Tag: pandemic

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 312

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.

312 is an idoneal number (which apparently there are only 65, 66 or 67 of — it’s wild how in math you can prove things that seem totally impossible to prove).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bereans Had No Bibles: Re-envisioning Acts 17 (Griffin Gulledge, The Gospel Coalition): “The Bereans had no Bibles. It was rare for average folks in the early church to have an individual copy of the Scriptures. Indeed, it wasn’t until the Reformation era that mass production of God’s Word was even possible. What they had instead was a community—in this case the synagogue—which had a collection of writings we know as the Old Testament.”
  2. How Big Tech Targets Faith Groups for Censorship (Joshua D. Holdenried, Real Clear Religion): “Most tech companies’ user agreements ban content that discriminates on the basis of religion, yet their policies enable them to engage in such discrimination themselves.”
    • That is a very succinct way to express the hypocrisy. Put that sentence in your pocket — you will have occasion to use it more than you’d like in the future.
  3. Becerra and Biden Betray Medical Professionals Being Forced to Assist in Abortions (Roger Severino, National Review):  “The facts were stunning in their clarity, the victim was extremely credible and sympathetic, and the violator remained entirely callous and unrepentant. The UVMMC matter was the most open and shut conscience case in over a decade. I say was, because on Friday, the DOJ quietly, and voluntarily, dismissed the case. No admission of guilt, no injunction, no corrective action, no settlement, no nothing.”
  4. Related to health care:
    • Mistaken identity lands man in Hawaii mental hospital (Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, Associated Press): “Instead, against Spriestersbach’s protests that he wasn’t Castleberry, he was eventually committed to the Hawaii State Hospital. ‘Yet, the more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr. Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the H.S.H. staff and doctors and heavily medicated… despite his continual denial of being Mr. Castleberry and providing all of his relevant identification and places where he was located during Mr. Castleberry’s court appearances, no one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that what Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth – he was not Mr. Castleberry.’ No one believed him — not even his various public defenders — until a hospital psychiatrist finally listened.”
    • Dance Till We Die (Ari Schulman, The New Atlantis): “Covid security theater is when we claim our actions are aimed at fighting Covid, but actually part of our motivation is just to give the impression that we’re fighting Covid. Genuinely fighting Covid may or may not be one of our goals too, but what makes theater theater is that performance is one of our goals.”
      • Provides an interesting defense of wise security theater while also absolutely slamming what we got in its place.
    • Adumbrations Of Aducanumab (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “I worry that people are going to come away from this with some conclusion like ‘wow, the FDA seemed really unprepared to handle COVID.’ No. It’s not that specific. Every single thing the FDA does is like this. Every single hour of every single day the FDA does things exactly this stupid and destructive, and the only reason you never hear about the others is because they’re about some disease with a name like Schmoe’s Syndrome and a few hundred cases nationwide instead of something big and media-worthy like coronavirus. I am a doctor and sometimes I have to deal with the Schmoe’s Syndromes of the world and every f@$king time there is some story about the FDA doing something exactly this awful and counterproductive.”
    • We Walk Among You (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “I do not want my mental illness to be accepted by strangers. I hate it and I hate myself for having it. Mental illness is not an expression of the beauty of every individual who has it but the most ugly element of their most ugly selves.… The worst part of this caricature of kindness towards the mentally ill may seem contradictory: it extinguishes the capacity for mercy. For only the guilty can be shown mercy; that is the most essential quality of mercy, its only meaning. And I am guilty. Many of us who suffer from mental illness are. Perhaps someday our culture will mature enough to understand that what we need is not to be absolved, nor to be exonerated, nor to be excused, but to be forgiven.”
  5. Anatomy of a Bad Idea: Affirmative Consent (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “So you get this huge policy change at hundreds of universities that does effectively nothing to stop sexual assault, infringes on the rights of the accused, and functions as a make-work program for overpaid ‘consultants’ and liberal writers, all while most people quietly recognize that nobody follows it, and support for that empty policy is enforced with missionary zeal not by true believers but almost entirely by people who are too scared to ask whether any of it makes any sense.”
    • My hot take? “No means no” and “yes means yes” are both pale imitations of “I do means I do” — and until we move back from consent to covenant we’re going to have lots of needless suffering.
  6. On Hungary
    1. Hungary is No Model for the American Right (David French, The Dispatch): “If you’ve been a conservative for any length of time, you’ve likely had what I like to call the ‘Sweden conversation,’ or perhaps the ‘Denmark debate.’ A socialist-leaning progressive friend will wax eloquent about the Scandinavian countries that combine high standards of living with generous welfare states and ask, ‘Why not here?’ .… Well, Hungary is the new right’s Denmark. Except that Hungary is a much worse place to live than Denmark.”
    2. “My favorite things Hungary” — my revisionist take (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Way back in 2011, when I was visiting Hungary, I did a post in typical MR style: My Favorite Things Hungary. I had no particular political point in mind, and indeed the current disputes over Hungary did not quite exist back then. Nonetheless, if you survey the list, just about every one of my favorites listed ended up leaving Hungary. The one exception, as far as I can tell, is film director Béla Tarr, but he is a critic of both nationalism and Orban. All the rest left Hungary.”
    3. Unpatriotic ConservativesTM 2021 (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “I can’t think of anything in recent memory that has been more revealing of where we Americans actually stand politically than Tucker Carlson’s visit to Hungary. As I wrote in The Spectator a couple of days ago, Hungary is a country with lots of troubles, including corruption. I won’t go once again into listing all the reasons why it’s important for Western right-of-center people to come here and learn from the Hungarians — I’ve been blogging about that all summer; I invite you to go through the archives here — so I’m going to try to boil it down.”
      • Dreher has a very different perspective than most American commentators, and I include him because his argument is interesting. I truly know almost nothing about Orban or Hungarian politics — but I am intrigued by how divisive Orban is in America.

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 20 Arguments For God’s Existence (Peter Kreeft, personal website): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s presence; and that is something for which to be profoundly grateful. But that does not mean you have no obligation to ponder these arguments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they really need. You may even be asked to provide help.” I was reminded of this by a conversation with an alumnus. The author is a philosophy professor at Boston College. (first shared in volume 116)

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 311

wide-ranging links with a focus on the pandemic

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues (although I skipped last week because I was on vacation and it was glorious). 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 the 311th installment. 311 is something called a permutable prime (aka absolute prime), which means that it is prime no matter how you reorder the digits. In other words because 311, 113, and 131 are all primes they are permutable primes. Nifty!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The New Moral Code of America’s Elite (Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic): “…it’s decent, if you have a problem with someone, to take it up with them before running it up the nearest flagpole. But this is something people with the right views and the best degrees, it seems, simply do not do; just as the distinction between tattling and whistleblowing—resting, as it does, on a sober evaluation of one’s own motives and the stakes at hand—is one they often fail to make.” THIS IS WILD and 100% worth using up a paywall view on.
  2. The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles (Rachel Aviv, New Yorker): “Perhaps the politicians were receptive because the project seemed to be the opposite of the Nazis’ reproductive experiments, with their rigid emphasis on propagating certain kinds of families, or perhaps they were unconcerned because, in their opinion, the boys were already lost.” Actually insane.
  3. “These Bastards Will Never See Our Tears”: How Yulia Navalnaya Became Russia’s Real First Lady (Julia Ioffe, Vanity Fair): “She said, ‘I think there is no chance that they will let him out. He will be in jail for a long time,’ ” Grozev recalls. “You must understand how shocking this conversation was. She’s this wide-eyed, earnest, honest person. She says these things like they’re the most obvious things on earth, but she’s saying very nonobvious things. You have to process what she says before you realize that it’s obvious only in a certain universe.” That universe was the imagined future in which Russia is free and happy.
    • What an absolutely astounding lady. Recommended by a student.
  4. Call it Racism, Not ‘White Supremacy’ (Samuel D. James, Substack): “ ‘Whiteness is a system, not white skin’ is a perfectly plausible reality, but it has the laws of ordinary language working against it, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. My sense is that you can have the language of whiteness or you can have an audience that understands what you’re saying, but you can’t have both.”
  5. A whole passel of pandemic-related articles, all of which are extremely worthwhile.
    • The Noble Lies of COVID-19 (Kerrington Powell & Vinay Prasad, Slate): “Public health messaging is predicated on trust, which overcomes the enormous complexity of the scientific literature, creating an opportunity to communicate initiatives effectively. Still, violation of this trust renders the communication unreliable. When trust is shattered, messaging is no longer clear and straightforward, and instead results in the audience trying to reverse-engineer the statement based on their view of the speaker’s intent.”
    • The Myth of Panic (Tanner Greer, Palladium Magazine): “This is the great lesson of the 2020 coronavirus: We should have been allowed to fear. Alas, our leaders feared our fear more than they feared our deaths. ” The latter half (about the motivations of the ruling class) is particularly insightful. Recommended by an alumnus.
    • ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’ Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients (Dennis Pillion, AL.com): “You kind of go into it thinking, ‘Okay, I’m not going to feel bad for this person, because they make their own choice,’” Cobia said. “But then you actually see them, you see them face to face, and it really changes your whole perspective, because they’re still just a person that thinks that they made the best decision that they could with the information that they have, and all the misinformation that’s out there. And now all you really see is their fear and their regret. And even though I may walk into the room thinking, ‘Okay, this is your fault, you did this to yourself,’ when I leave the room, I just see a person that’s really suffering, and that is so regretful for the choice that they made.” Sobering.
    • Let’s get more people vaccinated (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “Now if I went around tweeting all day ‘don’t take the vaccines unless you’re highly vulnerable, they’re experimental treatments the FDA hasn’t approved because they say they don’t have enough safety data yet’ people would (rightly) get very mad at me. Spreading that message would (rightly) be considered an anti-social and chaotic thing to be doing. But the message is true, and a good way to cut down on its spread would be to make it not be true, rather than trying to informally stigmatize saying it.”
    • The New COVID Panic (Susan Matthews, Slate): “The most important thing to realize is that breakthrough cases are going to continue to surface in our lives. ‘The goal was never to eradicate COVID from being annoying—it was to eradicate it from being a killer,’ said Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician in New York. (She emphasized, again, that the vaccines are very good at doing the latter.) And so even while you have likely heard that breakthrough cases are ‘rare,’ that’s a subjective assessment that is probably worth adjusting upward.”
    • Are COVID Restrictions the New TSA? (Richard Hanania, Substack): “It’s like God was designing the easiest moral and utilitarian question possible. Here we have a situation where a disease 1) Spares children 2) Spares those who behave responsibly; and 3) Therefore has a burden that falls almost exclusively on those who behave irresponsibly.” This is an uneven essay but on the whole quite strong.
    • Good morning. Covid is more mysterious than we often admit. (David Leonhardt, New York Times): “Social distancing and especially vaccination can save lives. But much of the ebb and flow of a pandemic cannot be explained by changes in human behavior. That was true with influenza a century ago, and it is true with Covid now. An outbreak often fizzles mysteriously, like a forest fire that fails to jump from one patch of trees to another.” Super interesting!
  6. Inside a KKK murder plot: Grab him up, take him to the river (Jason Dearen, AP News): “A confidential informant had infiltrated the group, and his recordings provide a rare, detailed look at the inner workings of a modern klan cell and a domestic terrorism probe. That investigation would unearth another secret: An unknown number of klansmen were working inside the Florida Department of Corrections, with significant power over inmates, Black and white.” Odd capitalization decisions aside, a worthwhile story.
  7. The Illusion of Porn “Literacy” (Samuel D. James, First Things): “Education is about discernment, yes, but it is also moral formation. No teacher or administrator interested in keeping her career would advocate a curriculum that treated racism the way porn literacy treats smut, as a substance with which to become better acquainted and a more informed consumer. Likewise, any teacher who invited a CEO of Big Tobacco to give a lecture on why his career is satisfying would be sharply rebuked. What we as a society deem harmful and unjust is taught as such.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Aliens and Pronouns (Dilbert): I am genuinely curious what the popular reaction to this strip will be. I wish I had access to his analytics! He’s going to learn some interesting things about our culture. People on Twitter will lose their minds… but Adams must be gambling that most people will find it funny.
  • Shark Fishing (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine minutes.
  • Strange Ways Airlines Cut Costs (QI, YouTube): four minutes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have Letter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tribune): “Congratulations. You officially have it all — money, power and prestige. All the things that are important, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arrogant, boorish and narcissistic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a gripping letter. Highly recommended. (first shared in volume 99)

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 309

in which I provide my views on sermon originality

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.

TIL that the number 309 is is the smallest number whose 5th power contains every digit at least once. 3095=2,817,036,000,549. I’m really stunned that someone figured that out.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘Sermongate’ Prompts a Quandary: Should Pastors Borrow Words From One Another? (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote of his admiration of a young Presbyterian preacher much respected for his preaching, which was apparently delivered extemporaneously. When a doctrinal dispute erupted in the congregation, however, an adversary recognized that a passage delivered by the preacher had been lifted from an uncredited source. Franklin stuck by the plagiarist. ‘I rather approved his giving us good sermons composed by others,’ he wrote, ‘than bad ones of his own manufacture.’ ”
    • The appropriate principles seem so obvious to me:
    • Never present someone else’s personal stories as though they happened to you. It’s hard to call that anything other than lying.
    • If you gain an insight from someone else, why would you deprive your hearers of that good insight? USE IT. Credit it in the way that seems most appropriate, but a sermon is not a written resource people are going to cite nor one that people are going to track down your references on. I don’t even think plagiarism is the right term in this conversation: there’s no standard way to cite other sermons nor should there be. People who get a bee in their bonnet about this seem so odd to me.
    • In fact, you should always assume that the messages I deliver have been enriched by insights from others. I love God’s Word and I love my students too much to just give them my own limited observations. My own practice: I copy and paste the text into a Word document. Then I begin typing my insights and constructing a rough outline. Then I consult scholarly and sermonic resources and revise my outline/notes when I realize I’ve misunderstood something or that I missed an important point. Typically that means I read two or three commentaries and will sometimes skim one or two sermons from preachers I respect. If someone’s phrasing is so good I adopt it, I usually add, “I heard a pastor say” or “an academic commentary really helped me out on this point” and sometimes will even give the precise source. But not always. Sometimes citing something verbally breaks up the flow too much. Sometimes after an especially fact-laden message I will send out an email roundup of the most important sources (that tends to happen after apologetic sermons when I’m appealing to extrascriptural facts).
    • It gets complicated with insights I gleaned years ago and have preached multiple times since. Sometimes I don’t even remember that it wasn’t original to me (whether clever phrasing or an entire sermon outline). That’s how learning works! I’m not trying to deceive anyone, but I am 100% confident that I word some things a certain way because someone else worded it that way to me and I thought, “that’s perfect” and now that I’ve said it 70 times I just know that’s how I think about the subject.
    • If you ever want to know if something I said is original to me, just ask. If I quoted someone else (and remember that I have), I’ll be thrilled to point you to a resource that helped me!
  2. What Makes a Cult a Cult? (Zoë Heller, New Yorker): “The good news is that rational objections to flaws in cult doctrine or to hypocrisies on the part of a cult leader do have a powerful impact if and when they occur to the cult members themselves. The analytical mind may be quietened by cult-think, but it is rarely deadened altogether. Especially if cult life is proving unpleasant, the capacity for critical thought can reassert itself.” The focus here is on way-out-there cults. Interesting nonetheless, even given the author’s blind spots (I think it would have been a stronger article if she had mentioned a few secular beliefs as parallels).
  3. Our Unequal Polygamous Past (Conn Carroll, Institute for Family Studies): “This brief history of human sexual relations shows us three things: 1) we are hardwired to form monogamous pair bonds; 2) the privileged among us will always try to monopolize more mates; and 3) we can check the privilege of the powerful by enforcing monogamous cultural norms.”
  4. Wokeness:
    • As a Gay Child in a Christian Cult, I Was Taught to Hate Myself. Then I Joined the Church of Social Justice—and Nothing Changed (Ben Appel, Quillette): “For years, I feared homophobic right-wing evangelicals. But these days, I’m equally wary of the progressive activists who push a distinctly homophobic agenda that denies the biological reality of sex—and who claim that what we are attracted to isn’t male or female bodies per se, but rather male or female gender identities. This outlook effectively imagines away the existence of homosexuality, which, in the real world, is of course rooted in physical attraction based on biological attributes.”
    • If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals (Kevin Drum, personal blog): “It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise since progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004. Now, I’m personally happy about most of this. But that doesn’t blind me to the fact that “personally happy” means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years:” Interesting and very different from the message I usually hear, which blames polarization on conservatives who are said to have moved much more to the right than liberals have moved to the left.
    • Culture Wars are Long Wars (Tanner Greer, personal blog): “Cultural insurgents win few converts in their own cohort. They can, however, build up a system of ideas and institutions which will preserve and refine the ideals they hope their community will adopt in the future. The real target of these ideas are not their contemporaries, but their contemporaries’ children and grandchildren. Culture wars are fought for the hearts of the unborn. Future generations will be open to values the current generation rejects outright. This will not be apparent at first. Beneath the official comings and goings of the cohorts above, a new consensus forms in in the cohorts below. Ideas will fester among the young, but their impact will be hidden by the inability and inexperience of youth. But the youth do not stay young. Eventually a transition point arrives.” Emphasis in original.
    • What Happened To You? (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “[We have witnessed a] sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of ‘white supremacy,’ which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.”
    • The West’s cultural revolution is over (Ed West, UnHerd): “Life of Brian couldn’t be made 20 years earlier, and neither could it be made now; its satire of Jesus, a prophet of Islam, would risk upsetting Muslim sensibilities, which it’s fair to say people have become slightly wary of doing. At the very least it would need to cut out the scene pointing fun at a man who, absurdly to the filmmakers and audiences, identifies as a woman; absurd in 1979, as it had been in 1879 and 1779 and in every year before that, but a sacred idea in 2021. It’s sacred in the sense that its believers have captured the moral citadel where the most powerful ideas are protected by taboo, achieved either by emotional argument or intimidation (and both can be effective). This is not some dark new age of cancel culture, however, it’s just a return to normality.”
  5. Pandemic-related
    • Why Didn’t COVID-19 Kill the Constitution? (Jacob Sullum. Reason): “COVID-19 did not kill the Constitution. But the crisis made it vividly clear that we cannot count on politicians or bureaucrats to worry about limits on their authority, especially when they believe they are doing what is necessary to protect the public from a deadly danger. The task of enforcing those limits falls to judges who are willing to stick their necks out.”
    • What Are the Limits to Governmental Authority over the Church? (Ben Edwards, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary): “Christians/churches must submit to every government regulation unless it would mean disobeying God (i.e., cause them to sin) or the government is seeking to regulate something outside its sphere of authority.”
  6. On China
    • China Won’t Bury Us, Either (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Garry Kasparov has a pithy way of summing up the past 18 months of tribulation. ‘China gave us the virus,’ the chess and human-rights champion told me over a recent breakfast. ‘And the free world gave us the vaccines.’ ”
    • Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastrophe for China and the world (Jon Stokes, personal blog): “The world’s largest, most valuable tech companies are dependent either directly or indirectly on the steady output of TSMC’s fabs. If those fabs went offline or became unavailable in the west because they were controlled by PRC, it would immediately devastate the global economy. An unknowable number of large companies just wouldn’t be able to refill their inventories for an indeterminately long time.” This is about computer chips and how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be disastrous for that market (which touches on so many others) no matter how the invasion plays out. Very thoughtful.
  7. Scripps Spelling Bee 2021: Zaila Avant-garde Wins (Maggie Astor and Maria Cramer, New York Times): “Zaila, who just finished eighth grade in her hometown, Harvey, La., showed a prowess for spelling at 10, when her father, who had been watching finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN, asked her how to spell the winning word: marocain. Zaila spelled it perfectly. Then he asked her to spell the winning words going back to 1999. She spelled nearly all of them correctly and was able to tell him the books where she had seen them.” Read the whole thing — this kid is amazing at more than spelling! The interface is weird — you’ll have to click “Read more” just before the timeline.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 308

there are a few articles touching on faith in unexpected ways 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 the 308th installation of this series, and the number 308 is a heptagonal pyramidal number. Pyramidal numbers describe the number of objects required to form a pyramid of a certain height with a given number of sides (in this case, a seven layer pyramid with a heptagonal base).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Academia and faith:
    • Dr. Karin Öberg: Planetary Formation, Faith-Shaping Books, and the Beauty of an Intelligible Universe (Raquel Sequeira, BioLogos): “I feel like there are so many stories of Christians that have had a great struggle in academia and for whom living out their faith has been problematic in different ways. While these people do exist and those struggles are real, I want people to know that this is not always the case. I have had a smooth and joyful journey being very open about my faith at the very secular place that Harvard is.”
    • The turning tide of intellectual atheism (Jonathon Van Maren, MercatorNet): “Not so long ago, the atheists who retreated to their Darwinian towers and bricked themselves up to fire arrows at the faithful wanted to be there. Their intellectual silos were a refuge from faith because they didn’t want Christianity to be true. They hated it and thought we’d be better off without it.… [but v]iewing Western civilisation with its Christian soul cut out, many are now willing to say: ‘We need Christ.’ What they are unable, thus far, to say, is: ‘I need Christ.’ But the political must become personal. Peterson appears to understand that—and is awestruck by the reality of it.” 
  2. When the Aliens Come, Will Their Arrival Destroy Our Faith? (David French, The Dispatch): “…a surprising number of theologians and Christian thinkers have openly considered the possibility of alien intelligence, including in books and essays. The good folks at Biologos have pondered the question. And surveying the literature, there is an interesting amount of consensus about both the key Christian questions and the Christian conclusions about alien life.” David French agrees with me, which is always a happy outcome.
  3. Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling. (Zeynep Tufekci, New York Times): “Nearly every SARS case since the original epidemic has been due to lab leaks — six incidents in three countries, including twice in a single month from a lab in Beijing.” This article is unlocked — you won’t use up your NYT articles reading it.
  4. What Bari Weiss Won’t Tell You About Human Rights and China (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “Perhaps there could be greater trade barriers between the United States and China — but there’s a real risk that doing so could cause major damage to the international economy. And that’s precisely the problem, right? When the fight to treating people with respect and dignity by extending them basic freedoms is such a challenge to the world economic system, you have to acknowledge that there’s something wrong with what that system defines as valuable.”
  5. My Conversation With Winston Marshall (Bari Weiss, Substack): “One of the things that I have noticed is that an inordinate number of people who have been willing to tell the truth and stand up to the new illiberalism, are religious. And I wondered if you could just tell us a little bit more about how your faith guided you through this decision or maybe to put it another way, maybe it’s that your faith anchors you in values that are so much bigger and more eternal than the idiot winds that feel like they’re sweeping through our politics every day.”
  6. A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions (Ariel Sabar, Chronicle of Higher Education): “What should a journal do after publishing a blockbuster paper marred by fraudulent evidence, failed peer review, and undisclosed conflicts of interest? If you’re Harvard Theological Review, the answer appears to be nothing.”
  7. Book Announcement: We Have Never Been Woke (Musa al-Gharbi, personal website): “…the Americans who are the primary producers and consumers of content on antiracism, socialism, feminism, etc. also happen to be among the primary beneficiaries of gendered, racialized and other forms of inequality – and not passive beneficiaries. We are active participants in exploiting and reproducing inequalities. And yet, it is difficult for us to ‘see’ how we contribute to the problem — precisely because of our deeply felt commitments to social justice. So we expropriate blame to others… often people who benefit far less from the system than we do, and exert far less influence over it.” The author is a sociologist at Columbia, and this book looks like it will be straight fire.

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 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.” (first shared in volume 148)

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 306

some really outstanding 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 306, which is an interesting number because 306 = 71 + 73 + 79 + 83 and is therefore the sum of consecutive primes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. American Passover (Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch): “Juneteenth is a good thing for all Americans, not just black Americans, to celebrate.… I’m at a loss to understand why celebrating the end of slavery is anything but good. In particular, I’m at a loss to understand why seeing white Americans celebrate the end of slavery is anything but good.”
  2. What We Learned Doing Fast Grants (Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen, and Patrick Hsu, Future): “In our survey of the scientists who received Fast Grants, 78% said that they would change their research program ‘a lot’ if their existing funding could be spent in an unconstrained fashion. We find this number to be far too high: the current grant funding apparatus does not allow some of the best scientists in the world to pursue the research agendas that they themselves think are best. Scientists are in the paradoxical position of being deemed the very best people to fund in order to make important discoveries but not so trustworthy that they should be able to decide what work would actually make the most sense!” EXTREMELY worth reading.
  3. Why Has “Ivermectin” Become a Dirty Word? (Matt Taibbi, Substack): “A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution — disallow calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done.”
    • This is ridiculous. Dig into it yourself — it’s crazytown. The prescient Lewis nailed it years ago: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” (from the underappreciated God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics)
  4. Christians, Beware the Blame Game (Carl Trueman, First Things): “By all means, call out the moral failings of Christians, congregations and denominations, left and right; but be specific, do so without slander and vitriol, and make a clear distinction between the church and the specific failings to which you allude in order to promote clear thinking. And remember—if your critique of Christians is not balanced by a Pauline emphasis on the church, the body of Christ, as the answer to the world’s problems, you ultimately offer no true Christian commentary on the contemporary scene. For as soon as you see the church herself as part of the problem, you have lost the gospel and deprived yourself and your audience of hope.”
  5. Some religious freedom news and commentary:
    • Four Things You Need to Know After a Huge Day at SCOTUS (David French, The Dispatch): “Very few comments about the Fulton case have emphasized a critical part of its ruling—that Philadelphia has very limited ability to force city contractors to contract away their First Amendment rights.… When the government expands—and government contracts and government funds touch more American lives and institutions—opposing partisans frequently demand that those funds come with ideological strings attached.” Sadly paywalled, but the best commentary on the ruling I’ve read. If you’re an avid news consumer, The Dispatch is well worth a subscription.
    • From the court, a vindication of faith-based service. From Alito, a blueprint for the future. (Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, SCOTUSblog): “At the end of the day, Fulton is an important rebuke to overzealous government officials who weaponize anti-discrimination laws against traditional religious belief. Brace yourself for the response of disgruntled progressives.”
    • Supreme Court Backs Catholic Agency in Case on Gay Rights and Foster Care (Adam Liptak, New York Times): “The decision, in the latest clash between antidiscrimination principles and claims of conscience, was a setback for gay rights and further evidence that religious groups almost always prevail in the current court.”
    • Justice Department says it can defend religious schools’ exemption from anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws (Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post): “To others, including supporters of President Biden, the administration had no other option, since federal civil rights law regarding education — called Title IX — exempts religion. They noted the purpose of the department’s filing, which was to block conservative religious groups from becoming parties to the lawsuit, arguing the agency can defend the exemption on its own.”
    • A frank analysis of the dynamics: No, the Biden Administration Isn’t Betraying Its Support for LGBTQ Rights (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate): “The best way to prevent the federal judiciary from adopting CCCU’s extreme stance is to stop the organization from making it before a court in the first place. That is presumably one reason why the Justice Department strongly opposed the group’s request to intervene, insisting on Tuesday that the administration can defend the Title IX exemption just fine by itself. The DOJ’s latest filing does not imply that the agency is exceedingly enthusiastic about the exemption, but rather that the Biden administration can be trusted to support the law’s legality in court.”
  6. The Peril of Politicizing Science (Anna I. Krylov, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters): “The Cold War is a distant memory and the country shown on my birth certificate and school and university diplomas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. But I find myself experiencing its legacy some thousands of miles to the west, as if I am living in an Orwellian twilight zone. I witness ever-increasing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship. Just as in Soviet times, the censorship is being justified by the greater good.” The author is a professor of chemistry at USC.
  7. Some Stanford news:
    • Stanford therapists allege ‘hostile climate’ for Jews in the workplace (Gabe Stutman, Jewish News of Northern California): “Two Jewish mental health professionals at Stanford’s on-campus counseling clinic have filed workplace discrimination complaints after what they call ‘severe and persistent’ anti-Jewish harassment from colleagues. Dr. Ronald Albucher, a psychiatrist and associate professor in the medical school, and Sheila Levin, a therapist specializing in eating disorders, describe being pressed into joining a ‘whiteness’ affinity group by staffers with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program, being told they were ‘privileged,’ and seeing antisemitic incidents downplayed.”
    • When the medalists aren’t the money-makers (Jasmine Kerber, Stanford Daily): “If athletic directors were rewarded for Olympic sports every bit as much as for football and men’s basketball, you would see different behavior,” Hogshead-Makar said.

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 some thoughts about slavery and the Bible – Does The Bible Support Slavery? (a lecture given by the warden of Tyndale House at Cambridge University, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Condone Slavery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Testament) and also Part Two – New Testament (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Christian Thinktank). All three are quite helpful. (first shared in volume 76)

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 304

fascinating links — enjoy

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 the 304th installment, an interesting number because it is the sum of consecutive primes. 304 = 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sinning in the Rain: Weather Shocks, Church Attendance and Crime (Jonathan Moreno-Medina, The Review of Economics and Statistics): “Based on a panel between 1980 and 2016, I find that one more Sunday with precipitation at the time of church increases yearly drug-related, alcohol-related and white-collar crimes.” Fascinating. The author is a Ph.D. candidate in econ at Duke.
  2. America Loses Religion, Somewhat (Lyman Stone, National Review): “Americans today are more likely to be part of a religious community than they were in 1800; the change over time can be characterized neither by a gradual decline from a religiously pristine past nor by the onward march of rational thinking.”
  3. Some thoughts on race in America:
    • When Our Forefathers Fail (David French, The Dispatch): “Humanity has not transformed its fundamental nature in the last 100 years. A nation full of people no better than us can do great good. A nation full of people no worse than us can commit great evil. Remembering our nation’s virtues helps give us hope. Remembering our sin gives us humility. Remembering both gives us the motivation and the inspiration necessary to repair our land.”
    • T. D. Jakes on How White Evangelicals Lost Their Way (Emma Green, The Atlantic): ‘Where I’ve tried to focus is on the white pastors who spoke out and tried to say something positive that was misunderstood. And I literally got on the phone with some of them and encouraged them to keep talking. Their immediate reaction was “I got it wrong; I’m not going to broach that subject again. I’m going to stay away from it. I’m just not going to talk about it.” And if we do that, we’ll never get better. We have to keep talking.’ The title is pretty misleading — that’s definitely not the vibe you pick up from the article itself.
    • What Happens When Doctors Can’t Speak Freely? (Katie Herzog, Bari Weiss’ Substack): “‘Whole research areas are off-limits,’ he said, adding that some of what is being published in the nation’s top journals is ‘shoddy as hell.’  Here, he was referring in part to a study published last year in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. The study was covered all over the news, with headlines like ‘Black Newborns More Likely to Die When Looked After by White Doctors’ (CNN), ‘The Lack of Black Doctors is Killing Black Babies’ (Fortune), and ‘Black Babies More Likely to Survive when Cared for by Black Doctors’ (The Guardian). Despite these breathless headlines, the study was so methodologically flawed that, according to several of the doctors I spoke with, it’s impossible to extrapolate any conclusions about how the race of the treating doctor impacts patient outcomes at all. And yet very few people were willing to publicly criticize it.”
    • Those Who Didn’t Make the List (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “I absolutely believe that we can theoretically build admissions systems that increase diversity and inclusion, including specifically for Black and Hispanic applicants, without perpetuating other kinds of injustice. I just have zero faith our actually-existing universities and employers will put them together. Why do good when it’s so much easier to appear to be good?”
  4. COVID perspectives:
    • Why the Lab Leak Theory Matters (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “First, to the extent that the United States is engaged in a conflict of propaganda and soft power with the regime in Beijing, there’s a pretty big difference between a world where the Chinese regime can say, We weren’t responsible for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because we’re strong and they’re decadent, and a world where this was basically their Chernobyl except their incompetence and cover-up sickened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe.”
    • Media Groupthink and the Lab-Leak Theory (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “If the lab-leak theory is finally getting the respectful attention it always deserved, it’s mainly because Joe Biden authorized an inquiry and Anthony Fauci admitted to doubts about the natural-origin claim. In other words, the right president and the right public-health expert have blessed a certain line of inquiry. Yet the lab-leak theory, whether or not it turns out to be right, was always credible. Even if Tom Cotton believed it.”
    • The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins (Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair): “A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.” Long, detailed.
  5. A Dangerous State of Affairs (Kevin Williamson, National Review): “In Dallas, a recent class for those seeking a license to carry was well attended in spite of the fact that Texas is about to implement ‘constitutional carry,’ under which no license would be required to carry a firearm that the carrier is legally eligible to own. Middle-aged African Americans made up almost exactly one half of that class. Black buyers account for about one in five of the guns sold nationwide in recent years, and Hispanic buyers a similar share. And about one in five buyers last year were first-time buyers.”
  6. Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law (Richard Hanania, Substack): “The US seems to elect some of the most conservative politicians in the Western world, but has perhaps the wokest institutions. Civil rights law makes all major institutions subject to the will of left-wing bureaucrats, activists, and judges at the expense of normal citizens.”
  7. I read two surprisingly complementary articles about abortion this week:
    • Abortion as an Instrument of Eugenics (Michael Stokes Paulsen, Harvard Law Review): “If the intuition of the wrongness of trait-selection abortion has moral salience — the intuition that it is simply wrong to kill a fetus for reasons of race, sex, or disability — it is because of the implicit recognition of the humanity of the fetus. If killing a fetus because she is female (or Black, or disabled) is thought horrible, it can only be because the human fetus is thought to possess moral status as human — because ‘it’ is a baby girl or a baby boy, a member of the human family.” The author is a law professor at the University of St. Thomas. The article itself is very long. Unless you are in law school, reading the introduction, section IV, and the conclusion is probably enough.
    • Dawkins is wrong – grossly wrong – about Down’s syndrome (Simon Barnes, Tortoise): “[Dawkins] is in the position of the brilliant philosopher telling us that the table at which we are sitting does not exist.”

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 How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Criticism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Taylor, Gospel Coalition): “A believer is one who identifies with all that God affirms and condemns in Christ’s crucifixion. In other words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judgment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s justification of me. Both have a radical impact on how we take and give criticism.” This is based on a longer article (4 page PDF). (first shared in volume 63)

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 303

topics range from the pandemic to a Biblical view of UFOs

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 the 303rd edition, which is fun because 303 is a lucky number, a category of numbers that gives us insight into prime numbers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Dr. Francis Collins Discusses The Complexities Of Herd Immunity (Colbert Report, YouTube): seven minutes. Dr. Collins is a fellow believer and eminent scientist. He flat-out shares his testimony! Recommended by an alumnus.
  2. Why I Didn’t “Just Bake the Cake” (Jack Phillips, First Things): “My commitment to God and to the truth of a book I believe to be his holy Word is the defining premise of my life, the focus of my faith, and the guiding directive for my actions. If you ask me to separate all of that from my work, from my decisions, from my art … I simply can’t do that. Not just won’t—can’t. It’s like asking a contractor to build a great building, but first remove the foundation.”
  3. It’s Time to Develop a Biblical Ufology (Kyle Beshears, Theology in the Middle): “What is the relationship, if any, between UAP phenomena and Christian angelologies and demonologies? How does the doctrine of the imago Dei fit in? Can our theology of the fall address extraterrestrials? What if they arrive denying the lordship of Christ (Gal 1:8; 1 John 2:22)? What if they arrive proclaiming the lordship of Christ (Rom 10:9)?”
  4. The Myth of the Value-Neutral Market (Mark Movsesyian, First Things): “The neutral market does not create tolerance for diverse views; rather, it’s the other way around. Tolerance for diverse views creates the neutral market; when tolerance disappears, the market becomes as polarized as everything else.”
  5. The future of war is bizarre and terrifying (Noah Smith, Substack): “The world may yet explode into another WW2-style conflagration, or the kind of nuclear holocaust we feared during the Cold War. If so, then my bet is that drones will dominate that battlefield. But most of the modern military technologies led themselves to a very different kind of great-power war — a war of constant sniping and harassment. Assassin drones, cyberattacks, info ops, and bioweapons raise the possibility of never-ending low-grade attacks that are below the threshold of massive retaliation.”
  6. For Cosmopolitan Christians, Secular Approval Is a Common Temptation (Justin E. Giboney, Christianity Today): “We need Christians who aren’t smitten with the culture or merely proficient at regurgitating its liturgy. We need believers who can wrestle with secular thought, affirming the merits and opposing the lies. Christians must be confident and distinctly Christian in our fields—boldly speaking up when the emperor is striding around with no clothes. When change is necessary, we must correct the mistakes of our elders by moving closer to the Bible, not further from it.”
  7. Some thoughts about Wuhan:
    • The media’s lab leak fiasco (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “If something is a 70–30 issue but the 30 are keeping their heads down, it can look like a 98–2 issue.… There is just more disagreement and dissension than you would know unless you took the time to reach out to people and speak to them in a more relaxed way. My strong suspicion is that this is true across domains of expertise, and is creating a lot of bubbles of fake consensus that can become very misleading.”
    • Checking Facts Even If One Can’t (Zeynep Tufekci, Substack): “If anything, all this overreach and hurry to declare everything a conspiracy theory or ‘not following the science’ just helps erode what trust authorities or fact-checkers may have had in their pronouncements. Imagine that in a few years, we do get some evidence that really helps resolve the question one way or the other, and the scientific community were indeed able achieve a consensus of sorts. Who’d believe it after this?”
    • The Considerable, If Circumstantial, Evidence of a Wuhan Lab Leak (Jim Geraghty, National Review): “Perhaps the least plausible argument in opposition to the lab-leak theory is that the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or other Chinese facilities are just too diligent to ever make a consequential mistake. The original SARS virus had accidentally leaked from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing, part of China’s Center for Disease Control. Twice.” The compilation of the evidence is compelling. To use a legal image, if I was a on a jury I’d vote to convict unless the opposing counsel had some slam dunk arguments — and in this situation the opposing counsel is frantically trying to get the case dismissed before it comes to court.

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 Every Place Has Detractors. Consider Where They’re Coming From. (Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave danger in judging a neighborhood, or a culture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those people are least likely to appreciate the good things about where they came from, and the most likely to dwell on its less attractive qualities.” Bear this in mind when listening to conversion testimonies (both secular and religious). (first shared in volume 62)

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 300

some of the articles have higher-quality arguments than the norm

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 300, which is how many Spartans it takes to fend off a Persian army.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. When Men Behave Badly — A Review (Rob Henderson, Quillette): “Intriguingly, men and women converge in their answers when asked what percentage of men would be willing to commit rape. Women estimate that about one-third of men would commit rape if there were no consequences, and about one-third of men report that they would commit rape if they believed they could get away with it.” The author is a PhD candidate at Cambridge reviewing a book by a professor at UT Austin. Extremely interesting throughout. Highly recommended.
  2. Proof That Political Privilege Is Harmful for Christianity (Nilay Saiya, Christianity Today): “In a peer-reviewed study published this month in the journal Sociology of Religion, my coauthor and I challenge the perceived wisdom that education and affluence spell Christianity’s demise. In our statistical analysis of a global sample of 166 countries from 2010 to 2020, we find that the most important determinant of Christian vitality is the extent to which governments give official support to Christianity through their laws and policies. However, it is not in the way devout believers might expect.”
  3. The Redemption of Justin Bieber (Zach Baron, GQ): “And then there is God. If you ask Chance the Rapper why he and his friend seem so happy in an industry that tends to grind people to dust, he will answer without hesitation. ‘Both of us, our secret sauce is Jesus,’ Chance says. ‘Justin doesn’t fake the funk. He goes to Jesus with his problems, he goes to Jesus with his successes. He calls me just to talk about Jesus.’ ”
  4. In Deciding Fulton v. Philadelphia, the Supreme Court Should Remember That Foster Care Is for the Children (James Dwyer, National Review): “But foster care is not a public accommodation nor a service to ‘the public.’ Children are not generic goods for sale (like donuts or cups of coffee), to which everyone has an equal right. Instead, when the government is making decisions on behalf of foster children, it is obligated to act only in that child’s best interest.” The author is a law prof at William and Mary and this article is really good.
  5. Pandemic-related:
    • COVID-19 Rewired Our Brains (Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review): “At some point, the pandemic — the provisional and practical judgments in favor of caution that can justify restrictive behaviors — became an unshakeable moral purpose. Actual weighing of risks went out the window: There’s a deadly disease out there; my actions can contribute to the end of the disease or to its spreading in perpetuity. ” This articulates something I’ve dimly felt. Very good.
    • The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “But personal decisions during the coronavirus crisis are fraught because they seem symbolic of people’s broader value systems. When vaccinated adults refuse to see friends indoors, they’re working through the trauma of the past year, in which the brokenness of America’s medical system was so evident. When they keep their kids out of playgrounds and urge friends to stay distanced at small outdoor picnics, they are continuing the spirit of the past year, when civic duty has been expressed through lonely asceticism. For many people, this kind of behavior is a form of good citizenship. That’s a hard idea to give up.”
    • Believe Science: Get Vaccinated. Then Relax. (Bari Weiss, Substack): “In other words, once we are stuck inside it is very hard to unstick ourselves. I’m trying to remind myself of this truth when I find myself wanting to berate friends who, fully vaccinated, look at me with crazy eyes when I suggest coming over for dinner. PTSD might be too strong a descriptor, but it’s not so far off either.”
    • Data Shows White Evangelicals And Catholics More Likely to Get Vaccine Than ‘Nones’ and General Public (Ryan Burge, Religion Unplugged): “…when the sample is broken down into the three of the largest religious groups: White evangelicals, White Catholics and the religiously unaffiliated, some disparities begin to emerge. It’s noteworthy that White Christians were significantly more likely to get the vaccine than the general public between January and April. In the latest wave of the survey, nearly 60% of White Catholics had been vaccinated and just about half of White evangelicals said the same. It was the religious “nones” that were lagging far behind, with only 31% indicating that they had received one dose.” That is definitely not the impression I’ve gotten from the media, but it is the impression I’ve gotten from my friends. The author is a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University.
    • Patents are Not the Problem! (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “Patents are not the problem. All of the vaccine manufacturers are trying to increase supply as quickly as possible. Billions of doses are being produced–more than ever before in the history of the world. Licenses are widely available.… Plastic bags are a bigger bottleneck than patents. The US embargo on vaccine supplies to India was precisely that the Biden administration used the DPA to prioritize things like bioreactor bags and filters to US suppliers and that meant that India’s Serum Institute was having trouble getting its production lines ready for Novavax. CureVac, another potential mRNA vaccine, is also finding it difficult to find supplies due to US restrictions (which means supplies are short everywhere).” Loosely related, but such a glorious rant I had to share it.
    • The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? (Nicholas Wade, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists): “Science is supposedly a self-correcting community of experts who constantly check each other’s work. So why didn’t other virologists point out that the Andersen group’s argument was full of absurdly large holes? Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.” Very thorough, very readable, very persuasive. There is a real chance humans are responsible for COVID and we need to investigate it.
  6. How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker): “Despite the fact that most adults carry around exceptionally good camera technology in their pockets, most U.F.O. photos and videos remain maddeningly indistinct, but the former Pentagon official implied that the government possesses stark visual documentation; Elizondo and Mellon have said the same thing.”
  7. I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait (Elizabeth Bruenig, New York Times): “But what of having children — or getting married, for that matter — before establishing oneself? That is: What to say to the young person who might consider those kinds of commitments if not for the finality of it all, the sense that she may be making somebody else before knowing who she herself really is?”

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 Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis): It was originally preached as a sermon and then printed in a theology magazine. Related: see the C. S. Lewis Doodle YouTube channel – it’s really good! (first shared in volume 36)

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 299

so many entertaining tidbits at the end — way more than normal

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 the 299th installment of these emails. 299 is, I am told, the most pieces into which a simple object (like a cube or a sphere — something without a weird structure) can be split using 12 straight cuts.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why You’re Christian (David Perrell, personal blog): “…I’m a tepid non-believer myself.… [However] I realized that society’s most passionate critics, most of whom claim to be secular, usually have the most Christian values of all. They’ve studied in elite universities, they live in major cities, and they’re proud members of the intelligentsia. Human rights, a centerpiece of their moral outlook, is inconsistent with the rest of their worldview. Though they pride themselves on evidence-based thinking, they’re intellectually bankrupt on the topic of human rights.”
    • Related (at least in my mind): What Became of Atheism, Part One: Wearing the Uniform (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “…if God exists then that is the single most important fact in the history of creation and nothing else can take its crown, ever. If a being exists, of whatever nature, who created reality, exists within all of reality, set reality’s physical and moral rules, watches over all of reality, judges all of us on how devout and moral we are, and determines reward and punishment based on that judgement, that clearly is the truth that trumps all other truths. Strange to let it slip out of the debate quietly in the night. But then I suppose that’s culture war; sooner or later the only question that remains is who is on what side of the line, and all the rest dissolves.”
  2. Justice-related thoughts:
    • ‘The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood Is Crying to Me From the Ground’ (David French, The Dispatch): “…we can articulate three truths of simple, individual justice. First, a grave wrong creates a moral and spiritual cry for redress. Second, it is the role of government to provide that redress. And third, the government must be impartial, treating ‘great and small’ alike. All too many Americans are completely unaware of the extent to which the present structures and habits of American law fail to meet those basic obligations, especially when injustice is visited upon the citizen by the state.”
    • Chauvin Was Convicted. Something Is Still Very Wrong. (Elizabeth Bruenig, New York Times): “Forgiveness doesn’t feel particularly triumphant. It’s a gift no one wants to be in the position to give; it releases a wrongdoer from moral debt — for their own good and the common good, not for the sake of the wronged.… But I want to live in a world where it is possible to forgive and to be forgiven. In fact, I think it’s necessary.”
    • The Real Reason to End the Death Penalty (Paul Graham, Substack): “But in practice the debate about the death penalty is not about whether it’s ok to kill murderers. It’s about whether it’s ok to kill innocent people, because at least 4% of people on death row are innocent.” I find this a really interesting line of argument. Clearly we want to have a 100% accuracy rate in all criminal convictions. But is 96% accuracy outrageously intolerable? To the extent that it becomes a persuasive argument against the death penalty isn’t that then also an argument against imprisonment? Or virtually any punishment?
    • Unjust Secular Justice (Matthew Schmitz,First Things): “While in the colonial era most cases went to trial (and most trials lasted a stunningly short thirty minutes), more and more are now resolved by a plea bargain. Nowhere is our abandonment of colonial ideas of criminal justice more apparent than in no-contest pleas that allow defendants to receive lighter sentences without any admission of guilt.” This is an older book review (2013) but is quite good.
    • Outrage Overload (Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch): “Modern policing—or even policing qua policing—owes far less to slave patrolling than NASA owes to Hitler’s rocket program. And yet no one talks about the troubling Nazi roots of modern space exploration, or asks Elon Musk if he’s exorcised the ghost of Werner Von Braun from SpaceX. I have seen this slave patrol thing brought up countless times in interviews, and not once have I seen an interviewer say, ‘Really?’ never mind, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ It’s as batty as any conspiracy theory, and it’s a deliberate attempt to heap innuendo on policing in lieu of making an intelligent argument. And that’s what frustrates me to no end. It’s the job of journalists to call out B.S. when it’s being thrown in their faces.”
  3. Where Two or Three Are Gathered (William J. Haun & Daniel L. Chen, Law & Liberty): “Over 40 amicus briefs lambasted this embrace of open-ended government surveillance—reflecting an ideological agreement so wide that NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina and Wisconsin Right to Life joined the same brief. On the surface, widespread consensus in favor of associational privacy is surely welcome. But this agreement masks equally widespread, decades-long confusion over how and why the Constitution protects free association.” Quite good, a bit dry. The authors are lawyers with the Becket Fund.
  4. “Wokeness is a problem and we all know it” (Sean Illing interviewing James Carville, Vox): “We won the White House against a world-historical buffoon. And we came within 42,000 votes of losing. We lost congressional seats. We didn’t pick up state legislatures. So let’s not have an argument about whether or not we’re off-key in our messaging. We are. And we’re off because there’s too much jargon and there’s too much esoterica and it turns people off.” Carville is a legendary Democratic political strategist and he is in full-on old man rant mode here.
  5. ‘This Is a Catastrophe.’ In India, Illness Is Everywhere. (Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times): “New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36 percent — meaning more than one out of three people tested were infected. A month ago, it was less than 3 percent.”
    1. Related: ‘Death Is the Only Truth.’ Watching India’s Funeral Pyres Burn. (Aman Sethi, New York Times): “The Indian government has ordered Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to take down dozens of posts criticizing its handling of the pandemic. But the graphic images of mass cremations have cut through this wall of noise, misinformation and propaganda, capturing what epidemiologists call ‘excess mortality’ in gruesome detail.”
  6. Columbia Stone (T.A. Krasnican, Substack): “This public forgetfulness is the same indifference that in 1938 inspired Adolf Hitler, after issuing orders for his Nazi ‘death-head formations’ to ‘send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language,’ to write the famous phrase, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ Public ambivalence about human tragedy emboldened him.” Recommended by a student.
  7. Individualism is associated with happy countries, but not people (Zaid Jilani, Substack): “In a recently released study, team of researchers studied young adults across four countries — China, the United States, Russia, and Italy — starting with the hypothesis that levels of life satisfaction would be higher among individuals who have individualistic values. At the country level, this is indeed what they found. Countries with a higher index of individualistic values had more life satisfaction — that put America on top, followed by Italy, Russia, and then China. But an entirely different picture emerged when they looked at the individual level. There, they found that individualism had no impact on life satisfaction. Instead, life satisfaction was positively correlated with collectivism, regardless of the wider culture of the country.” My take: Americans are on average happier than the Chinese because of the freedoms which emerge from our individualism, but the happiest individuals in each country are those that freely choose to embrace family and community.

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Washington Post): People can be healthy. Food can be nutritious. This is a wonderful essay about how we misuse language to our detriment. If you’re surprised I included this, I believe that our culture has a quasi-religious relationship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of language is profoundly moral and that our culture is a linguistic mess (to which I know of no finer guide than The Underground Grammarian). (first shared in volume 33)

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 298

surprisingly little from the news this week — just randomly interesting things

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 298, which is a fairly uninteresting number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. New Rule: Give It to Me Straight, Doc (Bill Maher, YouTube): eight minutes. This is a very good clip about COVID misinformation, although the language is not family-friendly. It goes in a direction I did not expect towards the end.
    • Related: Why do so many vaccinated people remain irrationally fearful? Listen to the professor’s story. (David Leonhardt, New York Times): “To take just one example, major media outlets trumpeted new government data last week showing that 5,800 fully vaccinated Americans had contracted Covid. That may sound like a big number, but it indicates that a vaccinated person’s chances of getting Covid are about one in 11,000.… A car trip is a bigger threat, to you and others. About 100 Americans are likely to die in car crashes today. The new federal data suggests that either zero or one vaccinated person will die today from Covid.”
  2. On Good Parties (Tara Isabella Burton, Breaking Ground): “A Good Party is a place where bonds of friendship, fostered in a spirit of both charity and joy, serve as the building blocks for communal life overall. The wedding feast, that abundant banquet of Christian life, is always prefigured in the convivial symposium of friendship. The kingdom of heaven, when it comes, will be a very Good Party. Good Parties don’t merely offer us the opportunity to gather with those we love. Rather, more importantly, they teach us how to love.” This is really quite something. I like it a lot.
  3. The Question That Dictates How Christians Approach Culture and Politics (David French, The Dispatch): “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that one explanation for profoundly different Christian approaches to politics and culture rests with different answers to the following question: Does the primary threat to the church come from within the church or without? Put differently, does the church stumble and fall primarily because of the sins of the church or because of the cultural and political headwinds directed against the church?”
    • In Here, Out There: On Assessing Spiritual Threats (Dan Darling, Substack): “At times when we are combating cultural ideas, we are not arguing with the world, but trying to equip the next generation of Christians whose faith will be challenged by ideas that run contrary to Scripture. Our people are inundated on every side by messages that are at odds with Jesus’ teachings. Pop culture, social media, friends, etc form a powerful influence on this cohort of young people.” Not a rebuttal, but a complement.
  4. It’s Time for Social Conservatives to Stop Fawning Over Hungary (Lyman Stone, The Public Discourse): “What made Hungary’s family policy work wasn’t the populism, but the boring technocracy of it. Flashy populist programs failed, while just pushing cash out the door to families (as is the norm in countries like Sweden, Denmark, or Norway, all of which have higher birth rates than Hungary) worked. American conservatives should learn from this: if you want a higher birth rate, you’re going to have to pay for it.” This was way more interesting than I anticipated.
  5. Why is Everything Liberal? (Richard Hanania, Substack): “In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral. This is not what we find.” This is basically one really good observation expounded in detail. The author, a political scientist, is a research fellow at Columbia University.
  6. Reparations: A Critical Theological Review (Kevin DeYoung, Gospel Coalition): “With tax collectors and soldiers throughout the Gospels, there is no talk of restitution for imperial supremacy or extractive systems, nor any summons to dismantle the structures they inhabited, just the straightforward command to live a godly life, be generous to others, and repay what you have stolen.” Well done book reviews are amazing. This is as good as the best reviews by Scott Alexander.
  7. The Great Unsettling (Paul Kingsnorth, Substack): “We in the West invented this thing called ‘modernity’, and then we took it out into the world, whether the world wanted it or not. Once we called this process ‘the white man’s burden’ and exported it with dreadnoughts. Now we call it ‘development’ and export it via the World Bank.” Wide-ranging.

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 Is What Makes Republicans and Democrats So Different (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skeptical, but there are some good insights in this article (first shared in volume 32 back in 2016).

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.