga­niz­ing our­selves for mean­ing­ful action. But in today’s cul­ture, the appear­ance of moral­i­ty is more impor­tant than moral actions, and speak­ing is more high­ly val­ued than pray­ing.”
    • This is full of good points. Chris is an acquain­tance of mine.

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 This Cul­tur­al Moment (pod­cast): I lis­tened to this pod­cast about fol­low­ing Jesus in the post-Chris­t­ian world upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of some alum­ni and a stu­dent. It’s quite good. Def­i­nite­ly start with episode 1. First shared in vol­ume 231.

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 294

more on Atlanta, puri­ty cul­ture, and oth­er inter­est­ing links

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 294, which is neat because 111152 — 2942 = 123,456,789. Num­bers are fun!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. On anti-Asian vio­lence:
    • The Racism Virus: Anti-Asian Attacks Surge (NBC News, YouTube): fifty-two min­utes, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. From before the Atlanta shoot­ings.
    • Race and False Hate Crime Nar­ra­tives (Heather Mac Don­ald, Quil­lette): “Per­haps a rev­e­la­tion of anti-Asian ani­mus will emerge, but for now, Long appears to have tar­get­ed pre­sumed sex work­ers who hap­pened, giv­en the demo­graph­ics of the mas­sage trade in Atlanta, to be Asian. Long intend­ed to tar­get a busi­ness in Flori­da next that made pornog­ra­phy, he told police. The employ­ees there were unlike­ly to be Asian.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • I am sur­prised at how divi­sive the ques­tion of motive has been. Regard­less of motive in this spe­cif­ic case, I think it is clear that the Atlanta attacks were wicked and also that many Asian-Amer­i­cans encounter prej­u­dice that too often esca­lates into vio­lence.
  2. On Chris­t­ian sex­u­al teach­ings:
    • Atlanta Suspect’s Fix­a­tion on Sex Is Famil­iar Thorn for Evan­gel­i­cals (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “The evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture he was raised in, he said, ‘teach­es women to hate their bod­ies, as the source of temp­ta­tion, and it teach­es men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and sex­u­al immoral­i­ty.’ ”
    • Why the Atlanta Mas­sacre Trig­gered a Con­ver­sa­tion About Puri­ty Cul­ture (David French, The Dis­patch): “Plac­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for male puri­ty on women harms women. It cre­ates an impos­si­ble bur­den. You can­not oppress women enough to pro­tect men from them­selves. You can ban porn, ban explic­it TV and movies of all types, put women in long dress­es, pro­hib­it make­up, and require courtship con­tracts, and you still will not solve the prob­lem of sin.”
    • Nev­er The Demons (Samuel D. James, Let­ter & Litur­gy): “I’m all for inter­ro­gat­ing the harm­ful effects of some church cul­tures, but I’m not sure why we don’t even linger over the news of a young man’s mur­der­ing eight peo­ple to ‘elim­i­nate temp­ta­tion’ long enough to see the demon­ic forces that Jesus clear­ly saw every­where he went. And when that sto­ry is quick­ly fol­lowed by anoth­er mass mur­der in Col­orado? The news cycle just resets, and the blood is on the hands of the GOP, or all Mus­lims, or puri­ty cul­ture, or can­cel culture…name your ide­o­log­i­cal ene­my, and you can find some­one promi­nent lay­ing hor­ror at their feet. Nev­er the demons.”
    • On puri­ty cul­ture and vio­lence, briefly (Samuel D. James, Let­ter & Litur­gy): “I think sto­ries [like the NYT arti­cle] are frus­trat­ing because they offer gen­uine insight mixed with a jour­nal­is­tic fram­ing that is deeply untrust­wor­thy. Brad Onishi, Jeff Chu, and Samuel Perry—the three voic­es brought in to crit­i­cize evan­gel­i­cal puri­ty culture—are all exam­ples of LGBT-affirm­ing post-evan­gel­i­cal­ism. Because of this fram­ing, the sub­text of the arti­cle is that there are real­ly only two choic­es for evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians: dou­ble down on hat­ing women and empow­er­ing shoot­ers like Robert Long, or aban­don core evan­gel­i­cal doc­trines. This is exact­ly the pos­ture that defines near­ly all anti-puri­ty cul­ture writ­ing I see, which is why I get so frus­trat­ed by it, even when it makes gen­uine­ly help­ful points…”
    • Ques­tions for David French on the Con­nec­tions between the Atlanta Killer and Puri­ty Cul­ture (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “What is the con­nec­tion between the killer and tox­ic puri­ty the­ol­o­gy and cul­ture? The piece assumes a con­nec­tion but nev­er gets around to demon­strat­ing one. And that leads to the weird expe­ri­ence of read­ing some­thing where I agree with vir­tu­al­ly every sin­gle word and yet find that the actu­al argu­ment doesn’t hold togeth­er.”
    • How church­es talk about sex­u­al­i­ty can mean life or death. We saw that in Robert Long. (Rachel Den­hol­lan­der, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Sex­u­al­i­ty divorced from per­son­hood is the foun­da­tion of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and vio­lence. The evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty has yet to grap­ple with its own ver­sion of this same mind-set and the deep dam­age it has, and will con­tin­ue, to do.”
  3. Chris­t­ian Bak­er Sued Again for Refus­ing to Bake a Cake (Colleen Slevin, Asso­ci­at­ed Press @ Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Autumn Scar­di­na attempt­ed to order the birth­day cake on the same day in 2017 that the high court announced it would hear bak­er Jack Phillips’s appeal in the wed­ding cake case. Scar­di­na, an attor­ney, request­ed a cake that was blue on the out­side and pink on the inside in hon­or of her gen­der tran­si­tion.”
    • The Nev­er-End­ing Per­se­cu­tion of Jack Phillips (David Harsyani, Nation­al Review): “You may not be sur­prised to learn that Scar­di­na hadn’t asked the most famous Chris­t­ian bak­er in the nation to cre­ate a ‘tran­si­tion’ cake by hap­pen­stance. Phillips’s lawyers sus­pect Scar­di­na called — the name appeared on the caller ID — to request ‘an image of Satan smok­ing mar­i­jua­na.’ Lat­er, an email was sent to the shop request­ing ‘a three-tiered white cake’ with a ‘large fig­ure of Satan, lick­ing a nine inch black Dil­do … that can be turned on before we unveil the cake.’ ”
    • Col­orado Bak­er Faces Long Line Of Peo­ple Out­side Wait­ing To Be Oppressed By Him (Baby­lon Bee): “Phillips had anoth­er busy day, but in the end, all his cus­tomers were sat­is­fied, those who want­ed cakes receiv­ing beau­ti­ful cakes and those who want­ed to get dis­crim­i­nat­ed against get­ting dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Philips is now con­sid­er­ing open­ing anoth­er branch just to not make peo­ple cakes, as he is appar­ent­ly the only cakeshop in the coun­try that does that, and it’s in high demand.” Nor­mal­ly I’d put a Baby­lon Bee arti­cle in the amus­ing sec­tion, but this one belongs here.
  4. Stan­ford’s silence does­n’t sur­prise wrestling champ: ‘Prob­a­bly more mad at me’ (Ann Kil­lion, SF Chron­i­cle): “Stan­ford ath­let­ics did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment on Griffith’s nation­al title. On Sat­ur­day the ath­let­ic depart­ment Twit­ter account @GoStanford tweet­ed, ‘Shane Grif­fith is a nation­al cham­pi­on. The red­shirt sopho­more com­plet­ed his run at the NCAA cham­pi­onships atop the podi­um, Sat­ur­day, at the Enter­prise Cen­ter.’ The dry mes­sage was notably miss­ing the excla­ma­tion points and emo­jis that accom­pa­ny almost every oth­er post.”
  5. What It Takes To Go From Slav­ery To Free­dom (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “ ‘When you are a slave, you don’t have to think,’ Yeon­mi told me. ‘In North Korea you can’t say I. You can just say we. We love the col­or red. Or we love kim­chi. You know every answer. In North Korea, every­thing is deter­mined for you before you are born, based on your family’s stand­ing in the par­ty. You don’t think: What do I study? Where do I live? Who do I mar­ry? They decide.  I remem­ber after I pub­lished my book one of my first inter­views was with NPR and they asked me about free­dom. I said free­dom was painful and con­fus­ing. I think they were expect­ing me to say free­dom was awe­some.’ But the truth was more com­pli­cat­ed. ‘It was so painful to be free. I some­times thought in the begin­ning if there was a guar­an­tee to go back to North Korea and not get exe­cut­ed and just live on frozen pota­toes I might go back.’ ” WOW. What an inter­view. Com­ing some­day to a ser­mon near you.
  6. The Bur­den of Proof (Jim­my Akin, per­son­al blog): “When­ev­er two peo­ple dis­agree and one wants the oth­er to change his view, then the per­son advo­cat­ing the change always has to shoul­der the bur­den of proof.” The cen­tral nugget is in the excerpt, but there’s more there (includ­ing an inter­est­ing Catholic per­spec­tive on Sola Scrip­tura).
  7. Why Are Few­er Young Adults Hav­ing Casu­al Sex? (Scott J. South & Lei Lei, Socius): “Among young women, the decline in the fre­quen­cy of drink­ing alco­hol explains about one quar­ter of the drop in the propen­si­ty to have casu­al sex. Among young men, declines in drink­ing fre­quen­cy, an increase in com­put­er gam­ing, and the grow­ing per­cent­age who core­side with their par­ents all con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the decline in casu­al sex.” See also the “a while ago” link below.

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 Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25) 

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.

The Screwtape Letters: Twenty Through Twenty-Five

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week we’re look­ing at let­ters 20 to 25. Two pas­sages caught my atten­tion this week.

I was struck by how con­tem­po­rary Lewis’s com­ments on sex­u­al temp­ta­tion in let­ter 20 seem, even though he wrote this book near­ly 80 years ago.

We have engi­neered a great increase in the licence which soci­ety allows to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the appar­ent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhi­bi­tion on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the fig­ures in the pop­u­lar art are false­ly drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actu­al­ly pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slen­der and more boy­ish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the mod­ern world is taught to believe that it is being “frank” and “healthy” and get­ting back to nature. As a result we are more and more direct­ing the desires of men to some­thing which does not exist—making the role of the eye in sex­u­al­i­ty more and more impor­tant and at the same time mak­ing its demands more and more impos­si­ble. What fol­lows you can eas­i­ly fore­cast! (let­ter 20, page 243)

It was indeed easy to fore­cast, but now we need mere­ly look around. Sex­u­al dys­func­tion plagues our soci­ety. A study that appeared this week (Pornog­ra­phy Use and Mar­riage Entry Dur­ing Ear­ly Adult­hood: Find­ings From a Pan­el Study of Young Amer­i­cans in pre­pub­li­ca­tion) found that “high­er lev­els of pornog­ra­phy use in emerg­ing adult­hood were asso­ci­at­ed with a low­er like­li­hood of mar­riage by the final sur­vey wave for men, but not women.” Lewis called it.

The oth­er pas­sage which stood out to me was from let­ter 21, and I con­fess it struck uncom­fort­ably close to home:

Men are not angered by mere mis­for­tune but by mis­for­tune con­ceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feel­ing that a legit­i­mate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, there­fore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tem­pered. Now you will have noticed that noth­ing throws him into a pas­sion so eas­i­ly as to find a tract of time which he reck­oned on hav­ing at his own dis­pos­al unex­pect­ed­ly tak­en from him. It is the unex­pect­ed vis­i­tor (when he looked for­ward to a qui­et evening), or the friend’s talk­a­tive wife (turn­ing up when he looked for­ward to a tete‑а-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear.… They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.… The man can nei­ther make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chat­tels. He is also, in the­o­ry, com­mit­ted a total ser­vice of the Ene­my; and if the Ene­my appeared to him in bod­i­ly form and demand­ed that total ser­vice for even one day, he would not refuse.

That is so true. If God asks for fif­teen min­utes, I’ll give it to Him glad­ly regard­less of what I am doing. But if some­one chats with me for fif­teen min­utes while I’m try­ing to get a task done, I become impa­tient and irri­ta­ble. Yet Jesus clear­ly said “what­ev­er you did for one of the least of these broth­ers and sis­ters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). I need to change.

Any­way, that’s some of what I got from this week’s read­ings. Only two weeks of read­ing remain!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 148

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. This col­lege pro­fes­sor gives her stu­dents extra cred­it for going on dates (Lisa Bonos, Wash­ing­ton Post): “She sees con­ver­sa­tions about dat­ing as part of the big ques­tions her class­es tack­le, such as: How should I live my life? What kinds of rela­tion­ships help me to become the kind of per­son I want to be? If stu­dents don’t learn how to date while they’re in col­lege, while sur­round­ed by thou­sands of peers all in a sim­i­lar stage in life, Cronin says, it only gets hard­er to build those skills after grad­u­a­tion.” The pro­fes­sor in ques­tion, Ker­ry Cronin, is a philoso­pher at Boston Col­lege.
    • She has these rules for a first date: “The stu­dent has to ask in per­son (“tex­ting is the dev­il; stop it,” she says in one of her YouTube videos), and the recip­i­ent has to know it’s a date. And if they say they’re busy and to check back with them lat­er, don’t. Just move on. ‘That’s a great skill to build, so that you can have a thick­er skin,’ Cronin says. She believes that the per­son who asks, pays. And the first date shouldn’t cost more than $10, include drugs or alco­hol, or last longer than 90 min­utes…”
    • Those are good guide­lines. Read them again.
  2. I think the fol­low­ing two arti­cles will prove to be among the most con­tro­ver­sial I’ve ever shared. I also think they both con­tain much prac­ti­cal wis­dom that will prove rel­e­vant as the weath­er warms:
    • For the gents: Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.”
    • For the ladies: Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.”
    • I am aware that these two arti­cles only deal with things from a male per­spec­tive. Sad­ly, I haven’t come across any insight­ful arti­cles that help ladies deal with their own lust or give gen­tle­men advice on how to be help­ful to them. Ladies, if you’ve read some­thing you found tru­ly help­ful, let me know.
  3. Jesus, Take the Con­trol Wheel: South­west Pilot Saw Fly­ing as Min­istry (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Tam­mie Jo Shults—the pilot who guid­ed Flight 1380 to the ground April 17 after a mid­flight engine fail­ure shot debris through a win­dow, killing one passenger—is a rec­og­niz­able fig­ure at the Texas Hill Coun­try church, which aver­ages 900 in wor­ship…. Mul­ti­ple media reports have cit­ed a blog post in which Shults stat­ed being a pilot gave her ‘the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness for Christ on almost every flight.’” You can glo­ri­fy God in almost any pro­fes­sion — make it your ambi­tion.
  4. Five Great Books on African Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “If I had to pick one African Amer­i­can church leader I wish more Chris­tians knew about, it would prob­a­bly be [Lemuel] Haynes. A Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War sol­dier, Haynes went on to become a pas­tor of a large­ly white church in New Eng­land, a crit­ic of Amer­i­can slav­ery, and an advo­cate of the New Divin­i­ty the­ol­o­gy of Jonathan Edwards’s suc­ces­sors.”
  5. Don­ald Trump, Trag­ic Hero (Vic­tor Davis Han­son, Nation­al Review): “Trag­ic heroes, as they have been por­trayed from Sopho­cles’ plays (e.g., Ajax, Antigone, Oedi­pus Rex, Philoctetes) to the mod­ern west­ern film, are not intrin­si­cal­ly noble. Much less are they like­able. Cer­tain­ly, they can often be obnox­ious and pet­ty, if not dan­ger­ous, espe­cial­ly to those around them.” Han­son is a fel­low at Stanford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  6. The Face­book Tri­als: It’s Not “Our” Data (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…I have hun­dreds of friends on Face­book, most of whom I don’t know well and have nev­er met. But my Face­book friends are friends. We share com­mon inter­ests and, most of the time, I’m hap­py to see what they are think­ing and doing and I’m pleased when they show inter­est in what I’m up to. If, before Face­book exist­ed, I had been asked to list ‘my friends,’ I would have had a hard time nam­ing ten friends, let alone hun­dreds. My Face­book friends didn’t exist before Face­book. My Face­book friend­ships are not sim­ply my data—they are a unique co-cre­ation of myself, my friends, and, yes, Face­book.”
  7. Google Will Now Answer Your The­o­log­i­cal Ques­tions (OpenBible.info): “Google just announced an AI-pow­ered exper­i­ment called Talk to Books, which lets you enter a query and find pas­sages in books that are seman­ti­cal­ly sim­i­lar to your query, not mere­ly pas­sages that hap­pen to match the key­words you chose. For the­ol­o­gy- and Bible-relat­ed ques­tions, it often presents an evan­gel­i­cal per­spec­tive, per­haps because U.S. evan­gel­i­cal pub­lish­ers have been eager for Google to index their books.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • A Divid­ed Coun­try (Pearls Before Swine): this one actu­al­ly made me laugh and not mere­ly chor­tle sen­si­bly.
  • Christ Chel­la (John Crist, Face­book): this is amaz­ing­ly detailed and the more you know the evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture the fun­nier it is

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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.