Tag: native americans

TGFI, volume 534: unfulfilled hopes and why the ESV is overrated

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.

This week was espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to nar­row down to just 7 top-lev­el group­ings.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Hop­ing for Right­ly Ordered Desires (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “One of the most dif­fi­cult truths to inter­nal­ize in this life is that you are not promised all that you desire, even when your desires are right­ly ordered. For exam­ple, you may desire friend­ship or a spouse or chil­dren or a job, and none of them are giv­en to you. Or at least, not on the time­line you expect. Each of these are good desires, and when you desire them right­ly (not exces­sive­ly, not before God, not as idols, not self­ish­ly), they are good things to desire and work towards. But God, in his per­fect will, does not promise to give us all our earth­ly desires.”
  2. Bureau­cra­tiz­ing Faith (Stephen Eide, Library of Law & Lib­er­ty): “Those con­cerned about anti-Chris­t­ian bias often frame the FBO [faith-based orga­ni­za­tions] ques­tion as a reli­gious lib­er­ty mat­ter. That fram­ing only clar­i­fies whether reli­gious groups can con­tract with gov­ern­ment. It’s less help­ful in deter­min­ing whether they should. In gen­er­al, an orga­ni­za­tion spir­i­tu­al­ly moti­vat­ed to serve the poor may take pub­lic mon­ey to do so, as long as it doesn’t dis­crim­i­nate based on sect and doesn’t use tax­pay­er dol­lars to evan­ge­lize. But evan­ge­lism is pre­cise­ly how FBOs reach some peo­ple failed by sec­u­lar pro­grams.”
    • I real­ly liked this essay. Lots of great insights.
  3. To Be Hon­est.. I’m Strug­gling with the ESV (Loren­zo Figueroa Cusick, Sub­stack): “The ESV has been revised the fol­low­ing times: 2001, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2016, 2025.  And when it is revised, it always claims to be sim­ply mod­est changes to bet­ter improve ‘accu­ra­cy and clar­i­ty’ (accord­ing to Cross­way). We can applaud when a Bible pub­lish­er wants to make the Bible even bet­ter for its users. Where it gets weird is the fact that they don’t iden­ti­fy (like the NASB, for exam­ple) when they do revise it. They don’t label it the ESV2001, ESV2002, ESV2007, etc. This leads to sit­u­a­tions where the Bible in your library or church bag is dif­fer­ent from the one used by the church.”
    • The ESV is a per­fect­ly ade­quate trans­la­tion — but some of the peo­ple who love it love it way too much. I pre­fer the NIV and the NET (which each have their own draw­backs, because no trans­la­tion is per­fect).
  4. Sor­ry, Liz Gilbert, Mar­ried Women Are (Increas­ing­ly) Hap­pi­est of All (Sophie Ander­son and Brad Wilcox, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “There’s only one prob­lem with the pro­gres­sive case against mar­riage and fam­i­ly for women: It’s com­plete­ly wrong. Today, mar­ried women live longer, earn more, and report more mean­ing in their lives, com­pared to sin­gle women. They are also marked­ly hap­pi­er than their sin­gle peers, accord­ing to recent research by psy­chol­o­gist Jean Twenge and col­leagues.… lib­er­al mar­ried moms are dra­mat­i­cal­ly more like­ly to say they are hap­py with their lives, com­pared to their sin­gle and child­less peers.”
    • Relat­ed (at least in my mind): How monog­a­mous are humans? A study ranks us between meerkats and beavers. (Vic­to­ria Craw, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Pre­vi­ous work on the role of monogamy in human soci­ety­has relied on fos­sil records or com­par­i­son of mar­riage norms across cul­tures, Dyble said. His research stud­ied the data from human pop­u­la­tions and non­hu­man mam­mal species to find rates of full sib­lings, mean­ing those born to the same moth­er and father.… Analy­sis of near­ly 2 mil­lion human sib­ling rela­tion­ships and more than 60,000 mam­mal rela­tion­ships showed that the pro­por­tion of full sib­lings in the human groups ‘clus­ters close­ly’ with rates seen in social­ly monog­a­mous ani­mals and ‘con­sis­tent­ly exceeds rates seen in non-monog­a­mous mam­mals,’ Dyble wrote. He said the data showed there was a stark dif­fer­ence between groups that were con­sid­ered social­ly monog­a­mous and non­monog­a­mous, based on def­i­n­i­tions from a 2013 study by Cam­bridge researchers.”
  5. Pay Atten­tion to How You Pay Atten­tion (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “What Meta shows me is what Meta most want me to see, which is what­ev­er their pre­dic­tion mod­els believe will get me to spend as much time on their apps as pos­si­ble. The algo­rithms serve the company’s ends, not my ends. If Meta want­ed to know what I want to see, it could ask me. The tech­nol­o­gy has long exist­ed for users to shape their own rec­om­men­da­tions. These com­pa­nies do not offer us con­trol over what we see because they do not want us to have it. They do not want to be bound by who we seek to be tomor­row.”
    • A good essay with a poor title. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. No, You Are Not on Indige­nous Land (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “Once the log­ic of land acknowl­edg­ments and ‘decol­o­niza­tion’ is fol­lowed, it leads very quick­ly to some very dark futures.… The gen­er­al prin­ci­ple here is that instead of a dark world of eth­nic cleans­ing in the name of ‘decol­o­niza­tion,’ we should try to build a bright future where Native Amer­i­cans and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca exist in har­mo­ny and coop­er­a­tion rather than in con­flict.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed even if you think you know what it will say based on the title and the excerpt. The arti­cle has some sur­pris­es.
  7. The Mak­ing of a Tech­no-Nation­al­ist Elite (Tan­ner Greer, Amer­i­can Affairs): “The eco­nom­ic, social, and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of the East­ern Estab­lish­ment were mutu­al­ly rein­forc­ing pil­lars of a larg­er pro­gram. Mem­bers of the Estab­lish­ment used the wealth gen­er­at­ed by new tech­nolo­gies to secure polit­i­cal influ­ence, used that influ­ence to sus­tain a nation­al mar­ket and legal frame­work geared for yet more tech­no­log­i­cal expan­sion, and then presided over a con­scious effort to pre­serve and trans­mit the val­ues of their class to future gen­er­a­tions, ensur­ing that the uni­ty and dis­ci­pline they gained in shared strug­gle would not dis­si­pate amid pow­er and pros­per­i­ty. Through these means, a tech­no-nation­al­ist elite guid­ed America’s devel­op­ment for more than sev­en­ty years. Under its stew­ard­ship, the Unit­ed States became the world’s wealth­i­est, most indus­tri­al­ly advanced, and most pow­er­ful nation: a true tech­no­log­i­cal repub­lic.… Behind the East­ern Estab­lish­ment stood a dense web of per­son­al ties that bound its fam­i­lies togeth­er. Many of these ties were con­sum­mat­ed, quite lit­er­al­ly, on the mar­riage bed. Karp and Zamiska are loathe to think in these terms. They write a great deal about the engi­neer­ing elite’s wan­ing com­mit­ment to West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, but they have lit­tle to say about its wan­ing com­mit­ment to rais­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of that civ­i­liza­tion. The East­ern Estab­lish­ment was self-con­scious­ly repro­duc­tive: it built schools, endowed uni­ver­si­ties, and found­ed lit­er­al dynas­ties. Part of build­ing ‘a shared cul­ture … that will make pos­si­ble our con­tin­ued sur­vival’ is cre­at­ing the chil­dren who will sur­vive us.”
    • Excel­lent. Long but rec­om­mend­ed. Also, OUCH. The clos­ing four para­graphs of this book review are absolute­ly bru­tal.

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 405

a bunch of depress­ing arti­cles this week

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 405, which is 43 + 53 + 63

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. That Hel­lo Spir­it (Leopold van den Daele & Mat­teo Per­p­er, The Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The admin­is­tra­tion has as its goal the total re-cre­ation of cam­pus social life, a rather mut­ed con­cep­tion of the Spir­it of Stan­ford, from the top-down. They will throw mon­ey at the prob­lem, estab­lish more offices, and more advi­so­ry boards. They will change the fine print of the rules and reg­u­la­tions for throw­ing par­ties, and they will bom­bard you with facts that demon­stra­bly prove all is swell. But we believe that a thriv­ing cam­pus social life emerges nat­u­ral­ly when every­one feels like they belong to one fam­i­ly; it can­not be bought. It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring about the change we want to see, from the bot­tom-up, one inter­ac­tion at a time: Say­ing hel­lo is the heart of com­mu­ni­ty.”
  2. How Con­gress Gets Rich from Insid­er Trad­ing (YouTube): thir­ty well-done min­utes about a bipar­ti­san prob­lem. I’ve read a lot of the arti­cles ref­er­enced before, but this is an excel­lent com­pi­la­tion with impec­ca­ble pre­sen­ta­tion. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. No One Is Immune (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “We went from Chris­t­ian pub­lic fig­ures warn­ing about the social and legal dan­gers of LGBTQ ‘civ­il rights’ to Chris­t­ian pub­lic fig­ures cham­pi­oning LGBTQ ‘civ­il rights’ in just two decades. And in some cas­es, they are the exact same per­son.”
    • A sol­id essay that makes an impor­tant point. Any time your the­ol­o­gy leads you to con­clude that some of God’s laws in the Old Tes­ta­ment are sin­ful (as opposed to mere­ly not bind­ing upon us), your the­ol­o­gy is wrong. This is a wide-rang­ing prin­ci­ple which, when con­sis­tent­ly fol­lowed, will make peo­ple annoyed with you. It is nonethe­less cor­rect. “The Law of the Lord is per­fect” (Psalm 19:7) and “the law is holy, and the com­mand­ment is holy, right­eous and good” (Romans 7:12).
  4. How evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian writer Jemar Tis­by became a radioac­tive sym­bol of ‘wok­e­ness’ (Bob Smi­etana, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Lerone Mar­tin, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Research and Edu­ca­tion Insti­tute at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, said that evan­gel­i­cals have long found it eas­i­er to label Black lead­ers as left­ists or Marx­ists rather than to deal with the real­i­ty of racism.”
  5. The ‘I’ in BIPOC (Sher­man Alex­ie, Per­sua­sion): “And here I must stress that Indi­ans, whether con­ser­v­a­tive, cen­trist, or lib­er­al, have a unique place in the Unit­ed States that BIPOC doesn’t even begin to address. BIPOC is an acronym that’s too plain to accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent Indi­an people’s com­plex rela­tion­ship with our coun­try.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Chi Alpha ‘Men­tor’ Daniel Savala Arrest­ed on Sex Abuse Charges (Josh Shep­herd, The Roys Report): “On Fri­day morn­ing, Savala, 67, was arrest­ed by the U.S. Mar­shals Lone Star Fugi­tive Task Force at his res­i­dence in down­town Hous­ton and booked at the Fort Bend Coun­ty Jail in Rich­mond, Texas. He was charged with con­tin­u­ous sex­u­al abuse of a child under age 14.… On May 23, Chris Hundl, for­mer leader of the Chi Alpha chap­ter at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty and pas­tor of Moun­tain Val­ley Fel­low­ship in Waco, was arrest­ed on iden­ti­cal charges in Waco.… the North Texas Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God (AoG) said its inves­ti­ga­tion of Hundl and oth­ers linked to Savala prompt­ed Hundl’s removal from his pas­toral duties and Chi Alpha lead­er­ship as of May 4. AoG dis­trict offi­cials said they also noti­fied child pro­tec­tive ser­vices in Texas and have rec­om­mend­ed that Hundl be dis­missed as an AoG min­is­ter.”
    • Read­ing this was like get­ting punched in the gut.
  7. Defin­ing Reli­gion in the Court (Mark Movs­esian, First Things): “…a focus on [reli­gion expressed in] com­mu­ni­ty accords with an impor­tant goal of reli­gious free­dom: the pro­mo­tion of pri­vate asso­ci­a­tions that encour­age coop­er­a­tive projects and check state pow­er. As Toc­queville explained, the despot­ic state desires noth­ing more than for indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens to feel iso­lat­ed from and indif­fer­ent to oth­ers, so that it can divide and dom­i­nate them all. By encour­ag­ing peo­ple to iden­ti­fy with and look out for one anoth­er, pri­vate asso­ci­a­tions mil­i­tate against self-cen­tered­ness and social iso­la­tion and help keep the state in check. Reli­gious groups per­form this func­tion espe­cial­ly well. No asso­ci­a­tions have been bet­ter, his­tor­i­cal­ly, at pro­mot­ing coop­er­a­tive social projects and defy­ing state oppression—as dic­ta­tors down the cen­turies have learned.”

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 We Need a New Media Sys­tem (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “The flaw in the sys­tem is that even the biggest news com­pa­nies now oper­ate under the assump­tion that at least half their poten­tial audi­ence isn’t lis­ten­ing. This leads to all sorts of prob­lems, and the fact that the eas­i­est way to keep your own demo­graph­ic is to feed it neg­a­tive sto­ries about oth­ers is only the most obvi­ous. On all sides, we now lean into inflam­ma­to­ry car­i­ca­tures, because the finan­cial incen­tives encour­age it.” From vol­ume 284.

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 370

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 370, a nar­cis­sis­tic num­ber (some­times also called an Arm­strong num­ber). It has three dig­its, and when you raise each dig­it to the third pow­er they sum to the orig­i­nal num­ber: 370 = 33 + 73 + 03. There are only 88 nar­cis­sis­tic num­bers in base 10, and only 4 of those have three dig­its (153, 370, 371, and 407).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. YouTube May Force You to Watch 10 (or More) Unskip­pable Ads in a Row (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “This, my friends, is the web we asked for. We want­ed every­thing for free—but what we real­ly got was a swamp where all the costs are still there, just hid­den. And the expe­ri­ence we have gained from oth­er indus­tries where prices are most­ly hid­den from view—healthcare is the most obvi­ous exam­ple, but of course there are others—is that this usu­al­ly turns out to be the most expen­sive trans­ac­tion of them all.”
    • This is real­ly good!
  2. For Sub­ur­ban Texas Men, a Work­out Craze With a Side of Faith (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “This is F3 — that’s fit­ness, fel­low­ship and faith — a fast-grow­ing net­work of men’s work­outs that com­bine exer­cise with spir­i­tu­al­ly inflect­ed cama­raderie.… I first heard about F3 through a few acquain­tances in Texas, men who spoke about their local groups with the zeal of evan­ge­lists. It remind­ed me of how urban women used to talk with me about Soul­Cy­cle, only these guys were sub­ur­ban fathers.”
    • A Short Sto­ry of Men (David French, The Dis­patch): “What is the short sto­ry of mod­ern men? Life has changed for­ev­er. Ide­o­logues pull men and boys into destruc­tive and unsus­tain­able extremes. Yet vir­tu­ous pur­pose can still be found in the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of the good life. Only a man can be a hus­band, only a man can be a father, and men need male friends. If a man can fill those roles with integri­ty and courage, then doubts about his mas­culin­i­ty should not ever dark­en his heart.”
    • This is a response piece inspired by the above sto­ry about F3.
  3. The Chero­kee Nation is again call­ing on Con­gress to deliv­er on a 200-year-old promise (Harmeet Kaur, CNN): “The Chero­kee Nation is renew­ing its cam­paign for rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Con­gress, call­ing on fed­er­al leg­is­la­tors to hon­or a treaty that the US gov­ern­ment made near­ly 200 years ago. In a video released last week, the trib­al nation reassert­ed its demand that Con­gress seat its del­e­gate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives – a right stip­u­lat­ed by the 1835 Treaty of New Echo­ta.”
    • From what I can tell this is a legit claim: the treaty was approved by the US Sen­ate even though shady things hap­pened on the the Chero­kee side (the treaty was entered into by Chero­kees not autho­rized to nego­ti­ate on behalf of their tribe). I don’t know why this is con­tro­ver­sial: Amer­i­ca took the land, we need to hon­or all the terms of the deal.
  4. ‘Out of con­trol’ STD sit­u­a­tion prompts call for changes (Mike Sto­bbe, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “New syphilis infec­tions plum­met­ed in the U.S. start­ing in the 1940s when antibi­otics became wide­ly avail­able. They fell to their low­est ever by 1998, when few­er than 7,000 new cas­es were report­ed nation­wide. The CDC was so encour­aged by the progress it launched a plan to elim­i­nate syphilis in the U.S. But by 2002 cas­es began ris­ing again, large­ly among gay and bisex­u­al men, and they kept going. In late 2013, CDC end­ed its elim­i­na­tion cam­paign in the face of lim­it­ed fund­ing and esca­lat­ing cas­es, which that year sur­passed 17,000. By 2020 cas­es had reached near­ly 41,700 and they spiked even fur­ther last year, to more than 52,000.”
    • That’s a 26% jump just last year!
    • As STD rates explode, are we still sure God’s way isn’t bet­ter? (Peter Heck, Not The Bee): “There’s more to the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic than a despot­ic list of don’ts. There’s a holis­tic and healthy ide­al that includes rec­og­niz­ing the per­son you are dat­ing is some­one’s future spouse and should be treat­ed with the same dig­ni­ty that we would want anoth­er treat­ing our future spouse. There’s an endur­ing com­men­da­tion of the for­ma­tion of life­long, lov­ing rela­tion­ships built not upon tawdry lusts but self-sac­ri­fi­cial com­mit­ment; the recog­ni­tion that love is not some­thing we feel, but some­thing we do. There’s a self-con­trol that pro­tects human­i­ty and lib­er­ates it from sick­ness and suf­fer­ing. It’s God’s way…”
    • I often think upon this fact: if the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic were uni­ver­sal­ly observed for one gen­er­a­tion STDs would be essen­tial­ly elim­i­nat­ed.
  5. Illib­er­al­ism Is For (Cul­tur­al) Losers (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “Illib­er­al­ism, the deep desire to deny to oth­ers their rights of con­science and belief and prop­er­ty that we our­selves enjoy and to force them into con­for­mi­ty to our vision of the com­mon good by way of coer­cive State pow­er is the last resort of losers. Cul­tur­al losers. Abi­gail Adams would judge that such peo­ple are unfit for lib­er­ty; or at least they are peo­ple who can’t accom­plish any­thing fruit­ful with it. I have a bet­ter idea. Reform our weak insti­tu­tions, and where we can­not, we build bet­ter ones and be cul­tur­al win­ners.”
  6. An ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ men­tal­i­ty on cam­pus­es turns poten­tial friends into allies — or ene­mies (Pamela Paresky and Samuel J. Abrams, Boston Globe): “Accord­ing to an NBC poll released in August, only 20 per­cent of col­lege sopho­mores sur­veyed said they can def­i­nite­ly see them­selves room­ing with some­one who vot­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than they did in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. And more than half said they prob­a­bly or def­i­nite­ly couldn’t see them­selves dat­ing such a stu­dent. Cam­pus cul­ture seems to fur­ther social dis­con­nec­tion rather than fos­ter friend­ship across the polit­i­cal divide.”
    • The authors are schol­ars of psy­chol­o­gy and pol­i­tics, respec­tive­ly. I read this one most­ly because the thumb­nail pre­view is of Stan­ford.
  7. The ‘Liz­zo Play­ing James Madis­on’s Flute’ Con­tro­ver­sy: A Blogger’s Analy­sis (Nick Catog­gio, The Dis­patch): “H ad you heard of Madison’s flute before Liz­zo played it? I hadn’t. I’d heard of her but not it. It was she who lent celebri­ty to the instru­ment, not vice ver­sa. You may find that dispir­it­ing, although I’m not sure why any of us should have base­line knowl­edge about a ran­dom gift giv­en to James Madi­son that played no mean­ing­ful role in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Me, I’m thrilled to have learned about it via this episode. A crys­tal flute! Made for the father of the Con­sti­tu­tion! Played for the first time in 200 years by a celebrity—totally ran­dom­ly! It wouldn’t sur­prise me if it turns out to have mag­i­cal pow­ers and Liz­zo has now been pos­sessed by Madison’s ghost. Which, if so, would make her next con­cert a must-see. But I digress. The last rea­son this sto­ry is instant blog fod­der is because, per the fore­go­ing, it’s quirky as all hell.”

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 Nuclear Fam­i­ly Was a Mis­take (David Brooks, The Atlantic): “If you want to sum­ma­rize the changes in fam­i­ly struc­ture over the past cen­tu­ry, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for indi­vid­u­als and more unsta­ble for fam­i­lies. We’ve made life bet­ter for adults but worse for chil­dren. We’ve moved from big, inter­con­nect­ed, and extend­ed fam­i­lies, which helped pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in soci­ety from the shocks of life, to small­er, detached nuclear fam­i­lies (a mar­ried cou­ple and their chil­dren), which give the most priv­i­leged peo­ple in soci­ety room to max­i­mize their tal­ents and expand their options. The shift from big­ger and inter­con­nect­ed extend­ed fam­i­lies to small­er and detached nuclear fam­i­lies ulti­mate­ly led to a famil­ial sys­tem that lib­er­ates the rich and rav­ages the work­ing-class and the poor.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. From vol­ume 238.

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.