Tag: Stanford

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 53

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Why I Believe Again (A.N. Wil­son, The New States­man): this piece is about sev­en years old, but I don’t remem­ber see­ing it before. “one thing that final­ly put the tin hat on any aspi­ra­tions to be an unbe­liev­er was writ­ing a book about the Wag­n­er fam­i­ly and Nazi Ger­many, and real­is­ing how utter­ly inco­her­ent were Hitler’s neo-Dar­win­ian rav­ings, and how potent was the oppo­si­tion, much of it from Chris­tians; paid for, not with clear intel­lec­tu­al vic­to­ry, but in blood.”
  2. The Evan­gel­i­cal Roots of Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ics (Bradley Bate­man, The Atlantic): “One unlike­ly exam­ple of the Protes­tant influ­ence on Amer­i­can cul­ture is the for­ma­tion of eco­nom­ics as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline in the Unit­ed States.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. Evan­gel­i­cals like me can’t vote for Trump — or Clin­ton. Here’s what we can do instead. (Alan Noble, Vox): This is a long and thought­ful piece. “unless a third-par­ty can­di­date with broad appeal emerges, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians would be bet­ter served by abstain­ing from [the pres­i­den­tial] vote and shift­ing their ener­gy toward elect­ing peo­ple to Con­gress and local and state gov­ern­ments who have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restrain whichev­er can­di­date is elect­ed as need­ed.“  
  4. Here Is The Pow­er­ful Let­ter The Stan­ford Vic­tim Read Aloud To Her Attack­er (Katie J.M. Bak­er, Buz­zfeed): many of you have seen this. If not, it’s worth read­ing. Pow­er­ful and insight­ful.
    • In rela­tion to this case, an anony­mous alum­na con­tact­ed me recent­ly to say: “I’m frus­trat­ed [that peo­ple] are not mak­ing an effort or rec­og­niz­ing the role that alco­hol and the cul­ture sur­round­ing the whole sit­u­a­tion had. What they’re call­ing for is greater pun­ish­ment on col­lege kids who com­mit sex­u­al assault but I think that kin­da miss­es a huge point. They refuse to rec­og­nize the sin in being ok with col­lege drink­ing and the whole frat par­ty thing.” I replied with a sug­ges­tion that she read some­thing I shared way back in issue 25 titled Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault, which I still believe is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar analy­sis I’ve read of the issue.
    • Many peo­ple feel that to crit­i­cize the par­ty scene is to excul­pate rapists. That seems odd to me, because we rec­og­nize that when some­one dri­ves drunk they accept moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for any acci­dents they cause. Their ine­bri­a­tion is not a defense — it is an admis­sion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty. And we also rec­og­nize the prin­ci­ple does not flow in both direc­tions — if you stab me while I am drunk, the fact that I am drunk does not pro­vide you with any excuse. The same prin­ci­ple holds here: Brock Turn­er’s drunk­en­ness is no defense and the vic­tim’s drunk­en­ness is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Fur­ther­more, our con­vic­tions about drunk dri­ving hint at a broad­er prin­ci­ple: drunk­en­ness is a sin because over time it pre­dictably leads to deplorable out­comes. This means that Brock Turn­er is to blame — and so are the parts of cam­pus cul­ture which encour­age drunk­en­ness. The par­ty scene is no excuse for Brock’s wicked­ness, but that does not make the par­ty scene a vir­tu­ous one. 
    • In fact, the par­ty scene on our cam­pus abounds with sin even when it fails to make nation­al news. The worst sin that night (that we know of) was the sex­u­al assault com­mit­ted by Brock Turn­er. But it was far from the only sin. There were numer­ous con­sen­su­al non­mar­i­tal sex­u­al encoun­ters that night — each of them also sin­ful (although less so). There were many peo­ple drunk that night — they too sinned, every one of them. There was arro­gant pos­tur­ing, envy, lust, anger, lying, betray­al, gos­sip, slan­der and a whole host of sins exac­er­bat­ed by alco­hol and the social sce­nario. Our alum­na’s instincts are cor­rect — the sys­tem itself makes sin like­ly and it should not be embraced by Chris­tians.
    • In case you stum­bled over the “worst sin/less sin­ful” judg­ments I made, you should read All Sins Are Not Equal (J.I. Pack­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today).
    • Thank you for your patience. I rarely add lengthy edi­to­r­i­al com­ments, but my words ran away with me today.
  5. My Life as a ‘Sex Object’ (Jes­si­ca Valen­ti, The Guardian): this is pow­er­ful, slight­ly vul­gar piece. I am always intrigued by authors who embrace the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion and are dis­mayed by some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions.
  6. 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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

[minor edit for clar­i­ty short­ly after post­ing]

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 31

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor): How much time each day would it take you to read the entire Bible in a year? “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it!
  2. I’m Think­ing It Over (The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive, Alan Jacobs): this is real­ly good advice for social media. Bonus: it name-drops a leg­endary Stan­ford pro­fes­sor. Read­ing this arti­cle made me feel good about not send­ing this email out over Christ­mas break.  🙂
  3. Can You Glo­ri­fy God As An Econ­o­mist? (Chris­t­ian Post, Napp Naz­worth): tl;dr yes.
  4. Across The Race Divide (Gospel Coali­tion, Kevin DeY­oung) — some­what long but worth­while. Dif­fi­cult to excerpt in a way that won’t tempt you pigeon­hole the piece.
  5. Can Hob­by Lob­by Buy The Bible? (The Atlantic, Joel Baden and Can­di­da Moss): the fram­ing is alarmist, some of the claims about tex­tu­al crit­i­cism are dubi­ous, but the arti­cle is quite engag­ing. The alle­ga­tions of arti­fact smug­gling seem most­ly the byprod­uct of naivete to me and I hope they prove to be so. The authors are pro­fes­sors at Yale and Notre Dame.
  6. The Quixot­ic Adven­tures of Roy Moore (The Atlantic, Matt Ford) — I was most inter­est­ed by the begin­ning of the fifth para­graph: “While that may be tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect…”  Heh. I think the best jour­nal­ism on this was actu­al­ly done by The Mont­gomery Adver­tis­er. It blew away the NY Times, NPR, etc by actu­al­ly inter­view­ing peo­ple with dif­fer­ing opin­ions. If you want the sto­ry, read Moore Tar­gets Same-Sex Mar­riage (Bri­an Lyman, Mont­gomery Adver­tis­er).
  7. Quick Links (short­er pieces):

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.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 17

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. Fear (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, NY Review Of Books): I don’t often find overt­ly the­o­log­i­cal pieces in the New York Review of Books, much less ones whose open­ing lines are, “Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian coun­try. This is true in a num­ber of sens­es.” She’s gonna get some hate mail.
  2. Some things that made me chuck­le:
  3. Why Do Good Uni­ver­si­ties Tend To Be Good At Every­thing? (Quo­ra ques­tion): Short but insight­ful.
  4. What Stan­ford Taught Me About Grace (Seth Vil­le­gas, per­son­al blog): Seth is an alum­nus of our min­istry who is cur­rent­ly doing grad work at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
  5. Reli­gion and the Repub­lic (David Forte, With­er­spoon Insti­tute): the author (a law pro­fes­sor) explains the impor­tance of reli­gious speech in the pub­lic square. This seems like a good place to men­tion one of my favorite aca­d­e­m­ic papers: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy.
  6. From the I‑know-I-shared-this-last-week-but-want-to-share-it-with-the-new-stu­dents depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 4

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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.

To that end, I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

  1. From the Charleston depart­ment:
    1. Why A Black Church? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): the last para­graph was like a punch in the gut.
    2. In this mov­ing Youtube clip, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims for­give the shoot­er in court and call upon him to repent. It sounds as though sev­er­al of them were actu­al­ly there when the shoot­ing hap­pened and inter­act­ed with the shoot­er in the hour before­hand.
    3. The Charleston Shoot­ing is the Largest Mass Shoot­ing in a House of Wor­ship Since 1991 (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is an infor­ma­tive overview of the his­to­ry of mass vio­lence at reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the US. I noticed one typo in the arti­cle — it refers to 176 deaths when I am pret­ty sure it should have referred to 176 vio­lent inci­dents lead­ing to 74 deaths in 2014.
    4. Black Amer­i­cans Are Killed at 12 Times the Rate of Peo­ple in Oth­er Devel­oped Coun­tries (Nate Sil­ver, FiveThir­tyEight): this is prob­a­bly the most depress­ing thing I read on a day of read­ing depress­ing things.
    5. The sto­ry of the lady who bust­ed the shoot­er is a more encour­ag­ing one. “It was God’s way of putting her in the right place at the right time, the Gas­to­nia woman said.”
  2. From the clar­i­ty is impor­tant depart­ment: Is Mor­monism Chris­t­ian? (Roger Olson, blog): Olson, a the­olo­gian, gives a very thor­ough and help­ful answer to the ques­tion. It’s real­ly long, so if you just want the sum­ma­ry jump to the last para­graph.
  3. From the mis­un­der­stood research depart­ment: The Real Les­son of the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment (Maria Kon­niko­va, New York­er): inter­est­ing for sev­er­al rea­sons, among them the fact that we walk past the site of the exper­i­ments reg­u­lar­ly.
  4. From the sin is per­va­sive depart­ment: All Your Clothes Are Made With Exploit­ed Labor (Gillian B. White, The Atlantic): even the most con­sci­en­tious com­pa­nies are unable to keep their prod­ucts oppres­sion-free.

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.