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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 305

more sub­lists 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.

305 is appar­ent­ly the 5th ‘hexag­o­nal prism num­ber’, which total­ly sounds made up and I am slight­ly skep­ti­cal of. This is because 305 = (n + 1)(3n2 + 3n + 1) where n=4 (pre­sum­ably the first hexag­o­nal prism num­ber is 1, when n=0).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Fad­ing of For­give­ness (Tim Keller, Car­dus): “In oth­er words, we no longer ground our val­ues in the sacred. We sim­ply treat the val­ues them­selves as sacred.… When the moral norms are detached from faith in a just God, it detach­es them also from faith in a mer­ci­ful and for­giv­ing God. In such a ‘sec­u­lar reli­gion,’ devi­a­tion from norms is sim­ply unfor­give­able.” Full of insights.
  2. Lov­ing the Foreigners—Even When They Have a Dead­ly Dis­ease (Hwee Hwee Tan, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While migrant work­ers had long lived chal­leng­ing lives in Sin­ga­pore, it was their unique vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing the cir­cuit-break­er peri­od that real­ly woke up local Chris­tians to the need to help them—in both the short and long term.”
  3. A cri­sis inside Amer­i­ca’s largest evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tion:
    • Rus­sell Moore’s Warn­ings Should Bring a Reck­on­ing (David French, The Dis­patch): “Chris­tians, let me ask you a ques­tion. When the #MeToo move­ment launched… did you think, ‘Stop obsess­ing over scan­dal. Most mem­bers of the media and most folks in Hol­ly­wood are good peo­ple’? Or did you think that mul­ti­ple pow­er­ful Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions were beset with deep cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al prob­lems? .… #MeToo did reveal moral rot. But let’s flip it all around. When you heard about cor­rup­tion and sex­u­al mis­con­duct at America’s largest Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty, what did you think? What did you think when you read about the sex­u­al scan­dal at Hill­song or when you learned about Ravi Zacharias’ record of abuse and his ministry’s ter­ri­ble mis­treat­ment of whistle­blow­ers? Did you pause to con­sid­er the larg­er impli­ca­tions of a decade of sex­u­al pre­da­tion at one of America’s largest Chris­t­ian camps or the camp’s efforts to intim­i­date and coerce vic­tims into silence?” I don’t often tip my hand, but FYI Moore and French are two of my favorite evan­gel­i­cal cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tors. If they ever agree on some­thing, you can be pret­ty sure that is my posi­tion as well.
    • The Scan­dal Rock­ing the Evan­gel­i­cal World (Pete Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “And the rot that has been so pow­er­ful­ly and so painful­ly exposed by Rus­sell Moore is not an indict­ment of Jesus any more than the fail­ures of the reli­gious author­i­ties in first-cen­tu­ry Pales­tine were. A the­olo­gian recent­ly remind­ed me that the Church is not the hope of the world; its pur­pose is to be a wit­ness to the hope of the world, even if that wit­ness is often imper­fect. But those of us of the Chris­t­ian faith do seem to be over­do­ing the imper­fect part.”
    • Where Did All the Evan­gel­i­cal Prophets Go? (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “The god­less­ness of the left maps very clean­ly onto the evan­gel­i­cal church’s radar because its insti­tu­tions and lead­ers are watch­ing for it all the time, but the god­less­ness of the right is obvi­ous­ly not yet some­thing some­one can talk about con­fi­dent­ly, expect­ing their denom­i­na­tion or eccle­si­as­ti­cal sup­port sys­tem to back them on.” Some good insights here.
  4. The future of Amer­i­ca:
    • A calm per­spec­tive: Are We Des­tined for a Trump Coup in 2024? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Then keep in mind, too, that in the event of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024, Biden, not Trump, will enjoy the presidency’s pow­ers; Kamala Har­ris, not Mike Pence, will pre­side over the elec­toral count; and Trump will be four years old­er, unlike­ly to run a fourth time, and there­fore some­what less intim­i­dat­ing in defeat.”
    • Alarmed from the left: 9/11 and 1/6 (Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Sub­stack): “The sce­nario then goes like this. The Repub­li­cans win back the House and Sen­ate in 2022, in part thanks to vot­er sup­pres­sion. The Repub­li­can can­di­date in 2024 los­es the pop­u­lar vote by sev­er­al mil­lion and the elec­toral vote by the mar­gin of a few states. State leg­is­la­tures, claim­ing fraud, alter the elec­toral count vote. The House and Sen­ate accept that altered count. The los­ing can­di­date becomes the pres­i­dent. We no longer have ‘demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment.’ And peo­ple are angry. No one is seek­ing to hide that this is the plan.”  The author is a his­to­ri­an at Yale.
    • Alarmed from the right: Our Increas­ing­ly Unrec­og­niz­able Civ­i­liza­tion (Mark Steyn, Imprim­is): “…one notices that Amer­i­ca is far­ther down this road than any oth­er coun­try in the West­ern world. In oth­er words, at this moment of cri­sis for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, or for what we used to call Chris­ten­dom, the lead­ing coun­try of the free world is pulling the wrong way.” Sent my way by a friend of the min­istry.
  5. A few thoughts on depres­sion (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “For some rea­son, human com­pa­ny helps. In fact, it is the sin­gle thing that helps the most. But not the kind of com­pa­ny a sad per­son needs. What a depressed per­son needs is sim­ply to talk to peo­ple, not about their prob­lems or their neg­a­tive thoughts or their depres­sion, but about any­thing else — music, ani­mals, sci­ence. The most help­ful top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion, I’ve found, is absur­di­ty — just talk­ing about utter­ly ridicu­lous things, gross things, vul­gar offen­sive things, bizarre things. Shared activ­i­ties, like going on a hike or play­ing sports, are OK, but talk­ing is much, much more impor­tant.”
  6. Once a Bas­tion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Iden­ti­ty Cri­sis (Michael Pow­ell, New York Times): “I got the sense it was more impor­tant for A.C.L.U. staff to iden­ti­fy with clients and pro­gres­sive caus­es than to stand on prin­ci­ple,” he said in a recent inter­view. “Lib­er­als are leav­ing the First Amend­ment behind.”
  7. Some snap­shots of acad­e­mia:
    • The Native Schol­ar Who Wasn’t (Sarah Viren, New York Times): “Of the 1,500 uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tors list­ed as Native Amer­i­can at the time, said Bill Cross, who helped found the Amer­i­can Indian/Alaska Native Pro­fes­sors Asso­ci­a­tion, “we’re look­ing real­is­ti­cal­ly at one-third of those being Indi­ans.”
    • Gripped by ‘Din­ner Par­ty-gate,’ Yale Law Con­fronts a Ven­omous Divide (Sarah Lyell and Stephanie Saul, New York Times): “At the law school, the episode has exposed bit­ter divi­sions in a top-ranked insti­tu­tion strug­gling to adapt at a moment of roil­ing social change. Stu­dents reg­u­lar­ly attack their pro­fes­sors, and one anoth­er, for their schol­ar­ship, pro­fes­sion­al choic­es and per­ceived polit­i­cal views. In a place awash in rumor and anony­mous accu­sa­tions, almost no one would speak on the record.”

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 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. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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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.