Tag: north korea

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 281

inter­est­ing things from Christ­mas week 2020

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.

As fore­told, slight­ly delayed this week and will like­ly be a day off next week as well.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Apply­ing Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples in the work­place (Vann Ky, per­son­al blog): “These prin­ci­ples have helped me devel­op work ethics and make an impact, not just at my cur­rent com­pa­ny but also when I was a col­lege stu­dent.” Vann is an alum­na.
  2. When You Can’t Just ‘Trust the Sci­ence’ (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Last month [the CDC’s] Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Immu­niza­tion Prac­tices pro­duced a work­ing doc­u­ment that’s a mas­ter­piece of para-sci­en­tif­ic effort, in which ques­tions that are legit­i­mate­ly med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic (who will the vac­cine help the most), ques­tions that are more logis­ti­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal (which pat­tern of dis­tri­b­u­tion will be eas­i­er to put in place) and moral ques­tions about who deserves a vac­cine are all jum­bled up, assessed with a form of pseu­do-rig­or that resem­bles some­one bluff­ing the way through a McK­in­sey job inter­view and then used to jus­ti­fy the con­clu­sion that we should vac­ci­nate essen­tial work­ers before seniors … because seniors are more like­ly to be priv­i­leged and white.”
    • Why Did So Many Doc­tors Become Nazis? (Ash­ley K. Fer­nades, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “It is wor­thy of empha­sis that although many pro­fes­sions (includ­ing law) were ‘tak­en in’ by Nazi phi­los­o­phy, doc­tors and nurs­es had a pecu­liar­ly strong attrac­tion to it. Robert N. Proc­tor (1988) notes that physi­cians joined the Nazi par­ty in droves (near­ly 50% by 1945), much high­er than any oth­er pro­fes­sion. Physi­cians were sev­en times more like­ly to join the SS than oth­er employed Ger­man males.” The author is a physi­cian and a bioethi­cist at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. 
    • Ore­gon Hos­pi­tals Did­n’t Have Short­ages. So Why Were Dis­abled Peo­ple Denied Care? (Joseph Shapiro, NPR): “There’s no rea­son that these exam­ples would occur more fre­quent­ly in Ore­gon than in oth­er states. But the fight for that anony­mous woman with an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty peeled back the cur­tain on health care deci­sion-mak­ing in Ore­gon in a way that did not hap­pen in oth­er states. That activism led to change in Ore­gon — includ­ing anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion and new statewide poli­cies.”
    • How Much Herd Immu­ni­ty Is Enough? (Don­ald G. McNeil, New York Times): “In a tele­phone inter­view the next day, Dr. Fau­ci acknowl­edged that he had slow­ly but delib­er­ate­ly been mov­ing the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, part­ly based on new sci­ence, and part­ly on his gut feel­ing that the coun­try is final­ly ready to hear what he real­ly thinks.”
  3. The Death and Life of an Admis­sions Algo­rithm (Lilah Burke, Insid­er High­er Edu­ca­tion): “For exam­ple, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion con­tain­ing the words ‘best,’ ‘award,’ ‘research’ or ‘Ph.D.’ are pre­dic­tive of admis­sion — and can lead to a high­er score — while let­ters con­tain­ing the words ‘good,’ ‘lass,’ ‘pro­gram­ming’ or ‘tech­nol­o­gy’ are pre­dic­tive of rejec­tion. A high­er grade point aver­age means an appli­cant is more like­ly to be accept­ed, as does the name of an elite col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty on the résumé. With­in the sys­tem, insti­tu­tions were encod­ed into the cat­e­gories ‘elite,’ ‘good’ and ‘oth­er,’ based on a sur­vey of UT com­put­er sci­ence fac­ul­ty.”
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, the crit­i­cisms peo­ple made of the algo­rithm are not actu­al­ly crit­i­cisms of the algo­rithm. They are crit­i­cisms of the admis­sions com­mit­tee itself.
  4. An Advent Lament in the Pan­dem­ic (Michael Luo, The New York­er): “The pan­dem­ic in 2020 has held a mir­ror to Chris­tian­i­ty, just as the epi­demics of antiq­ui­ty did, but today’s reflec­tion car­ries the poten­tial to repulse rather than attract.”
    • Curi­ous­ly, the spe­cif­ic exam­ples he cites are most­ly pos­i­tive but he allows the neg­a­tive exam­ple to col­or the entire piece. This is what I have seen as well — vir­tu­al­ly all church­es are act­ing respon­si­bly but the pub­lic focus is on the ones that aren’t.
  5. Why Does It Mat­ter that Jesus Was Born of a Vir­gin? (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Even if pro­fess­ing Chris­tians accept the vir­gin birth, many would have a hard time artic­u­lat­ing why the doc­trine real­ly mat­ters.”
  6. A Game Design­er’s Analy­sis of QAnon (Reed Berkowitz, Medi­um): “When I saw QAnon, I knew exact­ly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays peo­ple.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  7. 117 Wit­ness­es Detail North Korea’s Per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Drawn from expe­ri­ences stretch­ing from 1990 to 2019, KFI’s report lists scores of vio­la­tions. These include 36 instances of pun­ish­ment met­ed out to fam­i­ly mem­bers, 36 instances of tor­ture, and 20 exe­cu­tions. Women and girls rep­re­sent 60 per­cent of the vic­tims.… Chris­tians total near­ly 80 per­cent: 215 cas­es.” The 98 page report which inspired this arti­cle is Per­se­cut­ing Faith:Documenting reli­gious free­dom vio­la­tions in North Korea

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 Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” First shared in vol­ume 214.

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 91

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. The Cri­sis of Lib­er­ty In The West (Ryan Ander­son, Her­itage Foun­da­tion): “Free­dom today is under­stood as a mat­ter of indifference—a free­dom from con­straint. But free­dom right­ly under­stood is a free­dom for—a free­dom for excel­lence.” This. Read this.
  2. Gen­der Rever­sal Teach­es Uncom­fort­able Lessons (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “How would the Trump-Clin­ton debates have been per­ceived if the gen­ders had been reversed? Two pro­fes­sors worked with trained actors to dupli­cate not just the words but also the man­ner­isms of Trump and Clinton–only with a female actor play­ing Trump, now called Bren­da King, and a male actor play­ing Clin­ton, now called Jonathan Gor­don.” The pro­fes­sors found the oppo­site of what they expect­ed. There is a video clip so you can judge for your­self. A lit­tle mind-blow­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can Car­nage (Christo­pher Cald­well, First Things): “Call­ing addic­tion a dis­ease use­ful­ly describes cer­tain mea­sur­able aspects of the problem—particularly tol­er­ance and with­draw­al. It fails to cap­ture what is spe­cial and dan­ger­ous about the way drugs bind with people’s minds. Almost every known dis­ease is some­thing peo­ple wish to be rid of. Addic­tion is dif­fer­ent. Addicts resist known cures—even to the point of death.” A pow­er­ful arti­cle.
  4. There’s Enough Time To Change Every­thing (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If I were loose­ly gath­er­ing top­ics of study into cat­e­gories, I might call them arts, reli­gion, schol­ar­ship, and sci­ence. As impor­tant as schol­ar­ship and sci­ence are, arts and reli­gion are more impor­tant” A wide-rang­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Yale pro­fes­sor David Gel­ern­ter. This one is long.
  5. Faith Is Chang­ing The Way Peo­ple Think About Music (Marc Barnes, Rel­e­vant): “The cre­ative arts have a long his­to­ry of tak­ing to what is taboo in the pub­lic square. It is no sur­prise that they are tak­ing reli­gion, the ugly duck­ling of mod­ern sec­u­lar life, under their wing.”
  6. North Korea Is Prac­tic­ing For Nuclear War (Jef­frey Lewis, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “What­ev­er restraint Kim or Trump might show — and let’s be hon­est, our expec­ta­tions here are not high — each will face enor­mous pres­sure to start the attack lest his oppo­nent beat him to the punch.” Ouch.
  7. 10 Ques­tions for Sha­di Hamid (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “It’s not so much that [devout Mus­lims] want to die; it’s more that they are ready to die, and it doesn’t fright­en them as much as it might fright­en some­one else, because they believe there’s a pret­ty good chance that they’ll be grant­ed par­adise espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to killed while they’re in the mid­dle of an act that they con­sid­er to be in the ser­vice of God and his mes­sage.” The inter­view­er is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in genet­ics at UC Davis and the inter­vie­wee is a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. Also worth read­ing is Rod Dreher’s reac­tion piece Islam: The Last Badass Reli­gion.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.