Tag: theology

TGFI, Volume 541: What Forgiveness Takes

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. For­give­ness Always Involves the Absorp­tion of a Debt (J. D. Greear, blog): “…if you get jeal­ous of me and start slan­der­ing me and real­ly hurt my rep­u­ta­tion in the eyes of oth­ers, it can be hard to see where the ‘debt’ is. But it’s there. Watch this: Let’s say that after you’ve maligned me, but before I launched my coun­ter­at­tack, you came to me and said you were sor­ry. And I was feel­ing mag­nan­i­mous, so I for­gave you. In that moment, what has hap­pened? In for­giv­ing you, I’m say­ing, ‘I’m not going to pun­ish you or pay you back for what you did. I’m not going to take vengeance on you or seek retal­i­a­tion; I’m not going to go out and ruin your rep­u­ta­tion, and I’m not even going to stay mad at you for the hurt you caused me. I am going to absorb the con­se­quences of your sin.’ You can’t see the finan­cial dam­age, but the dam­age is just as real. And some­one is still pay­ing for it. For­give­ness always involves the absorp­tion of a debt. The sac­ri­fice of a lamb pic­tures how God would him­self absorb the cost for our sin. But catch this, that only makes sense if God him­self is some­how pic­tured in the lamb—otherwise, killing a lamb in our place is ran­dom and cru­el.”
  2. Near­ly 40% of Stan­ford under­grad­u­ates claim they’re dis­abled. I’m one of them (Elsa John­son, The Times): “The gam­ing even extends to our meals. Stan­ford requires most under­grad­u­ates liv­ing on cam­pus to pur­chase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025–26 aca­d­e­m­ic year. But stu­dents can get exempt­ed if they claim a reli­gious dietary restric­tion that the col­lege kitchens can­not accom­mo­date. And so, some stu­dents I know claim to be devout mem­bers of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all liv­ing crea­tures — includ­ing small insects and root veg­eta­bles. The stu­dents I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal mon­ey at Whole Foods instead and enjoy fresh­ly made sal­ads and oth­er yum­my dish­es, while the rest of us are stuck with col­lege meals, like burg­ers made part­ly from ‘mush­room mix’.”
  3. New Research Con­firms Jesus’s Mir­a­cles (T.C. Schmidt, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The impli­ca­tions are clear: Jose­phus ful­ly acknowl­edged Jesus’s mirac­u­lous deeds, as oth­er ancient non-Chris­tians did. And this comes from a man raised in first-cen­tu­ry Jerusalem, a man who knew those involved in Jesus’s tri­al, a man who went on to become one of the finest his­to­ri­ans the ancient world ever pro­duced. He was also per­fect­ly ready to deny the miraculous—he laughed at the idea of cer­tain wiz­ards cast­ing spells on him when he served as a gen­er­al, and he unmasked false prophets and char­la­tans when writ­ing his books of history—but in the case of Jesus, he didn’t claim his mir­a­cles were false, or exag­ger­a­tions, or the stuff of leg­ends. While Jose­phus wasn’t sure of the source for Jesus’s super­nat­ur­al deeds, he was sure they hap­pened.”
    • The title is a bit over the top (per­haps bet­ter “New Research Finds Ancient Attes­ta­tion To Jesus’s Mir­a­cles”), but real­ly inter­est­ing regard­less. This is the same guy who wrote Jose­phus and Jesus, men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly in TGFI (and still avail­able for free at https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/)
  4. The Real Rea­son Sci­ence is Bro­ken (Tim Requar­th, Per­sua­sion): “A study pub­lished last month in Nature ana­lyzed 41 mil­lion research papers across the nat­ur­al sci­ences and found some­thing that should unset­tle any­one who believes AI will rev­o­lu­tion­ize sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery. Yes, sci­en­tists who adopt AI tools pub­lish three times more papers and receive near­ly five times more cita­tions. Their careers accel­er­ate. But the col­lec­tive range of sci­en­tif­ic top­ics under inves­ti­ga­tion shrinks by near­ly 5 per­cent, and researchers’ engage­ment with one another’s work drops by 22 per­cent.… AI isn’t accel­er­at­ing sci­ence so much as opti­miz­ing sci­en­tists to thrive in an already-bro­ken reward sys­tem.”
    • The author is a neu­ro­science prof at NYU
  5. Unlocked: Chris­tian­i­ty at the Super Bowl defies a trend (Paul Putz, Wash­ing­ton Post): “It is a remark­able shift over the course of a cen­tu­ry. Chris­t­ian ath­letes have suc­cess­ful­ly turned pro sports — and foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar — from a space in which Chris­tians were rarely present into one of the most promi­nent are­nas in Amer­i­can life for Chris­t­ian wit­ness and self-asser­tion. This trans­for­ma­tion did not hap­pen by acci­dent. It is the result of a Chris­t­ian sports move­ment that has been grow­ing since the 1950s, as evan­gel­i­cal sports min­istries like the Fel­low­ship of Chris­t­ian Ath­letes, Pro Ath­letes Out­reach, and Ath­letes in Action have built a net­work of Chris­t­ian ath­letes and coach­es who find spir­i­tu­al mean­ing in and through their shared sports expe­ri­ence.”
  6. The hid­den costs of the world’s most expen­sive schools (Annie Dong, Sub­stack): “One of the most dan­ger­ous side effects of attend­ing pres­ti­gious insti­tu­tions is that you are con­stant­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed.… I have been con­grat­u­lat­ed repeat­ed­ly for my entire life, and it’s put me in an odd posi­tion where I can no longer dis­tin­guish my per­son­al mer­its from my per­ceived per­son­al mer­its. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, it’s put me in an odd posi­tion where I find myself unable to dis­tin­guish oth­ers’ per­son­al mer­its from their per­ceived per­son­al mer­its, or lack there­of – oth­er­wise known as elit­ism.… To be extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble, I even have trou­ble con­nect­ing with my cousins because I find it dif­fi­cult to tru­ly sum­mon a sense of admi­ra­tion for their achieve­ments and aspi­ra­tions.”
  7. Eileen Gu: The Win­ter Olympian who earns $23m a year — but just $100k of it from her sport (Char­lotte Harpur, New York Times): “An out­lier lies among the list of Forbes’ 2025 world’s high­est-paid female ath­letes. Ten­nis star Coco Gauff tops the list, earn­ing an esti­mat­ed $33 mil­lion, fol­lowed by her peers Ary­na Sabalen­ka ($30m) and Iga Swiatek ($25.1m) but then appears Eileen Gu. The lead­ing trio are house­hold sport­ing names, freestyle ski­er Gu is not, but her earn­ings? $23.1m.… Not every 22-year-old has stud­ied at Stan­ford and Oxford, does back­flips on ski slopes, has posed for Sports Illustrated’s swim­suit issue and is named one of Time’s 100 most influ­en­tial peo­ple but, Her­sh­man said, ‘for so many younger peo­ple, that will be aspi­ra­tional.’ ”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.

TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘The Idea of the Beau­ti­ful Is a Sig­na­ture of God’: A Q&A With Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God cre­at­ed that was not meant to rav­ish us with its beau­ty. The idea of the beau­ti­ful is a sig­na­ture of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many oth­er peo­ple. This dis­til­la­tion of the joy, the sen­so­ry joy, of being among things in the world. I think the loss of beau­ty is a loss of an intel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline, which sci­ence nev­er lost because sci­en­tists always have the right to say a for­mu­la is beau­ti­ful. We in the out­side world, we’ve aban­doned the word and the con­cept. It’s sug­ges­tive that the sci­en­tists use it.”
  2. Per­form­ing Gen­der, Left and Right (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “How each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weak­ness­es as a move­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives fun­da­men­tal­ly get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Lib­er­als are thought­ful and polite but place a high pri­or­i­ty on emo­tion­al safe­ty and avoid­ing dan­ger­ous or uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions.… These per­son­al­i­ty and aes­thet­ic dif­fer­ences are cen­tral to polit­i­cal divides. So much of pol­i­tics is who you know, and it’s dif­fi­cult to go some­where in a move­ment if you don’t get along with the peo­ple in it. Elites there­fore sort accord­ing to per­son­al­i­ty in addi­tion to ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. Why Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Is Built for Tik­Tok (Riv­er Page, The Free Press): “Of course evan­gel­i­cals went viral on Tik­Tok. The medi­um is per­fect for the mes­sage; but also, the mes­sage is per­fect for the medi­um. Catholics have art and ancient rit­u­als. Evan­gel­i­cals have rhetoric and emotion—the kind of stuff that trav­els far and wide on a plat­form where you have 15 sec­onds to grab people’s atten­tion.”
  4. Craft Is the Anti­dote to Slop. (Will Mani­dis, Sub­stack): “From Gen­e­sis, man enters not a par­adise with­out labor but a world of inten­tion­al cre­ation. The LORD God places man in the Gar­den of Eden ‘to dress it and to keep it’ (Gen­e­sis 2:15) estab­lish­ing labor not as pun­ish­ment but as sacred voca­tion. This orig­i­nal call­ing invites us to co-cre­ate the King­dom, tend­ing and devel­op­ing the world with inten­tion and care. Our fun­da­men­tal pur­pose is not con­sump­tion but par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ongo­ing work of cre­ation. The ser­pen­t’s temp­ta­tion rep­re­sents the first short­cut in human his­to­ry.… Human­i­ty’s first sin was, in part, choos­ing the easy short­cut over the mean­ing­ful process – pre­fer­ring effort­less gain to the demand­ing but ful­fill­ing work of tend­ing the gar­den.”
  5. Real­iz­ing a desired fam­i­ly size: when should cou­ples start? (Habbe­ma et al, Human Repro­duc­tion): “With­out IVF, cou­ples should start no lat­er than age 32 years for a [90% chance of a] one-child fam­i­ly, at 27 years for a two-child fam­i­ly, and at 23 years for three chil­dren. When cou­ples accept 75% or low­er chances of fam­i­ly com­ple­tion, they can start 4–11 years lat­er.”
    • An alum­nus passed this along to me and I found it fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. He’s Chris­t­ian. In Nige­ria, That Meant Tor­ture and Prison. (Josh Code, The Free Press): “What came to my mind when I was in deten­tion was that death could be the final result. I knew the con­se­quences of help­ing Mus­lims who have con­vert­ed to Christianity—and also the fact that the police were look­ing for them. So death was what was on my mind.… From the point of my deten­tion to the point where I was released, I was con­stant­ly pray­ing and fast­ing. Because of the way I was pray­ing, the oth­er men detained with me thought I was a pas­tor and were even call­ing me ‘rev­erend’ and ask­ing me to remem­ber them in my prayers, so that the Lord would also deliv­er them from cap­tiv­i­ty. Mind you, they were Mus­lims, not Christians—their deten­tion was not on account of their faith.”
  7. There Are Only Two Gametes (Car­ol Hooven, Tablet): “We call ani­mals that pro­duce sperm ‘male’ and those that pro­duce eggs ‘female.’ That’s about it. The bot­tom line is that there are two gamete types and thus two sex­es. There are no oth­er sex­es, no oth­er repro­duc­tive cat­e­gories. Among main­stream evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gists, there is sim­ply no dis­agree­ment on these basic points: The ‘gamet­ic view’ is the estab­lished ortho­doxy of our field. It applies across sex­u­al­ly repro­duc­ing ani­mals and accom­mo­dates all the com­plex­i­ty and vari­a­tion with­in the sex­es. It holds in non­re­pro­duc­tive­ly viable animals—like post­menopausal me—that don’t pro­duce gametes; it holds in male sea­hors­es that get preg­nant; in clown­fish who change from male to female (first pro­duc­ing sperm and then eggs); in females who iden­ti­fy as male (trans men) and take male lev­els of testos­terone and have a deep voice and a thick, bushy beard.”

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 515: go deep in community, plus missionaries with shotguns

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Com­pound Inter­est in an Atten­tion Econ­o­my (Austin Car­ty, Front Porch Repub­lic): “The pre­vail­ing log­ic of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, in and of itself, a nec­es­sary form of cap­i­tal with­out which one is ipso fac­to barred from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing a rich life. But my own expe­ri­ence, cor­rob­o­rat­ed by many of the peo­ple I’ve talked with, sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, just as often as not, the cause of our despair not the cure; for to keep shift­ing atten­tion from one thing to the next is almost always to drain one’s spir­i­tu­al and men­tal and emo­tion­al bank account, not to deliv­er a mean­ing­ful return. Mean­while, con­tra pop­u­lar opin­ion, there is some­thing life-giv­ing about root­ing one­self in a sin­gle community—about invest­ing our­selves in a mutu­al fund, so to speak—and watch­ing the invest­ment slow­ly grow at com­pound inter­est.”
  2. ‘A com­put­er, a radio, a drone and a shot­gun’: how mis­sion­ar­ies are reach­ing out to Brazil’s iso­lat­ed peo­ples (John Reid and Daniel Biaset­to, The Guardian): “Mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty now threat­ens 13 of the 29 iso­lat­ed peo­ples that Brazil offi­cial­ly recog­nis­es as defin­i­tive­ly con­firmed, accord­ing to the fed­er­al prosecutor’s office.”
    • This was actu­al­ly a pret­ty encour­ag­ing arti­cle over­all, despite the use of lan­guage like “threat­ens.”
  3. Trend­ing thoughts about Gaza:
    • The Price of Flour Shows the Hunger Cri­sis in Gaza (Amit Segal, The Free Press): “Dis­cussing these find­ings, The Free Press’s Haviv Ret­tig Gur high­light­ed Spitzer’s key chal­lenge in con­vinc­ing Israelis that Gaza is indeed fac­ing a hunger cri­sis: ‘It’s hard to con­vince Israelis of that because lit­er­al­ly every­thing said to them for 22 months on this top­ic has been a fic­tion.’ ”
    • Is Gaza Starv­ing? Search­ing for the Truth in an Infor­ma­tion War. (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Free Press): “Over the years, Israelis have been accused of fake mas­sacres and rapes. The country’s actions are lied about almost dai­ly by peo­ple describ­ing them­selves as jour­nal­ists, ana­lysts, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed Nations, often using sta­tis­tics that are them­selves untrue. For peo­ple here in Israel, the con­stant bar­rage of libel—like the more lit­er­al bar­rages of rockets—is sim­ply a fact of life. After years of this, aver­age Israelis do what peo­ple do when con­front­ed with lunatics on the New York sub­way: They tune it out.… a senior fig­ure in the Israeli mil­i­tary told one of my col­leagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass star­va­tion as claimed by pro-Hamas pro­pa­gan­da, Gaza real­ly is on the brink this time.”
    • How Israel’s War Became Unjust (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…Israel has made a strate­gic choice, try­ing to sep­a­rate food dis­tri­b­u­tion from a sys­tem that it argues Hamas was exploit­ing for its own pur­pos­es. But if your strate­gic choice leads to chil­dren dying of star­va­tion when the food is avail­able to feed them, then a civ­i­lized nation has to make a dif­fer­ent choice — even if that makes things eas­i­er for its ene­mies to some degree.”
  4. Till Words Do Us Part (Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dis­patch): “Clas­si­cal­ly, the mar­riage vows are not about the par­tic­u­lar cou­ple stand­ing at the altar—they’re about the insti­tu­tion the cou­ple is choos­ing to enter. Clas­si­cal vows (for bet­ter, for worse, etc) have last­ed with only minor revi­sions for a thou­sand years. They are intend­ed to suit every cou­ple, uncus­tomized, and they enu­mer­ate the promis­es that must be kept for a mar­riage to be a mar­riage. But cus­tomized vows fre­quent­ly min­gle seri­ous promis­es with ones that can­not or should not be kept.”
  5. The Nat­ur­al Law Is Not Enough. The Nat­ur­al Law Is All We Have. (Andrew T. Walk­er, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…any attempt to con­struct a moral and polit­i­cal order must grap­ple with two com­pet­ing truths: the ima­go Dei makes moral rea­son­ing pos­si­ble, but orig­i­nal sin ensures that moral rea­son­ing will often be con­test­ed, sup­pressed, cor­rupt­ed, or ignored. This is the para­dox of our moment. The nat­ur­al law is writ­ten on every heart (Romans 2:15), but hearts are wound­ed and rea­son cloud­ed. We have access to moral truth, but not con­sen­sus. Hence, the nat­ur­al law is not enough. But it is still the best we have.”
  6. Desider­a­ta for a Protes­tant The­ol­o­gy of the Body (Sub­stack): “But I think there are, in fact, dis­tinc­tive­ly Protes­tant ways to approach the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty and repro­duc­tion- and I sus­pect some of the dearth of con­ver­sa­tion about these top­ics reflects a cer­tain Protes­tant sen­si­bil­i­ty. It also reflects the bound­aries of what might be pos­si­ble with a Protes­tant view. So here are a few ‘desider­a­ta’- a fan­cy way of say­ing ‘things we ought to con­sid­er’, in order to build a Protes­tant the­ol­o­gy of the body.”
    • The author is a the­olo­gian at Gor­don-Con­well.
  7. How the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing Helped Make Amer­i­ca (Thomas Kidd, The Dis­patch): “Amer­i­cans might assume that the height of their nation’s reli­gious com­mit­ment was around its Found­ing. Some like­wise fig­ure that spir­i­tu­al­ly, it’s been going down­hill ever since. But in many ways, Amer­i­ca became increas­ing­ly reli­gious through the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry.”
    • Kidd is one of the great­est liv­ing evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ri­ans.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 514: Jephthah, Europe, and the Enchanted Broccoli Forest

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Jesus Is the Key to All Scrip­ture (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): “We’re incred­u­lous. ‘All things’ in Scrip­ture are ful­filled in him? Real­ly? Every­thing? Ehud thrust­ing a sword into obese Eglon? Jael crack­ing Sisera’s skull with a tent peg? David clip­ping and heap­ing up two hun­dred Philis­tine fore­skins? Jehu glee­ful­ly slaugh­ter­ing sons of Ahab? We dodge and backpedal, pro­tect­ing Jesus from his hermeneu­ti­cal excess. ‘Every episode and per­son con­tributes to the sto­ry of Jesus,’ we say. ‘But not every sin­gle per­son or event is direct­ly about Jesus.’ There’s some­thing to that, but it’s often a cop-out. And it keeps us from grasp­ing the height and depth of Jesus’s glo­ry. Jeph­thah is a test case.”
    • An engag­ing arti­cle with strong insights about Jeph­thah’s sto­ry.
  2. I Once Thought Euro­peans Lived as Well as Amer­i­cans. Not Any­more. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “I was shocked recent­ly to learn that more Euro­peans die of heat death—largely due to lack of air-conditioning—than Amer­i­cans die from gun­shot wounds. I’m not say­ing Amer­i­ca isn’t more dan­ger­ous in cer­tain ways: We have high­er non-gun mur­der rates and per­ilous weath­er pat­terns, among oth­er prob­lems. But it turns out Euro­pean bureau­cra­cy is lit­er­al­ly dead­ly.… Cir­ca 2025, my sub­jec­tive judg­ment is that Amer­i­can liv­ing stan­dards are 20 to 30 per­cent high­er than those in West­ern Europe. That dif­fer­ence is like­ly to grow.”
  3. Uni­ver­si­ty sus­pends EBF, Kairos after Title VI inves­ti­ga­tions (Francesca Pin­ney, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Fol­low­ing stu­dent com­plaints to Stanford’s Title VI Office, the Uni­ver­si­ty deter­mined that both hous­es vio­lat­ed Title VI, the fed­er­al law that pro­hibits harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, col­or or nation­al ori­gin in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions.”
    • The details are kind of wild and may shock you if you’re not used to Stan­ford rhetoric. One stu­dent com­ment­ed, “Tbh, that’s what most of NSO and my first quar­ter at Stan­ford felt like, and I was def­i­nite­ly told sim­i­lar things by folks in my dorm, etc.”
  4. Some reflec­tions on exer­cise:
    • Don’t Skip Leg Day or the Lord’s Day (Sean DeMars, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Exer­cise pre­vents me from falling into two seri­ous sins: sloth and idol­a­try. When I stop car­ing about my body, I drift toward pas­siv­i­ty and excuse-mak­ing, and I become sloth­ful. When I over­pri­or­i­tize fit­ness, I start build­ing my iden­ti­ty around per­for­mance or image, which is a form of idol­a­try. But when fit­ness is teth­ered to call­ing and is viewed as fuel for long-term min­istry, exer­cise finds its right­ful place. It’s not ulti­mate, but it’s impor­tant. The heart­beat of this lit­tle the­ol­o­gy of exer­cise is that redeemed bod­ies should be used in the ser­vice of joy, love, and mis­sion.”
    • How Exer­cise Fights Anx­i­ety and Depres­sion (Erik Vance, New York Times): “Decades of research have estab­lished that exer­cise has a pos­i­tive effect on men­tal health. In stud­ies of patients with mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion, for exam­ple, a wide range of exer­cise reg­i­mens has been shown to be as effec­tive as med­ica­tions like SSRIs (though the best results gen­er­al­ly involve a com­bi­na­tion of the two).”
  5. Inclu­siv­i­ty In Health­care Should Not Be Val­ued Above Our Para­mount Man­date: First, Do No Harm (Jan­havi Nilekani, Sub­stack): “In the spring of 2022, a 50-year-old grand­fa­ther in North Car­oli­na decid­ed that he want­ed his daughter’s new­born to suck­le at his nip­ple.… Because this par­tic­u­lar man iden­ti­fied as a trans­gen­der woman, doc­tors and aca­d­e­mics from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed his ‘unique desire’. Indeed, they pub­lished a research paper in Breast­feed­ing Med­i­cine, pro­vid­ing details of the cock­tail of hor­mones and drugs they used. With these, he was able to pro­duce secre­tions, that were admin­is­tered to his grand­child. The paper does not have a sin­gle sen­tence about the poten­tial impact on the grand­child. It is an unimag­in­able breach of ethics. An adult male’s desire to be affirmed as a woman should nev­er be met by feed­ing an exper­i­men­tal drug-infused sub­stance to new­borns with no capac­i­ty to con­sent.… Such exper­i­ments are pos­si­ble only because med­i­cine, in the push towards inclu­siv­i­ty, is for­get­ting our own core val­ue: first, do no harm.”
    • Shar­ing most­ly for the shock­ing intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry. The entire thing is long and prob­a­bly does not cov­er new ground for reg­u­lar read­ers. It is well-argued, though.
  6. The Per­verse Eco­nom­ics of Assist­ed Sui­cide (Louise Per­ry, New York Times): “There is a very clear prob­lem with assist­ed sui­cide in its new guise: The state, with its almighty pow­er, is tasked with both pay­ing for the sup­port of the old and dis­abled and reg­u­lat­ing their dying.… organs of the state that are tasked with solv­ing an impos­si­ble finan­cial prob­lem — how to pay for more old peo­ple with less mon­ey — will be inex­orably tugged toward what looks to a mind­less bureau­cra­cy like a ‘solu­tion.’ ”
  7. Rea­son, Rev­e­la­tion, and Rev­o­lu­tion (Joseph Locon­te, The Dis­patch): “Colo­nial assump­tions about nat­ur­al rights, human equal­i­ty, reli­gious lib­er­ty, gov­ern­ment by con­sent, the right of rev­o­lu­tion: Each drew heav­i­ly from Locke’s writ­ings, which were con­sid­ered manda­to­ry read­ing for edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans. As we’ll see, the colonists were heirs of the Lock­ean tra­di­tion. As a result, free­dom, rea­son, and rev­e­la­tion formed a con­cep­tu­al trin­i­ty in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. The pow­er­ful alliance of these ideas helps to explain the aston­ish­ing and endur­ing influ­ence of the Amer­i­can exam­ple. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, non­sense talk about the mean­ing and legit­i­ma­cy of the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment is almost as ingrained in the New Right as in the pro­gres­sive left.”
    • A strong defense of Locke against his crit­ics on the right. The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor and a Chris­t­ian pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al.

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 512: denominations are good and smart people are bad

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why Denom­i­na­tions Are Good, Actu­al­ly (Eric Ton­jes, Mere Ortho­doxy): “I often hear non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al broth­ers and sis­ters talk about denom­i­na­tions as if they are the source of divi­sions in the church. Cer­tain­ly, the church is divid­ed, in both trag­ic and unavoid­able ways. Some divi­sions are the prod­uct of sin and self­ish­ness. Oth­ers are tem­po­rary but nec­es­sary because of dis­agree­ments about Scrip­ture and prac­tice. While the church still shares a spir­i­tu­al uni­ty, it is insti­tu­tion­al­ly split, and we should right­ly long to see it more uni­fied than it is. The thing that puz­zles me is the way many peo­ple think that by leav­ing any larg­er denom­i­na­tion or affil­i­a­tion group they are some­how help­ing to increase the uni­ty of the church. If your fam­i­ly is divid­ed, dis­own­ing every­body isn’t going to make it more unit­ed.”
  2. Peo­ple with high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty have weak­er moral foun­da­tions, new study finds (Eric W. Dolan, Psy­Post): “Peo­ple with high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty tend to endorse moral val­ues less strong­ly across the board, accord­ing to new research pub­lished in the jour­nal Intel­li­gence. The pat­tern held across two inde­pen­dent stud­ies and did not dif­fer by gen­der. These find­ings chal­lenge pop­u­lar assump­tions that smarter peo­ple hold stronger or more ‘enlight­ened’ moral val­ues.”
    • I actu­al­ly began to chuck­le at the arti­cle’s repeat­ed insis­tence that “most peo­ple assume smarter peo­ple are more moral.” Fact check: false. Smart peo­ple assume smarter peo­ple are more moral, sure. But most peo­ple? It’s hard not to notice that clever peo­ple are real­ly good at talk­ing them­selves into what­ev­er they need to talk them­selves into. And that means they’re good at ratio­nal­iz­ing self­ish and bad behav­ior.
  3. Heart­break and Hero­ism in Hill Coun­try, Texas (Dan Cren­shaw, The Free Pres): “The Guadalupe Riv­er that snakes through down­town Ker­rville aver­ages a depth of just 1.65 feet. But between 5:15 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. that day, it surged from two feet to 34 feet, becom­ing a lit­er­al wall of water that swept through Kerr Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ties.… One nev­er knows if they will be a hero when the time comes. Only a test of tragedy will be the judge. Many think they will act with courage, but fail. Many think they will lack the courage, but instead become the hero we need. Neigh­bors saved neigh­bors. Ordi­nary peo­ple became heroes. That is the spir­it of Texas. No flood can ever wash it away.”
    • That’s the same Dan Cren­shaw who serves as a con­gress­man. Many amaz­ing and heart­break­ing anec­dotes in this brief arti­cle.
  4. The Death of Par­ty­ing in the U.S.A.—and Why It Mat­ters (Derek Thomp­son, Sub­stack): “Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Amer­i­cans spent attend­ing or host­ing a social event declined by 50 per­cent. Almost every age group cut their par­ty time in half in the last two decades. For young peo­ple, the decline was even worse. Last year, Amer­i­cans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 per­cent less time attend­ing or host­ing par­ties than they did in 2003.”
  5. Eco­nom­ic Nihilism (Julia Stein­berg, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “Eco­nom­ic nihilism is then the ide­ol­o­gy of the young, aspi­rant class, will­ing to put in two years—but only two years—at what­ev­er firm is pres­ti­gious upon grad­u­a­tion. Eco­nom­ic nihilism is the ide­ol­o­gy that cel­e­brates tak­ing short­cuts. The econ­o­my itself is abstract­ed away, what’s left is a salary or its equiv­a­lent in cryp­to pay­outs.”
  6. Have Mer­cy on Me, a Zyn­ner (Luke Simon, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Your soul no longer pants for liv­ing water (Ps. 42:1) because the buzz has numbed its thirst. We’re trad­ing spir­i­tu­al depen­dence for a chem­i­cal calm, and we’re left with faith with­out hunger, wor­ship with­out depth, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with­out sur­ren­der. We become what Jesus warned against—not white­washed tombs but white-pouched ones.”
  7. “When peo­ple argue against free will, you often see them smug­gle in some intrigu­ing moral assump­tions.” (Rob Hen­der­son, Twit­ter)
    • The post has both text and a two-minute video of the author say­ing the same thing (tak­en from a longer video). The text is a good sum­ma­ry of the video, but the video gets a lil’ spicy at the end in a way the writ­ten text does not.

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 477

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some post-elec­tion analy­sis, with the reminder that I do not endorse every­thing I share. I share them because they made me think.
    • Amaz­ing quote from the Stan­ford Review: It’s Time For Stan­ford to Accept Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump (Again) (Edi­to­r­i­al, Stan­ford Review): “Stan­ford stu­dents often for­get to con­sid­er that the world around them votes too—and that the world does not have the same con­cerns. As one peer remarked, ‘I found out some of the din­ing hall staff vot­ed for Trump and lowkey for­got they got to vote too.’ ”
    • 10 Rea­sons You Did­n’t See This Com­ing (Kon­stan­tin Kisin, Sub­stack): “Amer­i­cans are extreme­ly prac­ti­cal peo­ple. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we pro­duce great writ­ers and intel­lec­tu­als. In Amer­i­ca they pro­duce (and attract) great engi­neers, busi­ness­men and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump’s rhetoric than you do and more about his poli­cies than you do.”
      • Kisin is a Russ­ian-born immi­grant to Britain. Inter­est­ing to see how at least one for­eign­er per­ceives the results US elec­tion.
    • Don­ald Trump Is the Pres­i­dent for Post-Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “It’s hard to com­plain that he’s crude when we live in a crude soci­ety and peo­ple like that way — except when it comes to him. In fact, com­pared to the rest of the coun­try, Trump is a retro mod­el of rec­ti­tude when it comes to not drink­ing or doing drugs, hav­ing a relent­less work eth­ic, wear­ing suits, etc.”
    • Democ­rats Picked the Wrong Women’s Rights Issue (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “Democ­rats bet big on ‘repro­duc­tive rights’ this elec­tion cycle, even offer­ing free abor­tions at their nation­al con­ven­tion. But the strat­e­gy didn’t pay off. Not only was abor­tion a flop with the elec­torate, it was Republicans—not Democrats—who pushed the win­ning women’s‑rights issue: fight­ing the encroach­ment of bio­log­i­cal men into women’s spaces and sports.”
    • How a Lati­no wave car­ried Trump to vic­to­ry (Daniel McCarthy, The Spec­ta­tor): “The fact is that left-wing cul­tur­al atti­tudes in Amer­i­ca, and in the West as a whole, are them­selves very ‘Euro­pean’ and seem often irrel­e­vant or repug­nant to peo­ple of oth­er cul­tures and racial back­grounds. White pro­gres­sive Amer­i­cans think of their views as being uni­ver­sal, but they are real­ly very spe­cif­ic to their own group. White lib­er­als believe, for exam­ple, that mas­culin­i­ty is ‘tox­ic’ and the world needs more female lead­ers. They also believe that ‘anti-racism’ requires ‘affir­ma­tive action’ or racial quotes to give blacks in par­tic­u­lar more rep­re­sen­ta­tion in posi­tions of pow­er and pres­tige. White lib­er­al­ism is the rea­son Kamala Har­ris was named as Joe Biden’s run­ning mate in 2020. She wasn’t a pop­u­lar politi­cian – and as this elec­tion proved, she still isn’t. But she was the right sex and colour to sat­is­fy the require­ments of white lib­er­als. Lati­nos are not white lib­er­als.”
    • How Dif­fer­ent Groups Vot­ed in the 2024 Elec­tion (Bri­an McGill, Antho­ny DeBar­ros and Caitlin Ostroff, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Here are the results of a sur­vey of over 120,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers, com­piled by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, which offer a look at vot­ing pat­terns and trends among var­i­ous groups in the elec­torate and what issues were the most impor­tant to vot­ers head­ing into Elec­tion Day. Num­bers will update as respons­es are added and the survey’s weight­ing adjusts.”
      • A LOT of graphs. One detail fas­ci­nat­ing detail: peo­ple who vot­ed for Trump were MORE con­cerned that Kamala Har­ris would lead Amer­i­ca in an author­i­tar­i­an direc­tion than the peo­ple who vot­ed for Har­ris were con­cerned about Trump doing the same. It was tight, but the greater fear was of a Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion.
    • How Could Trump and Abor­tion Rights Both Win? (Jill Fil­ipovic, New York Times): “How could sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of vot­ers cast their bal­lots for legal abor­tion and also for the man who helped make it pos­si­ble to crim­i­nal­ize abor­tion in the first place? Mr. Trump boast­ed about over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade and being the most pro-life pres­i­dent in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, while Kamala Har­ris pledged to use her pres­i­den­tial pow­er to pro­tect and expand a broad range of repro­duc­tive free­doms. Yet, accord­ing to the vote tal­lies released so far, in every state where abor­tion was up for a vote, more vot­ers cast those bal­lots for abor­tion rights than for Ms. Har­ris.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Pre­dic­tion Mar­kets for the Win (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The pre­dic­tion mar­kets pre­dict­ed the elec­tion out­come more accu­rate­ly and more quick­ly than polls or oth­er fore­cast­ing meth­ods, just as expect­ed from decades of research.”
    • Con­grats To Poly­mar­ket, But I Still Think They Were Mis­priced (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “Why [do I think the mar­ket was mis­priced]? In order for an Amer­i­can to use Poly­mar­ket, you have to get a VPN, a Coin­base account, and a Meta­mask wal­let, use the VPN, get cryp­to on the Coin­base account, trans­fer it to the Meta­mask wal­let, con­nect the Meta­mask wal­let to Poly­mar­ket, and buy the shares you want. Abil­i­ty to do this rules out 99% of the US pop­u­la­tion.… I think pre­dic­tion mar­kets are among our sin­gle best sources of truth, but that (as with every source of truth) we need to think crit­i­cal­ly about them and notice the rare times when they fail. If you can’t think crit­i­cal­ly, you’re going to have a hard time, but in that case I would still trust pre­dic­tion mar­kets over any oth­er source (except Metac­u­lus, which is so sim­i­lar to a pre­dic­tion mar­ket that it belongs in the same cat­e­go­ry any­way).”
      • Inter­est­ing con­trar­i­an take on the pre­dic­tion mar­ket’s suc­cess in the elec­tion.
  2. Why Women Use Pornog­ra­phy and How the Church Can Help (Helen Thorne-Allen­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The biggest dri­ver of pornog­ra­phy use among the women I’ve met with is anx­i­ety. Life feels over­whelm­ing at times; pornog­ra­phy brings some relief… Maybe unsur­pris­ing­ly, anoth­er big dri­ver among the women I’ve walked along­side (par­tic­u­lar­ly younger women) is a desire to know what sex is like.… The dri­ver we prob­a­bly miss most often in the church is that of man­ag­ing pain.”
  3. Be Per­fect (Ross Byrd, Mere Ortho­doxy): “In the Bible, the word ‘per­fect’ does­n’t mean what we tend to mean by it today. For the writ­ers of Scrip­ture, per­fec­tion has more to do with fin­ished-ness than flaw­less­ness. A thing is called ‘per­fect’ when it is brought to its full matu­ri­ty, when it becomes every­thing it is meant to be. Now, if we apply this def­i­n­i­tion to the Gar­den of Eden, we are forced to con­clude that Eden was not, in fact, per­fect. Eden was good, as Gen­e­sis tells us over and over. He cre­at­ed this and that, and it was good. He cre­at­ed human beings, and it was very good. But it does­n’t say per­fect. In a very impor­tant sense, it was not yet per­fect, because it was not yet com­plete. Eden was the begin­ning. The gar­den was, among oth­er things, a place of poten­tial.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. I like the core insight in this essay a lot.
  4. Why We’re Still Athe­ists (Kat­ja Hoy­er, Plough): “I, on the oth­er hand, often won­dered even as a child what the point of life was if all you did is grow up, work, die, and be erased. When I lost rel­a­tives, friends, and pets, I knew I had lost them for­ev­er, while oth­ers held out for some form of reunion in anoth­er life or at least the idea that souls con­tin­ued to exist some­where. On an abstract lev­el, I began to under­stand why most of human­i­ty finds com­fort, sure­ty, and pur­pose in reli­gion. But by the time I worked this out, it was entire­ly an intel­lec­tu­al mind game to me. I had grown up in a world that made sense with­out God and noth­ing could change that now.”
    • A very inter­est­ing essay about why East Ger­many is so athe­ist, writ­ten by an athe­ist reflect­ing on it.
  5. Are Reli­gious Peo­ple More Fear­ful? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “I am real­ly sur­prised at how few of these fac­tors actu­al­ly ‘pop’ in this analy­sis. That was true for things like income, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, view of the Bible, and reli­gious impor­tance. None of those had a mea­sur­able impact on the fear index. Also, I didn’t find a sin­gle fac­tor that clear­ly led to high­er lev­els of expressed fear. How­ev­er, there were four vari­ables in this analy­sis that pre­dict­ed a low­er score on the fear index. They were: being white, being male, hav­ing a high­er lev­el of edu­ca­tion, and increased church atten­dance.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. St. Junipero Ser­ra: An Unjust­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Fig­ure (Bri­an Gabriel, The Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tive): “In present-day dis­course, the actions of the mis­sion­ar­ies and the Span­ish sol­diers are often con­flat­ed, but the mis­sion­ar­ies’ pater­nal­is­tic atti­tude toward the tribes actu­al­ly often led them to pro­tect the tribes from the more rapa­cious and unsa­vory behav­ior of the sol­diers. It’s true enough that the tribes were some­times forced to labor in the fields, and their free­dom of move­ment was restrict­ed once they con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism. The mis­sions them­selves were often built in part, at least, by the tribes­men, some­times under duress. But the harsh treat­ment, while strik­ing the mod­ern observ­er as cru­el and tor­tu­ous, was seen by the mis­sion­ar­ies as essen­tial to the natives’ spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion. Today, many of their descen­dants remain Catholic. The val­ue of the mis­sion­ar­ies’ actions can nev­er be rec­og­nized by a mod­ern world that doesn’t allow for spir­i­tu­al effects.”
    • I have long believed, even as a very Protes­tant per­son, that Junipero Ser­ra has got­ten a bum rap in Cal­i­for­nia (and at Stan­ford).
  7. Rod­ney Alcala Didn’t Kill Me. Forty Years Lat­er, I Asked Him Why (Alice Feir­ing, New York Mag­a­zine): “Four-decades-plus lat­er, I learned his real name when it flashed across a tele­vi­sion screen beneath his famil­iar face and orange jump­suit: ‘Rod­ney Alcala, The Dat­ing Game Ser­i­al Killer, Sen­tenced to Death.’ It couldn’t be the same man, I’d thought to myself. But after hours of Googling I had to accept the truth: Jon Burg­er was an alias; he was the win­ning bach­e­lor on The Dat­ing Game nine years after I met him; and he is believed to have been one of the most pro­lif­ic of ser­i­al killers, offi­cial­ly respon­si­ble for at least sev­en mur­ders with author­i­ties esti­mat­ing his real body count at about 130.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who says, “Very well writ­ten, chill­ing sto­ry. The author is lucky to be alive.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • How to Do Action Com­e­dy (Every Frame a Paint­ing, YouTube): nine min­utes about what makes Jack­ie Chan so great, and why his for­eign films are bet­ter than his Amer­i­can films in impor­tant ways.
  • Har­vey Epstein for New York City Coun­cil (Sat­ur­day Night Live, YouTube): two and a half min­utes I found absolute­ly hilar­i­ous. What’s even fun­nier is that it’s about a real politi­cian.
  • Vote (Texts From Super­heroes)
  • Diet (Pearls Before Swine) — actu­al­ly, though

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 459



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 459th instal­la­tion, a num­ber I find inter­est­ing sim­ply because 4 + 5 = 9.

I should prob­a­bly men­tion that I’m not shar­ing any arti­cles about last night’s pres­i­den­tial debate today because I want to wait and see how peo­ple are think­ing about the race after a few days. The reac­tions right now are too raw.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A slap in the face for psy­chob­a­b­ble (Janan Ganesh, Finan­cial Times): “I can’t be the only for­eign­er in the US who has been chid­ed for not hav­ing a ther­a­pist by some­one who — choos­ing my words care­ful­ly here — seems to be get­ting uneven results from theirs. If psy­chob­a­b­ble were con­fined to actors going up to col­lect their big cer­tifi­cates, I’d leave it alone. But, like sand, it gets every­where.”
    • Old­er but gold.
  2. Rebels with a reli­gious cause: Meet New York’s avant-garde con­ser­v­a­tives (Leonar­do Bevilac­qua, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor): “Orig­i­nal­ly from Philadel­phia, Salomé has been a devout Catholic since she was young. She wears a ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ hat around town some­times as an act of iron­ic defi­ance. And even though she’s a trans­gen­der woman, she prefers the term of an ear­li­er age: cas­tra­to.  But first and fore­most, she says, she’s a child of God.”
    • Inter­est­ing and full of sur­pris­es.
  3. A Par­tial Expla­na­tion of Zoomer Girl Derange­ment (Zin­nia, Sub­stack): “Why are young women today so deranged? Because no one is hon­est with them and they can­not be hon­est with them­selves. Par­ents lie to you, teach­ers lie to you, friends lie to you, every­one lies to you. If any­one dares tell you the truth, they are ostra­cized. My teenage self could only find truth smug­gled away in the dark recess­es of obscure online com­mu­ni­ties; usu­al­ly couched in lay­ers of iron­ic (and sin­cere) big­otry. And while I did not enjoy the big­otry (at the time), I found val­ue in engag­ing with the trans­gres­sive mate­r­i­al I came across because I felt that it expressed truths oth­er­wise unavail­able to me. Today, truth lies with­in the domain of inter­net ghet­tos, siloed away from the rest of polite soci­ety. At best, what soci­ety tells you is entire­ly unhelp­ful: ‘You’re beau­ti­ful just the way you are.’ At worst, what soci­ety tells you is entire­ly destruc­tive: ‘If you feel alien­at­ed by your body, you should maybe con­sid­er a mas­tec­to­my.’ ”
    • A bit vul­gar in places, but inter­est­ing. Kin­da long.
  4. Elite mis­in­for­ma­tion is an under­rat­ed prob­lem (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “…all this slop­py work and mis­lead­ing rhetoric is both more impact­ful than a lot of peo­ple real­ize, and also a lot less tac­ti­cal­ly savvy than those doing it think. The prob­lem is that it’s about a mil­lion times eas­i­er to per­suade a high­ly engaged mem­ber of your team of some­thing than it is to per­suade a swing vot­er (who is prob­a­bly skep­ti­cal, cyn­i­cal, and not that engaged with pol­i­tics) or a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion (who instinc­tive­ly assumes you’re lying about every­thing). So when you put some­thing out there that’s false or mis­lead­ing, you’re about a mil­lion times more like­ly to con­fuse peo­ple who are friend­ly to your cause than to actu­al­ly per­suade any­one worth per­suad­ing.”
  5. It Is Time for Rad­i­cal Can­dor (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dis­patch): “It’s anoth­er lit­tle Bat­tle of Stal­in­grad: It’s a pity some­body has to win; all a decent per­son can do is pray for casu­al­ties.… Because we are gov­erned by imbe­ciles and thieves and mis­cre­ants and degen­er­ates and peo­ple who are will­ing to put up with all that imbe­cil­i­ty and thiev­ery and mis­cre­ance and degen­er­a­cy if it gets them even such a pathet­ic prize as a tem­po­rary seat in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives…”
  6. How (and How Not) to Wait (Mark Vroe­gop, Cross­way): “Focus. Adore. Seek. Trust. That’s how you wait on the Lord. It’s how you live on what’s true about God when you don’t know what’s true about your life.… Rather than allow­ing strong emo­tions to hold you hostage, you can embrace a strat­e­gy (FAST) that wel­comes God’s grace into your uncer­tain­ty.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. I feel awk­ward shar­ing this, but I was inter­viewed for a pod­cast. I did not choose the title (nor even the top­ic): Why I am NOT a Calvin­ist: Break­ing Down Every­thing from Calvin­ism, to Can We Lose Our Sal­va­tion (King­dom Come Pod­cast, YouTube): one hour long.

Less Serious Things Which Interested Glen

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 443

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, vol­ume 443, is a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Four Ways of Look­ing at Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…to chart the sup­posed reach of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, a sur­vey from the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute asks respon­dents whether they agree with the for­mu­la­tion ‘U.S. laws should be based on Chris­t­ian val­ues.’ But some­one who says yes might just be agree­ing with King’s ‘Let­ter From Birm­ing­ham Jail’ or the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, not endors­ing a legal code based on Deuteron­o­my.”
    • Unlocked.
  2. Relat­ed: If It Were Me, I’d Try Not Help­ing the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “A demo­c­ra­t­ic life is not the high­est thing or the best thing. But as a way of liv­ing amongst our neigh­bors and seek­ing to live a life of con­science under the law, it is a very good thing. The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists, with their strong man pol­i­tics, sup­port for rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence, and obses­sion with racial sol­i­dar­i­ty would destroy all of that. What wor­ries me now, though, is not the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists them­selves. Frankly, many of them are too reck­less, undis­ci­plined, and reac­tive to be able to accom­plish the rev­o­lu­tion­ary change they seek. What wor­ries me is that there are a great many social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers who love the demo­c­ra­t­ic life who are con­stant­ly being called ‘Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists’ by the likes of Hei­di Przy­by­la for believ­ing things that are utter­ly unre­mark­able in Chris­t­ian his­to­ry. If our sec­u­lar media out­lets con­tin­ue to tell them that ‘Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism’ is the belief in things vir­tu­al­ly all Chris­tians across his­to­ry have believed, I fear they will lis­ten. And they will find these eth­no-nation­al­ist total­i­tar­i­an aspi­rants and, not real­iz­ing what they are doing, they will make com­mon cause with them.”
    • This is one of the most help­ful pieces I’ve seen on Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. It’s a bit long, but eas­i­ly skim­ma­ble to zero in on the parts you find most inter­est­ing.
  3. What hap­pened after a man got 217 coro­n­avirus shots (Rachel Pan­nett, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Going into the study, the researchers had spec­u­lat­ed that hav­ing so many shots could cause his immune sys­tem to become fatigued. Vac­cines cre­ate immune mem­o­ry cells that are on stand­by, ready to rapid­ly acti­vate the body’s defens­es in the event of an infec­tion. But in fact, the researchers found that the man had more of these immune cells — known as T‑cells — than a con­trol group that had received the stan­dard three-dose vac­cine reg­i­men. They also did not detect any fatigue in these cells, which they said were just as effec­tive as those of peo­ple who had received a typ­i­cal num­ber of coro­n­avirus shots.”
  4. Alba­nia to speed up EU acces­sion using Chat­G­PT (Alice Tay­lor, Eurac­tiv): “The Alban­ian gov­ern­ment will use Chat­G­PT to trans­late thou­sands of pages of EU legal mea­sures and pro­vi­sions into shqip (Alban­ian lan­guage) and then inte­grate them into exist­ing legal struc­tures, fol­low­ing an agree­ment with the CEO of the par­ent com­pa­ny, Ope­nAI, Mira Murati, who was born in Alba­nia.… on 13 Decem­ber, at the EU sum­mit in Brus­sels, he will present the project and a suc­cess­ful test of ‘the Alban­ian mod­el of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence for the inter­po­si­tion of the leg­is­la­tion totalling 280,000 pages of legal mea­sures of the EU.’”
  5. I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train (Steve Charnok, Metro): “While the 17-year-old does indeed live on trains, he does so entire­ly legal­ly. And with a sur­pris­ing amount of com­fort. Lasse trav­els 600 miles a day through­out Ger­many aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He trav­els first class, sleeps on night trains, has break­fast in DB lounges and takes show­ers in pub­lic swim­ming pools and leisure cen­tres, all using his unlim­it­ed annu­al rail­card.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 435

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 435, a tri­an­gu­lar num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Ground of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): three and a half excel­lent min­utes
  2. No, Not Every­one Needs Ther­a­py (Freya India, Sub­stack): “… there are peo­ple who now feel pres­sured to get pro­fes­sion­al help for nor­mal neg­a­tive emotions—teens and pre-teens con­vinced the rea­son they’re sad some­times is because they’re bro­ken and haven’t paid enough to be healed. Now not going to ther­a­py is a red flag. Seek­ing sup­port from friends and fam­i­ly is exploit­ing their ’emo­tion­al labour’. And men are shamed for pre­fer­ring to chat to their mates about their prob­lems than pay a stranger, like that one Bet­ter­Help ad where a woman dis­miss­es a guy she’s dat­ing because he ‘doesn’t do ther­a­py’. Think about that! How have we reached the point where we’re stig­ma­tis­ing peo­ple for not need­ing men­tal health sup­port?”
  3. What If There Is No Such Thing as ‘Bib­li­cal’ Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty? (Brady Bow­man, Mere Ortho­doxy): “…the ‘pro­duc­tiv­i­ty mind­set’ seems to me, at least in some ways, deeply incon­gru­ent with the Bible’s vision of real­i­ty. To say it more sim­ply, to adopt an out­look dom­i­nat­ed by speed and effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is to adopt a per­spec­tive that is alien to the writ­ers of Scrip­ture.…”
  4. New tech­nol­o­gy inter­prets archae­o­log­i­cal find­ings from Bib­li­cal times (Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty, Phys.org): “Apply­ing their method to find­ings from ancient Gath (Tell es-Safi in cen­tral Israel), the researchers val­i­dat­ed the Bib­li­cal account, ‘About this time Haz­a­el King of Aram went up and attacked Gath and cap­tured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem’ (2 Kings 12, 18). They explain that, unlike pre­vi­ous meth­ods, the new tech­nique can deter­mine whether a cer­tain item (such as a mud brick) under­went a fir­ing event even at rel­a­tive­ly low tem­per­a­tures, from 200°C and up.”
  5. US Intel­li­gence Shows Flawed Chi­na Mis­siles Led Xi to Purge Army (Peter Mar­tin and Jen­nifer Jacobs, Bloomberg): “The cor­rup­tion inside China’s Rock­et Force and through­out the nation’s defense indus­tri­al base is so exten­sive that US offi­cials now believe Xi is less like­ly to con­tem­plate major mil­i­tary action in the com­ing years than would oth­er­wise have been the case, accord­ing to the peo­ple, who asked not to be named dis­cussing intel­li­gence.”
    • This may be the most impor­tant bit of geopo­lit­i­cal news you read this year.
  6. The Mis­guid­ed War on the SAT (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “With the Supreme Court’s restric­tion of affir­ma­tive action last year, emo­tions around col­lege admis­sions are run­ning high. The debate over stan­dard­ized test­ing has become caught up in deep­er ques­tions about inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca and what pur­pose, ulti­mate­ly, the nation’s uni­ver­si­ties should serve. But the data sug­gests that test­ing crit­ics have drawn the wrong bat­tle lines. If test scores are used as one fac­tor among oth­ers — and if col­leges give appli­cants cred­it for hav­ing over­come adver­si­ty — the SAT and ACT can help cre­ate diverse class­es of high­ly tal­ent­ed stu­dents. Restor­ing the tests might also help address a dif­fer­ent frus­tra­tion that many Amer­i­cans have with the admis­sions process at elite uni­ver­si­ties: that it has become too opaque and uncon­nect­ed to mer­it.”
    • Not the main point of the essay, but worth com­ment­ing that pol­i­tics poi­sons what­ev­er it polar­izes.
  7. The Pecu­liar Sto­ry of C. S. Lewis and Janie King Moore (Bethel McGrew, First Things): “Lewis’s let­ters from this peri­od are marked by an under­stat­ed deep relief. He wrote to a fre­quent cor­re­spon­dent that he was only just begin­ning to appre­ci­ate ‘how bad it was’ in hind­sight. And yet, though we miss the works he might have writ­ten under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, we might also won­der whether the books we have would have been the same, had duty not com­pelled him to die to self every day for the sake of one frag­ile, impos­si­ble old woman. In the end, his own words rang as true for him­self as they did for every­one else: ‘Whether we like it or not God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 429

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 429, a sphenic num­ber (i.e, a num­ber with exact­ly three dis­tinct prime fac­tors).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Clas­si­cal lib­er­als are increas­ing­ly reli­gious (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Not too long ago, I was telling Ezra Klein that I had noticed a rel­a­tive­ly new devel­op­ment in clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. If a meet an intel­lec­tu­al non-Left­ist, increas­ing­ly they are Niet­zschean, com­pared to days of yore. But if they are clas­si­cal lib­er­al instead, typ­i­cal­ly they are reli­gious as well. That could be Catholic or Jew­ish or LDS or East­ern Ortho­dox, with some Protes­tant thrown into the mix, but Protes­tants com­ing in last. The per­son being reli­gious is now a pre­dic­tor of that same per­son hav­ing non-crazy polit­i­cal views. Clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism thus, whether you like it or not, has become an essen­tial­ly reli­gious move­ment.”
    • Relat­ed: Why Tyler Cowen Does­n’t Meet Protes­tant Intel­lec­tu­als (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “You would think that after decades of bemoan­ing the ‘scan­dal of the evan­gel­i­cal mind,’ we would be heav­i­ly pro­mot­ing the world class sci­en­tists and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al fig­ures we have. But that isn’t the case. I’m not a sci­en­tist but I’m not chopped liv­er either. I was a part­ner in a con­sult­ing firm, a senior fel­low in a major think tank, and have writ­ten for and been cit­ed in most of the major pub­li­ca­tions in the coun­try (NYT, WSJ, Guardian, Atlantic, etc). But the insti­tu­tion that’s done the most to pro­mote my work is the Catholic-cen­tric First Things mag­a­zine. Undoubt­ed­ly the best career move I could make as a writer on cul­ture, men’s issues, and pub­lic pol­i­cy would be to con­vert to Catholi­cism. That would prob­a­bly open doors to oppor­tu­ni­ties I will not oth­er­wise get.”
      • Renn left out some impor­tant pieces of the puz­zle. It also has to do with the way that decen­tral­ized church author­i­ty oper­ates in the Protes­tant world and the lack of inter­sec­tion between some­one like me and some­one like Andy Stan­ley. We just move in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cir­cles. I’m not say­ing I’m the intel­lec­tu­al in this equa­tion, by the way. I am say­ing I know a bunch. I have bap­tized peo­ple who are now pro­fes­sors at Stan­ford, but pick-your-favorite megachurch preach­er has no idea that they exist. And that lack of inter­sec­tion extends to groups like Ver­i­tas and the Trin­i­ty Forum which are doing the kind of work Renn describes, but inde­pen­dent­ly of Sad­dle­back Church or any oth­er evan­gel­i­cal cen­ter of influ­ence. Most influ­en­tial preach­ers are niche celebri­ties who are also pop­ulist intel­lec­tu­als, and that is a very dif­fer­ent thing from an aca­d­e­m­ic or insti­tu­tion­al intel­lec­tu­al. There real­ly isn’t any straight­for­ward way to bring the two togeth­er. And I haven’t even talked about the role of Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties in this sit­u­a­tion, their rela­tion­ship to evan­gel­i­cal influ­encers, and their joint rela­tion­ship to sec­u­lar schol­ars. It would take a whole essay to bring all the pieces togeth­er, and I’m not sure it’s a good use of my time.
    • Relat­ed: She found mean­ing where she least expect­ed it — her child­hood faith (Rachel Mar­tin, NPR): “Hur­witz: But I think what makes me ner­vous about the spir­i­tu­al buf­fet is that what you’re say­ing is, ‘I’m going to take this thing from Bud­dhism that’s so me and this thing from Judaism that’s so me and this from Catholi­cism.’   Mar­tin: One-hun­dred per­cent. That’s what I’m doing. Hur­witz: This is what so many of us do, and at the end of the day you’re rein­forc­ing your­self. You’re kind of deify­ing your­self. Mar­tin: Wow. Hur­witz: You’re say­ing, ‘What rein­forces my pre­ex­ist­ing beliefs?’ This is how we con­sume social media, right? But it’s not the pur­pose of these great spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions.”
    • Also relat­ed: Where Does Reli­gion Come From? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Some sort of reli­gious atti­tude is essen­tial­ly demand­ed, in my view, by what we know about the uni­verse and the human place with­in it, but every sin­cere searcher is like­ly to fol­low their own idio­syn­crat­ic path.”
      • A fas­ci­nat­ing essay that wan­ders into weird places.
  2. How this Tur­ing Award–winning researcher became a leg­endary aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor (Sheon Han, MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review): “For­mer stu­dents describe Blum as unwa­ver­ing­ly pos­i­tive, say­ing he had oth­er ways besides crit­i­cism to steer them away from dead ends. ‘He is always smil­ing, but you can see he smiles wider when he likes some­thing. And oh, we want­ed that big smile,’ says Ronitt Rubin­feld, a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence at MIT. Behind the gen­er­al pos­i­tiv­i­ty, Rubin­feld says, is a fine taste for inter­est­ing ideas. Stu­dents could trust they were being guid­ed in the right direc­tion. Come up with a bor­ing idea? Blum, who is known for his ter­ri­ble mem­o­ry, would have most­ly for­got­ten it by your next meet­ing.”
    • I quite liked this one.
  3. There’s anoth­er Chris­t­ian move­ment that’s chang­ing our pol­i­tics. It has noth­ing to do with white­ness or nation­al­ism (John Blake, CNN): “The Social Gospel was a Chris­t­ian move­ment that emerged in late 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca as a response to the obscene lev­els of inequal­i­ty in a rapid­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing coun­try.… The Social Gospel turned reli­gion into a weapon for eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal reform. Its mes­sage: sav­ing peo­ple from slums was just as impor­tant as sav­ing them from hell. At its peak, the movement’s lead­ers sup­port­ed cam­paigns for eight-hour work­days, the break­ing up of cor­po­rate monop­o­lies and the abo­li­tion of child labor. They spoke from pul­pits, lec­tured across the coun­try and wrote best-sell­ing books.… The Social Gospel move­ment is mak­ing a come­back. Some may argue it nev­er left.”
  4. You Are the Last Line of Defense (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): “I am here because I know that in the fight for the West, I know who my allies are. And my allies are not the peo­ple who, look­ing at facile, exter­nal mark­ers of my iden­ti­ty, one might imag­ine them to be. My allies are peo­ple who believe that Amer­i­ca is good. That the West is good. That human beings—not cultures—are cre­at­ed equal and that say­ing so is essen­tial to know­ing what we are fight­ing for. Amer­i­ca and our val­ues are worth fight­ing for—and that is the pri­or­i­ty of the day.”
  5. UK infant bap­tized before being forced off life sup­port, father says ‘the dev­il’ was in the court­room (Tim­o­thy H.J. Nerozzi, Fox News): “Dean Gre­go­ry, Indi’s father, said before her death that he was inspired to bap­tize his daugh­ter by Chris­t­ian legal vol­un­teers who fought to keep her alive. Dean said he became con­vinced of the exis­tence of the dev­il by his fam­i­ly’s treat­ment in the court­room. ‘I am not reli­gious and I am not bap­tized. But when I was in court, it felt like I had been dragged to hell,’ Dean Gre­go­ry said in a Nov. 6 inter­view with New Dai­ly Com­pass. ‘I thought, if hell exists then heav­en must exist. It was like the dev­il was there. I thought if there’s a dev­il then God must exist.’ ”
    • Heart­break­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. Some Israel/Hamas per­spec­tives:
    • There Should Be More Pub­lic Pres­sure on Hamas (David French, New York Times): “I’m not naïve. I don’t for a moment believe that defeat­ing Hamas and remov­ing it from pow­er solves the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Israel can­not live up to its own demo­c­ra­t­ic promise or its own lib­er­al ideals if, for exam­ple, it indulges its own dan­ger­ous rad­i­cals. But I do know that plac­ing more pres­sure on Israel than Hamas to end the con­flict and save civil­ian lives is exact­ly back­ward. The inter­na­tion­al sys­tem depends on oppos­ing the aggres­sor and pun­ish­ing crimes. Protests that aim their demands more at Israel than Hamas impede jus­tice, erode the inter­na­tion­al order and under­mine the quest for a real and last­ing peace.”
    • This War Did Not Start a Month Ago (Dalia Hatuqa, New York Times): “To many inside and out­side this war, the bru­tal­i­ty of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthink­able, as have been the scale and feroc­i­ty of Israel’s reprisal. But Pales­tini­ans have been sub­ject to a steady stream of unfath­omable vio­lence — as well as the creep­ing annex­a­tion of their land by Israel and Israeli set­tlers — for gen­er­a­tions. If peo­ple are going to under­stand this lat­est con­flict and see a path for­ward for every­one, we need to be more hon­est, nuanced and com­pre­hen­sive about the recent decades of his­to­ry in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, par­tic­u­lar­ly the impact of occu­pa­tion and vio­lence on the Pales­tini­ans.”
      • A fair­ly straight­for­ward pre­sen­ta­tion of the Pales­tin­ian per­spec­tive.
    • The Strug­gle for Black Free­dom Has Noth­ing to Do with Israel (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “There is yet anoth­er incon­ve­nient fact for those who want to reduce the Israeli-Arab con­flict to a com­pe­ti­tion between Euro­pean set­tlers and peo­ple of col­or: the major­i­ty of Israeli Jews are not Euro­pean. They are Mizrahi Jews—hailing from the Mid­dle East and North Africa. What’s more, it is not the Euro­pean Jews but the Mizrahi Jews—who are dif­fi­cult to visu­al­ly dis­tin­guish from Palestinians—that form most of the vot­ing base of the right-wing par­ties that Israel’s crit­ics con­sid­er to be the tru­ly racist ones.”
    • Three arti­cles from The Gospel Coali­tion about the var­i­ous ways Chris­tians think about the promis­es to Israel in the Old Tes­ta­ment. It’s worth sort­ing through your own per­spec­tive. These three essays are from well-respect­ed Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics who present their posi­tions con­cise­ly and well.
      • Why the Land Promis­es Belong to Eth­nic Israel (Ger­ald McDer­mott, The Gospel Coali­tion): “First, if the land promise was end­ed with the com­ing of Jesus, then God is not trust­wor­thy. For he promised to Abra­ham and his seed that the land would be theirs for an ever­last­ing pos­ses­sion (Gen. 17:8). Sec­ond, if the land promise to Israel is bro­ken, then so might be God’s promise to renew and restore the heav­ens and the earth. The land promise’s par­tial fulfillment—by bring­ing Jews from the four cor­ners of the earth back to the land start­ing in the eigh­teenth century—is down pay­ment on the promise of a new heav­en and a new earth. Third, it is a deep the­o­log­i­cal rea­son why we should sup­port Israel in this new war against the new Nazism.”
      • The Expect­ed Uni­ver­sal­iza­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment Land Promis­es (G. K. Beale, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The land promis­es will be ful­filled in a phys­i­cal form when all believ­ers inher­it the earth, but the inau­gu­ra­tion of this ful­fill­ment is main­ly spir­i­tu­al until the final con­sum­ma­tion in a ful­ly phys­i­cal new heav­en and earth. The phys­i­cal way these land promis­es have begun ful­fill­ment is that Christ him­self intro­duced the new cre­ation by his phys­i­cal res­ur­rec­tion.… There­fore, none of the ref­er­ences to the promise of Israel’s land in the Old Tes­ta­ment appears to be relat­ed to the promis­es of eth­nic Israel’s return to the promised land on this present earth.”
      • Israel’s Role in the Land Promise (Dar­rell Bock, The Gospel Coali­tion): “It’s often claimed the New Tes­ta­ment moves the land promise from being about Israel as a peo­ple in the land to being about God’s peo­ple in the world. That’s an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. The ques­tion is whether that uni­ver­sal expan­sion neuters the spe­cif­ic promise made to Israel of a peo­ple in a land.”
  7. The Impru­dence of ‘Dump Them’ (Clare Cof­fey, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “As pru­dence has fall­en out of favor as an aspi­ra­tion, it’s hard not to see the hole it has left. On social media, we try to fill that hole with an end­less pro­lif­er­a­tion of abstract rules to gov­ern human deci­sions. We try to out­source the basis of indi­vid­ual judg­ment to over­ly sim­plis­tic moral equa­tions, and more often than not, we find the math works out to ‘dump them.’ ”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.