Tag: politics

Some Thoughts About The Election

This is an email I sent to the stu­dents in my min­istry the morn­ing fol­low­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion:

I would like to say some­thing to the despon­dent and the jubi­lant: the despon­dent should not be too despon­dent and the jubi­lant should not be too jubi­lant.

To The Despondent:

You just woke up and feel as though you woke up in a dif­fer­ent coun­try than the one you thought you lived in. You feel as though you don’t belong. I want to encour­age you: this will pass. There are rarely per­ma­nent defeats in pol­i­tics. You will get anoth­er try at the pres­i­den­cy in four years and at the leg­isla­tive branch in two years. Remem­ber when Oba­ma rode into office? The Democ­rats had the House, the Sen­ate, and the Exec­u­tive Branch along with most state guber­na­to­r­i­al and leg­isla­tive offices. The days of the Repub­li­can par­ty seemed over, yet now the Repub­li­cans have usurped the Democ­rats in every one of those roles. Your turn will come again. Be patient.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you in the mean­while:

1) If you did not reg­is­ter to vote, do it now while you’re moti­vat­ed. It will not take much time and is one of the few pro­duc­tive things you can actu­al­ly do right now.

2) You may be tempt­ed to blame the oth­er side’s vic­to­ry on the basest of motives. The oth­er side is racist. The oth­er side is misog­y­nis­tic. The oth­er side is dri­ven by hate. Please hear this: they don’t think they are. “But they are — I know it!” Even if you are right that there are vile motives float­ing around inside their souls, you will not change their minds by point­ing that out. Instead, you must under­stand your oppo­nents in order to per­suade them. If you are gen­uine­ly shocked that a large chunk of Amer­i­cans are afraid of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and what it would have done with four to eight more years of pow­er, you need to read more wide­ly.  Add to your read­ing list authors such as Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Ross Douthat, Thomas Sow­ell, Matthew Lee Ander­son, Rus­sell Moore, Rod Dreher, and David French. If you use Twit­ter, fol­low each of them. If you don’t, pay atten­tion to their writ­ings. They pop up from time to time in the Fri­day emails I send out — begin delib­er­ate­ly read­ing the entries you think you’ll dis­agree with. Also, con­sid­er watch­ing Fox News from time to time.

3) Pray. This is some­thing you will have a chance to do at Chi Alpha tonight. #just­say­ing

To The Jubilant:

It’s a good feel­ing when your side wins. Enjoy the moment, but rec­og­nize how ephemer­al it is. When­ev­er one par­ty sweeps into pow­er across mul­ti­ple branch­es of gov­ern­ment, cor­rup­tion and infight­ing ensues. Your team is like­ly in for a rough time two years from now in the midterm elec­tions and will face a seri­ous chal­lenge four years down the road.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you:

1) Rec­og­nize that some of your friends are gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fied right now. Peo­ple who are made in God’s image — some of whom are your broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ — are in pain. Be empa­thet­ic. Even if you think that their emo­tions are overblown, acknowl­edge that their emo­tions are real.

2) Pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. Politi­cians rarely deliv­er what you hoped for. The Democ­rats did­n’t deliv­er immi­gra­tion reform when Oba­ma was in office even though the Democ­rats held the House and the Sen­ate. The Repub­li­cans will almost cer­tain­ly get bogged down on issues that lat­er prove to be incon­se­quen­tial and as a result will let some of your high­est pri­or­i­ties slip out of their grasp. Two years is not that long and Repub­li­can offi­cials will refuse to believe that’s prob­a­bly all the time they have.

To Everyone:

Yes­ter­day Amer­i­ca elect­ed a pres­i­dent for the next four years, but we know the King who reigns for­ev­er. So acknowl­edge the pres­i­dent, “but in your hearts revere Christ as Lord” (1 Peter 3:15a).

Remem­ber Philip­pi­ans 3:20: “our cit­i­zen­ship is in heav­en. And we eager­ly await a Sav­ior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Elec­tions mat­ter, but eter­ni­ty mat­ters more. Keep per­spec­tive today and always.

God bless and I hope to see you at wor­ship tonight. I’ll talk more about these things there and we will pray.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 74

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Men Are More Like­ly to Be Sex­u­al­ly Attract­ed to Their Oppo­site-Sex Friends (Drake Baer, Sci­ence of Us): “the study found that guys are more like­ly to define a female friend as ‘a mem­ber of the oppo­site sex to whom I am attract­ed and would pur­sue giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty’ and ladies to define their oppo­site-sex friends as sim­ply ‘a friend of the oppo­site sex.’” For an amus­ing take on this idea, see this three-minute video (it’s got over 9 mil­lion views).
  2. The New Evan­gel­i­cal Moral Minor­i­ty (Kele­fa San­neh, New York­er): this is a well-writ­ten essay focus­ing on the South­ern Bap­tist ethi­cist Rus­sell Moore, of whom I am a huge fan and with whom I usu­al­ly agree. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, although the author’s snark shows through occa­sion­al­ly. The author, inci­den­tal­ly, is the son of famed Chris­t­ian mis­si­ol­o­gist Lamin San­neh.
  3. In Love and Mar­riage, Prac­tice Doesn’t Make Per­fect (Scott Stan­ley, Psy­chol­o­gy Today):  “We found that hav­ing more sex­u­al and cohab­it­ing part­ners before mar­riage is asso­ci­at­ed with low­er rela­tion­ship qual­i­ty once mar­ried. In par­tic­u­lar, hav­ing only ever lived with or had sex with one’s spouse was asso­ci­at­ed with high­er mar­i­tal qual­i­ty.” The author is a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver. The research upon which this arti­cle was based is avail­able here.
  4. Pos­i­tive Par­ent­ing is Ide­al, But Many Chil­dren Need Time-Outs, Too (Robert Larzelere, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Yes, the worst out­comes were for the type of author­i­tar­i­an par­ent­ing that Dr. Coul­son oppos­es, which can be defined as strict enforce­ment with­out love. But the sec­ond-worst 10-year out­comes were for over­ly per­mis­sive par­ents…” When we sing that God is a good, good Father we should should remem­ber we are cel­e­brat­ing the fact that he both encour­ages and dis­ci­plines. 
  5. North Kore­a’s War On Chris­tian­i­ty: The Globe’s Num­ber One Reli­gious Per­se­cu­tor (Doug Bandow, Forbes): “[Chris­t­ian Sol­i­dar­i­ty World­wide] reports doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of believ­ers being ‘hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steam­roller, herd­ed off bridges, and tram­pled under­foot.’”
  6. The Case Against Democ­ra­cy (Caleb Craine, The New York­er): I’m a monar­chist, truth be told. In the King­dom I call home we don’t get a vote, but we wel­come any­one who wish­es to immi­grate. Join us! #king­je­sus  

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 73

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Here is the 2010 arti­cle I men­tioned in my ser­mon: Study of the ther­a­peu­tic effects of prox­i­mal inter­ces­so­ry prayer (STEPP) on audi­to­ry and visu­al impair­ments in rur­al Mozam­bique (Google schol­ar link). And the book I men­tioned, Mir­a­cles by Craig Keen­er, is in Green Library at BS2548 .K44 2011. 
  2. The Bur­ial Place Of Jesus Exposed For The First Time In Cen­turies: An Inter­view On What It Orig­i­nal­ly Looked Like And How We Know This Is The Right Loca­tion (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “Read­ers might won­der, though, how we know this is real­ly the place Jesus was buried…. What does the Bible say? How about archae­ol­o­gy? Do we know what first-cen­tu­ry tombs looked like? How big were these tombs?”
  3. Papyrus offers non­bib­li­cal men­tion of Judean king­dom in Jerusalem (Michael Chabin, Reli­gion News Service): “Israeli archae­ol­o­gists have unveiled the ear­li­est known non­bib­li­cal Hebrew-lan­guage ref­er­ence to Jerusalem, dat­ing back to the time of the First Tem­ple in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry B.C.” Note that there is some con­tro­ver­sy about the papyrus.
  4. Nei­ther Trump Nor Clin­ton Is The End Of The Repub­lic (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “[Amer­i­ca] sur­vived chat­tel slav­ery that made a mock­ery of found­ing prin­ci­ples, Shay’s Rebel­lion, the Whiskey Insur­rec­tion, the burn­ing of its cap­i­tal by the British, the Trail of Tears, The Dred Scott deci­sion, the afore­men­tioned civ­il war, the assas­si­na­tions of pres­i­dents, Plessy vs. Fer­gu­son, an impe­ri­al­ist for­ay into the Philip­pines, the Espi­onage and Sedi­tion Acts, a flu pan­dem­ic that killed 20 mil­lion world­wide and an esti­mat­ed 675,000 Amer­i­cans, the Great Depres­sion, the glob­al rise of fas­cism, World War II, an expan­sion­ist Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship with nuclear weapons that infil­trat­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment, Jim Crow, Water­gate, urban riots, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion, and the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. But now it’s all over [because of this elec­tion].” See also Friedersdorf’s arti­cle How  Mil­lions Of Good Peo­ple Can Vote Dif­fer­ent­ly Than You Will.
  5. The Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quences of Law (Joe Bosquin, Builder): “Large, sweep­ing statutes like Prop 13 have con­se­quences that con­tin­ue to man­i­fest decades after they are passed. In this case, it’s a dearth of entry-lev­el hous­ing.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 72

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some­one is Learn­ing How To Take Down The Inter­net (Bruce Schneier, per­son­al blog): Schneier is one of the most trust­ed voic­es in the field of com­put­er secu­ri­ty. For a fol­low-up, see this arti­cle which includes thought­ful mus­ings on the prob­a­bil­i­ty and con­se­quences of such a take­down.
  2. Scan­dal? What Scan­dal? (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard):  “A recent NBC poll found that only 19 per­cent of Amer­i­cans approve of the media, a rat­ing well below that of Clin­ton or even Trump. And the mis­sives in Podesta’s inbox reveal good rea­sons for the medi­a’s rep­u­ta­tion to be in the dump­ster.” For a less alarmed take, see Wik­iLeaks and the Oily Wash­ing­ton Press (Jack Schafer, Politi­co).
  3. Relat­ed: The Fact Check­ers Keep Destroy­ing Fact-Check­ing (Tim­o­thy Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Lots of jour­nal­ists, includ­ing myself, wor­ry about what hap­pens when the pub­lic broad­ly los­es faith in the media.”
  4. The Guilt-free Gospel of Don­ald Trump (Daniel Burke, CNN): a help­ful expla­na­tion of Trump’s reli­gious beliefs.
  5. One third-par­ty can­di­date has a real shot at gain­ing elec­toral votes, and you may not have even heard of him: How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Pres­i­den­cy (Ben­jamin Mor­ris, FiveThir­tyEight): for what it’s worth, I have heard a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple I respect say that they will vote for McMullin instead of Trump or Clin­ton. These peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­als and are not at all rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. As a result they know he will not win the elec­tion, but feel he is some­one they can vote for with a clear con­science.
  6. How to Cut Cake Fair­ly and Final­ly Eat It Too (Eri­ca Klar­re­ich, Quan­ta Mag­a­zine): “Two young com­put­er sci­en­tists have fig­ured out how to fair­ly divide cake among any num­ber of peo­ple, set­ting to rest a prob­lem math­e­mati­cians have strug­gled with for decades. Their work has star­tled many researchers who believed that such a fair-divi­sion pro­to­col was prob­a­bly impos­si­ble.”
  7. This Is The Most Under-Report­ed Con­flict In The World Right Now (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog): Ethiopia is fac­ing tough times.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 71

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Set Our Hearts On Fire Again (Zac Hicks, Desir­ing God) : “Christ-cen­tered wor­ship [is] a cycli­cal process of two actions. Let’s call those actions dis­place­ment and replace­ment.” This one was rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The real meat is the last half.
  2. The Shift from Author­i­ty to Preference—And Its Con­se­quences for the Church (Os Guin­ness, 9 Marks): This is long but worth­while. “in today’s world, free­dom of con­science is con­fused with free­dom of choice and there­fore ren­dered duti­less and shorn of its rights.”
  3. A Fight In The Lep­er Colony (Doug Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “what we [have] is a vile woman run­ning against a vile man, and we must choose between them, God says, because we are a vile peo­ple. We get a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign between a cor­rup­to­crat and a clown, and this is because God has now nar­rowed our choice down to what would best rep­re­sent this stiff-necked gen­er­a­tion.” For a more gen­tle approach, see Joe Carter’s insight­ful Why Evan­gel­i­cals Are Divid­ed Over Trump and the inter­view with Rus­sell Moore titled The Evan­gel­i­cal Civ­il War.
  4. The New Cul­ture Of Life (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “In con­ver­sa­tions over the past sev­er­al weeks with activists and oth­er young peo­ple who care deeply about end­ing abor­tion, I found many who are skep­ti­cal of the movement’s long-held ties to the GOP and the Chris­t­ian right. Instead, they are using the lan­guage of fem­i­nism, human rights, and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment to make their case for a new cul­ture of life.”
  5. Chi­na tar­gets par­ents with reli­gion rules in Xin­jiang (Al Jazeera): a take on China’s reli­gious crack­down from a Mus­lim per­spec­tive. “While Chi­na offi­cial­ly guar­an­tees free­dom of reli­gion, minors are not sup­posed to par­tic­i­pate in reli­gious activ­i­ty.” 
  6. Real Insights About Pornog­ra­phy and Mar­riage (Nick Wolfin­ger, blog): “Even more curi­ous is the role of reli­gion. Porn only seems to threat­en mar­i­tal sta­bil­i­ty for cou­ples who don’t attend church reg­u­lar­ly” (empha­sis added). The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy.
  7. Human Rights Cam­paign threat­ens Johns Hop­kins over New Atlantis “Sex­u­al­i­ty and Gen­der” report (Al Mohler, The Brief­ing): “One of the things Chris­tians must keep in mind is that sci­ence is a human endeav­or. Sci­ence sim­ply doesn’t exist inde­pen­dent of, well, sci­en­tists, that is human beings. It isn’t some kind of inde­pen­dent author­i­ty…. That is to say, there is no such thing as a sci­ence that is free of ide­ol­o­gy when it comes to human beings, after all, study­ing them­selves.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 70

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

This edi­tion is com­ing out ear­ly in the morn­ing because I’m about to hop on a plane to preach at a retreat in Vir­ginia. Your prayers for fruit­ful min­istry are appre­ci­at­ed!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Red Tape: Chi­na Wants To Con­strict Chris­t­ian Activ­i­ties With 26 New Rules (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): there are inter­est­ing par­al­lels between the way Stan­ford reg­u­lates stu­dents and how states such as Chi­na and Rus­sia reg­u­late their cit­i­zens. #seri­ous­lytho
  2. How Chris­tian­i­ty Flour­ish­es (Jared Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): “I can­not find any­where in the New Tes­ta­ment where it teach­es Chris­tians how to be a major­i­ty pres­ence in the world.”
  3.  Jon­ah Gold­berg On Why He Won’t Vote For Hilary or Trump (Seth Steven­son, Slate): the Solzhen­it­syn quote alone makes the arti­cle worth­while.
  4. Why Believ­ing In Mir­a­cles Could Be Haz­ardous To Your Health (David Brig­gs, Wash­ing­ton Post): if you think med­i­cine and faith are opposed to each oth­er, you have bad the­ol­o­gy. Matthew 9:12 seems rel­e­vant.
  5. Don’t Take A Test On A Hot, Pol­lut­ed Day (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I find both of these results hard to believe which doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that they shouldn’t be believed.”
  6. Is glob­al­iza­tion bad for the glob­al poor? This study ran an exper­i­ment to find out. (Vox): “Some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as glob­al­iza­tion is nev­er going to be just good or just bad. We need to divide the good and the bad, and fig­ure out how to address the lat­ter with­out elim­i­nat­ing the for­mer.”
  7. Undo­ing Insu­lar­i­ty: A Small Study of Gen­der Soci­ol­o­gy’s Big Prob­lem (Char­lot­ta Stern, Econ Jour­nal Watch): “gen­der soci­ol­o­gy insu­lates its sacred beliefs from ideas that chal­lenge those beliefs, even when the chal­leng­ing ideas are very well-ground­ed. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between the sex­es are minor and that the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences between (or among) the gen­ders are the result of social process­es and have lit­tle basis in bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 69

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. 
  2. A Col­lege Is A Com­mu­ni­ty But It Can­not Be A Home (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): for­get col­lege. This whole world is not your home — 1 Peter 2:11; Hebrews 13:14.
  3. Is Pla­gia­rism A Sin? (Ger­vase Markham, per­son­al blog): this is well-argued and rais­es issues I had not con­sid­ered before.
  4. Split Over Don­ald Trump and Cut Off by Cul­ture Wars, Evan­gel­i­cals Despair (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY Times): an unusu­al­ly per­cep­tive piece from the often obliv­i­ous-to-reli­gion New York Times.
  5. Sci­ence Denial­ism: Pot. Ket­tle. Black. (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): a nuclear physi­cist gives an stim­u­lat­ing sum­ma­ry of cos­mo­log­i­cal fine-tun­ing and how both the­ists and skep­tics often mis­un­der­stand it.
  6. Eco­nom­ic Free­dom and Reli­gion: An Empir­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tion (SSRN): “Our cross-sec­tion­al dataset includes 137 coun­tries aver­aged over the peri­od 2001–2010. Sim­ple cor­re­la­tions show that Protes­tantism is asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic free­dom, Islam is not, with Catholi­cism in between.”
  7. Can Islam and Lib­er­al­ism Coex­ist? (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Sha­di Hamid. “Dur­ing the course of our con­ver­sa­tion… we dis­cussed why lib­er­als have trou­ble tak­ing reli­gion seri­ous­ly, the future of Islamist pol­i­tics in Turkey and Egypt, and what the rise of Don­ald Trump has meant for Amer­i­can Mus­lims.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 67

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Ice­break­ers Are Ter­ri­ble. They Also, Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Work Real­ly Well (Cari Romm, NY Mag­a­zine): “Is there any val­ue to mak­ing a room­ful of peo­ple mis­er­able with false cheer? Psy­chol­o­gist Anton Vil­la­do is adamant that the answer is yes, and that ice­break­ers don’t have to be pleas­ant to be effec­tive.” Rel­e­vant for the start of the school year.
  2. Reli­gion in US ‘worth more than Google and Apple com­bined’ (Har­ri­et Sher­wood, The Guardian): “the sums spent by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions on social pro­grammes have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9bn. Twen­ty of the top 50 char­i­ties in the US are faith-based, with a com­bined oper­at­ing rev­enue of $45.3bn.” There’s some excel­lent com­men­tary on this at Crux.
  3. The First Coun­try to Offi­cial­ly Defend Chris­tians Per­se­cut­ed by ISIS (World Watch Mon­i­tor at Chris­tian­i­ty Today): It’s Hun­gary. Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter for Human Resources said, “Today, Chris­tian­i­ty has become the most per­se­cut­ed reli­gion, where out of five peo­ple killed [for] reli­gious rea­sons, four of them are Chris­tians.… In 81 coun­tries around the world, Chris­tians are per­se­cut­ed, and 200 mil­lion Chris­tians live in areas where they are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”
  4. Why Not a Col­lege Degree in Sports? (Roger Pielke Jr., NY Times): “Beyond our cul­tur­al bias­es, what real­ly is the dif­fer­ence between a Shake­speare play, an orches­tra con­cert and a bas­ket­ball game? Each per­for­mance requires some high-lev­el com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and men­tal acu­ity, devel­oped through years of train­ing and study, and for which only a select few reach elite lev­els.” There is a sim­i­lar arti­cle back in issue 44.
  5. Time For A Realign­ment (NY Times, David Brooks): “There’s a good chance many of you will be switch­ing polit­i­cal par­ties over the next 15 years.” This is true both for the rea­sons Brooks men­tions and also because some of you will change your minds.
  6. The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 66

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
  2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
  3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
  4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
  5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
  6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
  7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
  8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 65

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The health effects of reli­gious ser­vice atten­dance (red­dit AMA): the researcher, Tyler Van­der­Weele, is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and a believ­er. You can see his Ver­i­tas talks here.
  2. If you’re not a sports per­son, you may not know that the San Fran­ci­c­so 49’s quar­ter­back recent­ly refused to stand for the nation­al anthem because Amer­i­ca is unjust. Con­tro­ver­sy ensued. Two alum­ni shared rel­e­vant arti­cles: Col­in Kaeper­nick Is Righter Than You Know: The Nation­al Anthem Is a Cel­e­bra­tion of Slav­ery and the salti­er Why I’ll Nev­er Stand Again For ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner’. Doug Wil­son offered good insights at The Seat­ed Col­in Kaeper­nick. See also Be Use­ful (A Post About Col­in Kaepernik) by Scott Adams and Insult­ing Col­in Kaeper­nick Says More About Our Patri­o­tism Than His by Kareem Abdul-Jab­bar. For a con­trary view, see Col­in Kaeper­nick, Meet Hen­ry John­son (David French, Nation­al Review).
  3. Framed. (Christo­pher Gof­fard, LA Times): this is one of the cra­zi­est things I have read all year. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Heads up: there is a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in the sto­ry and it is not a pos­i­tive one.
  4. What sci­ence real­ly has to say about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der (Joe Carter, ERLC): this is a read­able sum­ma­ry of a 144 page PDF writ­ten by Paul McHugh (a psy­chi­a­trist at Johns Hop­kins) and Lawrence May­er (an bio­sta­tis­ti­cian at Ari­zona State). From the orig­i­nal arti­cle: “Sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty resist expla­na­tion by sim­ple the­o­ries. There is a large gap between the cer­tain­ty with which beliefs are held about these mat­ters and what a sober assess­ment of the sci­ence reveals.”
  5. How The Catholic Church Doc­u­ment­ed Moth­er Tere­sa’s 2 Mir­a­cles (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “The group rea­soned that if Duf­fin, as an athe­ist, found there was no sci­en­tif­ic rea­son the woman should have recov­ered, who could doubt it was a mir­a­cle? In fact, after her inves­ti­ga­tion of the wom­an’s recov­ery, Duf­fin agreed that the wom­an’s heal­ing was — for lack of a bet­ter word — mirac­u­lous.” The Pope and I dis­agree about a lot of things (includ­ing saints), but I have long been impressed with the way the Catholic Church crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ates mir­a­cles.
  6. FBI Says For­eign Hack­ers Pen­e­trat­ed State Elec­tion Sys­tems (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News): I am con­vinced we are way more vul­ner­a­ble on this front than most peo­ple know.
  7. The Sneaky Pro­gram To Spy On Bal­ti­more From Above (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In real­i­ty, unlike in 1984, Big Broth­er may watch for awhile with­out reveal­ing that there is a Big Broth­er.”
  8. Wait­ing To Die (Michael Pat­ton): well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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