Tag: money

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 231

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

A Christ­mas reminder: Chi Alpha is a donor-fund­ed min­istry. This week­ly roundup of links is one small part of what we do to equip stu­dents to live for Christ in a con­fused cul­ture. If you’d like to make a spe­cial year-end gift to help us reach future lead­ers, vis­it https://glenandpaula.com/giving. Every pen­ny counts — thanks!

On to the things Glen found inter­est­ing:

  1. Trump Should Be Removed from Office (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Sen­ate or by pop­u­lar vote next election—that is a mat­ter of pru­den­tial judg­ment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a mat­ter of par­ti­san loy­al­ties but loy­al­ty to the Cre­ator of the Ten Com­mand­ments.”
    • Emma Green nabbed an inter­view with Gal­li about the edi­to­r­i­al: How Trump Lost an Evan­gel­i­cal Stal­wart (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “So I am a great believ­er in the prov­i­dence of God, and that he will, in his grace, mer­cy, and mys­te­ri­ous judg­ment, help us through this peri­od. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to heal the breach among evan­gel­i­cals. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring peace to the world. My respon­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en the posi­tion I have, what­ev­er it might be, is to speak the truth. If it makes a dif­fer­ence, I am thank­ful to God. And if it doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence, that’s kind of up to him.”
    • When the CT Edi­tor’s Feel­ings Trump Facts (Jim Gar­low, Charis­ma News): “Numer­ous high-vis­i­bil­i­ty evan­gel­i­cals have had oppor­tu­ni­ty to be with the pres­i­dent, to coun­sel him and to pray with him. Some have spo­ken truth to lead­er­ship. Wise­ly, they do not dis­cuss the con­tent of those meet­ings pub­licly. Nor should they. They are con­sid­er­ably more aware of the ‘heart’ of the pres­i­dent than is Mr. Gal­li. If he knew what they know about Mr. Trump, Gal­li would not have writ­ten such an arti­cle.”
    • I sus­pect Charisma’s op-ed is clos­er to the per­spec­tive of most evan­gel­i­cal Trump sup­port­ers than Chris­tian­i­ty Today’s is. For con­text, Chris­tian­i­ty Today post­ed sim­i­lar op-eds dur­ing each of the two pre­vi­ous impeach­ments.
    • Speak­ing of the pre­vi­ous impeach­ments, did you real­ize that from Nixon until now â…“ of U.S. pres­i­dents have been impeached? Props to Ross Douthat for notic­ing that. 
  2. A Sci­ence-Based Case for End­ing the Porn Epi­dem­ic (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, Amer­i­can Great­ness): “Since it seems some­how rel­e­vant, let me state at the out­set that I am French. Every fiber of my Latin, Catholic body recoils at puri­tanism of any sort, espe­cial­ly the bizarre, Anglo-Puri­tan kind so preva­lent in Amer­i­ca. I believe eroti­cism is one of God’s great­est gifts to humankind, prud­ish­ness a bizarre aber­ra­tion, and not so long ago, hyper­bol­ic warn­ings about the per­ils of pornog­ra­phy, whether from my Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian or pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist friends, had me rolling my eyes…. The evi­dence is in: porn is as addic­tive as smok­ing, or more, except that what smok­ing does to your lungs, porn does to your brain.”
    • Relat­ed: Let’s Fix the Pornog­ra­phy Prob­lem (Jim Banks, First Things): “The preva­lence of pornog­ra­phy in our soci­ety has con­se­quences, espe­cial­ly for our chil­dren. It’s time to start talk­ing about it, and it’s time for the gov­ern­ment to get involved.” The author is a Repub­li­can mem­ber of con­gress.
  3. The New Tes­ta­ment Doesn’t Say What Most Peo­ple Think It Does About Heav­en (N.T. Wright, Time): “The book of Rev­e­la­tion ends, not with souls going up to heav­en, but with the New Jerusalem com­ing down to earth, so that ‘the dwelling of God is with humans.’ The whole cre­ation, declares St. Paul, will be set free from its slav­ery to cor­rup­tion, to enjoy God’s intend­ed free­dom.”
  4. Los­ing Faith in the Human­i­ties (Simon Dur­ing, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Faith has been lost across two dif­fer­ent zones: first, reli­gion; then, high cul­ture…. Cul­tur­al sec­u­lar­iza­tion resem­bles ear­li­er reli­gious sec­u­lar­iza­tion. What hap­pened to Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion and the Bible is now hap­pen­ing to the idea of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and ‘the best that has been thought and said,’ in Arnold’s famous phrase.”
  5. This Cul­tur­al Moment (pod­cast): I’ve been lis­ten­ing 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.
  6. What Would Jesus Do About Inequal­i­ty? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “In today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism, this is where the the­o­log­i­cal action is: the faith and work move­ment, the inter­sec­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty with the demands of the work­place and the broad­er econ­o­my — in a soci­ety that is one of the world’s wealth­i­est, yet per­sis­tent­ly inhu­mane.”
  7. The Dig­i­tal Pul­pit: A Nation­wide Analy­sis of Online Ser­mons (Pew Research): “For instance, ser­mons from evan­gel­i­cal church­es were three times more like­ly than those from oth­er tra­di­tions to include the phrase ‘eter­nal hell’ (or vari­a­tions such as ‘eter­ni­ty in hell’). How­ev­er, a con­gre­gant who attend­ed every ser­vice at a giv­en evan­gel­i­cal church in the dataset had a rough­ly one-in-ten chance of hear­ing one of those terms at least once dur­ing the study peri­od. By com­par­i­son, that same con­gre­gant had a 99% chance of hear­ing the word ‘love.’”
    • Relat­ed with some good inter­views: How long is the ser­mon? Study ranks Chris­t­ian church­es (David Crary, AP News): “Accord­ing to Pew, the medi­an length of the ser­mons was 37 min­utes. Catholic ser­mons were the short­est, at a medi­an of just 14 min­utes, com­pared with 25 min­utes for ser­mons in main­line Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions and 39 min­utes in evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions. His­tor­i­cal­ly black Protes­tant church­es had by far the longest ser­mons, at a medi­an of 54 min­utes. Pew said ser­mons at the black church­es last­ed longer than main­line Protes­tant ser­mons even though, on aver­age, they had rough­ly the same num­ber of words.”

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Celebration of Discipline: Simplicity

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2019. The sched­ule is online.

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

I’m trav­el­ing right now and don’t have a lot of time to write up my thoughts on this chap­ter, so I’ll sim­ply say that while I like this Fos­ter’s thoughts on sim­plic­i­ty this chap­ter reminds me of how quick­ly he wrote the book. His thoughts are unfor­tu­nate­ly jum­bled at times, espe­cial­ly when it comes to eco­nom­ics. He has a good advice for indi­vid­u­als, but he seems to con­fuse wise indi­vid­ual choic­es with wise social struc­tures. That aside, there’s a lot of sol­id advice in this chap­ter about liv­ing a sim­ple life.

Fos­ter does­n’t define sim­plic­i­ty clear­ly, but he most­ly seems to mean being con­tent, being gen­er­ous and being sus­pi­cious of indul­gence. I’m actu­al­ly sur­prised he did­n’t make gen­eros­i­ty one of his twelve cen­tral spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines. Gen­eros­i­ty with a side of sim­plic­i­ty seems more faith­ful to the Bib­li­cal wit­ness than sim­plic­i­ty with a side of gen­eros­i­ty. Regard­less, he made the focus sim­plic­i­ty (per­haps so he can bring in com­ments about sim­plic­i­ty in speech on pages 93–94).

If I had to pick one quote that stood out to me, it would be this one:

“The cen­tral point for the Dis­ci­pline of sim­plic­i­ty is to seek the king­dom of God and the right­eous­ness of his king­dom first and then every­thing nec­es­sary will come in its prop­er order…. Focus upon the king­dom pro­duces the inward real­i­ty, and with­out the inward real­i­ty we will degen­er­ate into legal­is­tic triv­ia. Noth­ing else can be cen­tral. The desire to get out of the rat race can­not be cen­tral, the redis­tri­b­u­tion of the world’s wealth can­not be cen­tral, the con­cern for ecol­o­gy can­not be cen­tral…. The per­son who does not seek the king­dom first does not seek it at all.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 86–87.

There are many peo­ple who pur­sue a sim­ple lifestyle for oth­er rea­sons. God­ly sim­plic­i­ty isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about reduc­ing your car­bon foot­print or engag­ing in effec­tive altru­ism. The sim­plic­i­ty we pur­sue is root­ed in our uncom­pli­cat­ed devo­tion to God.

One last com­ment and a bit of a tan­gent: “It is time we awak­en to the fact that con­for­mi­ty to a sick soci­ety is to be sick” (page 80). Sil­i­con Val­ley in gen­er­al and Stan­ford in par­tic­u­lar have very unhealthy ten­den­cies, and to the extent we feel ful­ly at home here we reveal unhealth­i­ness in our­selves. In this regard I often reflect on 2 Peter 2:7–8, “Lot, a right­eous man, who was dis­tressed by the depraved con­duct of the law­less (for that right­eous man, liv­ing among them day after day, was tor­ment­ed in his right­eous soul by the law­less deeds he saw and heard).” If we are nev­er dis­tressed at Stan­ford then we are not pay­ing suf­fi­cient atten­tion to God, to Stan­ford, or to both.

Any­way, I hope you are chal­lenged by this week’s read­ing! Remem­ber that next week we are read­ing both the chap­ter on soli­tude as well as the pref­ace.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 199

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

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the news, arti­cles about the Mueller report are con­spic­u­ous by their absence in this week’s email. Apolo­gies if you were hop­ing for some­thing on that, but I find it dif­fi­cult to over­state how unin­ter­est­ed I am in this news cycle.

Also, next week will be vol­ume 200. Should I do any­thing spe­cial? Sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is Reli­gious Decline Inevitable in the Unit­ed States? (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The results are unam­bigu­ous: those with the least amount of edu­ca­tion are con­sis­tent­ly the most like­ly to iden­ti­fy as reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. The far right bar in the graph, indi­cat­ing those with a grad­u­ate lev­el edu­ca­tion are almost always the group that is the most like­ly to be reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed.”
  2. The new reli­gion: why try­ing to be per­fect is doomed to fail (Oliv­er Burke­man, The Guardian): “It’s one thing to seek sal­va­tion in God, or to stop seek­ing sal­va­tion; but the attempt to engi­neer your own sal­va­tion is doomed to fail. We’re flawed and finite, so we lack the capac­i­ty to work, par­ent or romance our way to per­fec­tion. Try to do so and you’ll only end up strug­gling to exert ever more con­trol over your life – where­as deep rela­tion­ships, and oth­er mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences, require giv­ing up con­trol.”
  3. Now We’re Talk­ing: The Excep­tion­al Life of Paul Coates (Wil S. Hyl­ton, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “There weren’t white cats in hoods, burn­ing cross­es and beat­ing up on black peo­ple, but if you walked through town, the moment you got to the black side, the side­walks would dis­ap­pear, the streets would dis­ap­pear, and now you’re walk­ing in dirt. So the racism was subtle—but as your con­scious­ness expands, the sub­tle­ty melts away and the racism becomes more ran­cid to the eyes and nose.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father.
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies are sup­posed to suf­fer … So am I allowed to buy an air con­di­tion­er? (Amy Med­i­na, A Life Over­seas): “If God has called you to work among the upper-class in India, then you’ll need to live like them, in a lux­u­ry apart­ment. If God has called you to work among the coastal tribes of Tan­za­nia, then you’ll need to live like them, in a sim­ple cin­der-block house with a pit toi­let. Each life has its set of chal­lenges. Each life has its set of bless­ings.”
  5. Broke Mil­len­ni­als Are Flock­ing to Finan­cial Guru Dave Ram­sey. Is His Advice Any Good? (Kris­ten Bahler, Mon­ey): “[Young adults are] an audi­ence that mar­keters stake their entire bud­gets on, and he’s speak­ing to them in all the wrong ways. He quotes scrip­ture and Ronald Rea­gan. He calls young peo­ple ‘snowflakes.’ He has absolute­ly no chill, what­so­ev­er. But for a grow­ing swath of millennials—a gen­er­a­tion we’re told is too frag­ile, too god­less, too polit­i­cal­ly correct—his word is gospel.”
  6. Lis­ten­ing at the Great Awok­en­ing (Areo, Darel E. Paul): “…this spring the Great Awok­en­ing final­ly came to my home insti­tu­tion, Williams Col­lege. Admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er cam­pus lead­ers have encour­aged white mem­bers of the col­lege com­mu­ni­ty like myself to lis­ten. Over the past two months, I have striv­en to do exact­ly that…. Lis­ten­ing to these views from mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es helped me real­ize that what seems to be a local dis­course respond­ing to local issues is actu­al­ly a local man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inter­na­tion­al social, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
    • Relat­ed: The End of Empa­thy (Han­na Rosin, NPR): “…new research has scram­bled notions of how empa­thy works as a force in the world. For exam­ple, we often think of ter­ror­ists as shock­ing­ly blind to the suf­fer­ing of inno­cents. But Bre­i­thaupt and oth­er researchers think of them as clas­sic exam­ples of peo­ple afflict­ed with an ‘excess of empa­thy. They feel the suf­fer­ing of their peo­ple.’”
  7. The Gospel of AI: Evan­gel­i­cals Want Tech to Remain Good News (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The doc­u­ment], com­posed by experts in busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy, tech, ethics, and bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy, con­sists of 12 arti­cles, each offer­ing bib­li­cal affir­ma­tions and denials about human nature and var­i­ous impli­ca­tions for the future of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The doc­u­ment empha­sizes God’s pow­er as the author of life and humans’ spe­cial role as image-bear­ers. It most­ly focus­es on con­cep­tu­al and the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works for using AI but also explic­it­ly decries the use of AI for sex­u­al plea­sure as well as ‘manip­u­la­tive and coer­cive’ data col­lec­tion.”
    • See the full doc­u­ment: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: An Evan­gel­i­cal State­ment of Prin­ci­ples: “In light of exis­ten­tial ques­tions posed anew by the emer­gent tech­nol­o­gy of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), we affirm that God has giv­en us wis­dom to approach these issues in light of Scrip­ture and the gospel mes­sage. Chris­tians must not fear the future or any tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment because we know that God is, above all, sov­er­eign over his­to­ry, and that noth­ing will ever sup­plant the image of God in which human beings are cre­at­ed. We rec­og­nize that AI will allow us to achieve unprece­dent­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties, while acknowl­edg­ing the poten­tial risks posed by AI if used with­out wis­dom and care.”

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 Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

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.