Lies We Believe

John Stos­sel did a report on 20/20 that makes for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing, Lies, Myths, and Down­right Stu­pid­i­ty, in which he explodes the most com­mon media-fed rumors that mess up our lives and our soci­ety.

Some of the myths he hits: that there’s a rela­tion­ship between being cold and catch­ing a cold, that we have less free time than we used to (we have a lot more free time than our par­ents did or than we did grow­ing up), and the idea that mon­ey can buy hap­pi­ness.

It’s good read and will give you fod­der for late-night dorm con­ver­sa­tions.

Some February Thoughts

Last night’s episode of the West Wing was the first one in a while that was­n’t com­plete­ly lame. The end­ing was a bit con­trived, but I liked the flow of the episode.

That, how­ev­er, is nei­ther here nor there.

Also, I noticed that a Stan­ford grad joined Cirque de Soleil while at the same time becom­ing Ms. Fit­ness USA. I swear, those stu­dents can be such over­achiev­ers… I bet her mom has some fun­ny con­ver­sa­tions, though. “So your daugh­ter has a grad degree from Stanford–what does she do?” “She’s per­forms in the cir­cus.”

That also is nei­ther here nor there (but I note that you’re still read­ing, and so it was at least inter­est­ing).

Paula is doing well–she’s got just under two months to go until she gives birth to our first child. The biggest item on our to-do list now is buy­ing dia­pers. Lots of dia­pers.

Things are going well with Chi Alpha, espe­cial­ly on a dis­trict (statewide) lev­el.

Speak­ing of the dis­trict lev­el, my dis­trict super­in­ten­dent is retir­ing this April. This led Tim Smith, who leads Chi Alpha at Sacra­men­to State to have some fun:


From: Tim Smith
Sent: Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 04, 2004 1:24 PM
To: Glen Cole
Sub­ject: Chi Alpha

Dear Bro. Cole–

I don’t want you to leave your cur­rent office, but as talk­ing you out of it at this point seems unlike­ly, I am writ­ing today to offer you a new job as an Asso­ciate Cam­pus Pas­tor with me here in Chi Alpha-Sacra­men­to.

The perks of this job include:
–unlim­it­ed time off for “Plus One” con­certs and/or tours.
–a more relaxed dress code when on cam­pus.
–the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have direct involve­ment in shap­ing the imme­di­ate future of our world’s lead­er­ship, both domes­tic and for­eign, on a dai­ly basis.

I’m pret­ty sure I can get Chi Alpha and AGHM to waive the year-long Cam­pus Mis­sion­ary Intern­ship and Bere­an require­ments, so we could have you on cam­pus imme­di­ate­ly after rais­ing your bud­get. Also, if Mrs. Cole goes to work, they will count her income toward 20% of your bud­get, so that could help.

Any­way, you think about it, let me know if you’re inter­est­ed, and we’ll sched­ule an inter­view over piz­za and Coke.
Have a great day!
Tim Smith

To which the amused Glen Cole replied:


Dear Tim:

I knew God would speak to me about my future. Yours is the first offer, so we will be in prayer­ful con­sid­er­a­tion about this.

Bless­ings!

GDC

That’s a lot fun­nier if you know Glen Cole at all. Or if you know any­thing about how Chi Alpha ranks on the inter­nal AG peck­ing order.

And Now For Something Completely Different

From the realm of just plain gross: the BBC reports that sci­en­tists have found a way to make mice pro­duce mon­key sperm.

Yes, you read that cor­rect­ly.

*shud­der*

That’s just creepy on so many lev­els I don’t know where to begin.

Religion and Economic Growth Linked

Here’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry from the New York Times: Research Around the World Links Reli­gion to Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment.

Intrigu­ing excerpts:

Since the Ger­man soci­ol­o­gist Max Weber wrote about the Protes­tant work eth­ic and the spir­it of cap­i­tal­ism, social sci­en­tists have argued that cul­ture — includ­ing reli­gious habits — is part of the com­plex mix that deter­mines a coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health. What dis­tin­guish­es the work of Mr. Bar­ro and Ms. McCleary, some schol­ars said, is that it uses a sophis­ti­cat­ed analy­sis of a huge set of data to quan­ti­fy the argu­ments of anthro­pol­o­gists, soci­ol­o­gists and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists.

…

As the cou­ple began their study, Ms. McCleary said, it was clear that the wide­ly dis­cussed sec­u­lar­iza­tion the­sis — the idea that a coun­try becomes more sec­u­lar as it becomes rich­er and more indus­tri­al­ized — did not apply to the Unit­ed States, one of the most reli­gious nations in the world.

And over the last 30 years, many East Asian coun­tries, includ­ing Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore and South Korea, have expe­ri­enced both rapid eco­nom­ic growth and the spread of Chris­tian­i­ty, Mr. Bar­ro said.

“South Korea is a good exam­ple of that rapid growth and more reli­gion,” he said. There the num­ber of con­verts from Con­fu­cian­ism and oth­er East­ern reli­gions to Chris­tian­i­ty is grow­ing rapid­ly, he explained.

Some of the low­est lev­els of reli­gios­i­ty were found in Chi­na and North Korea. The low­est lev­els of eco­nom­ic growth were in sub-Saha­ran African coun­tries. The for­mer East Ger­many (which includes Weber’s birth­place) was one of the low­est in both reli­gios­i­ty and growth.

Booze, the Bible, and Bad Theology

As I promised in last night’s mes­sage Booze, The Bible, & Bad The­ol­o­gy, here are some resources out­lin­ing what the Bible says about fer­ment­ed bev­er­ages.

* First, a list of every pas­sage in the Bible that dis­cuss­es alco­hol.
* Daniel Whit­field has a good essay Alco­hol and the Bible–well worth read­ing.
* Daniel Wal­lace wrote The Bible and Alco­hol, an extreme­ly help­ful arti­cle from a very sol­id schol­ar.
* The Chris­t­ian Coun­ter­cul­ture project has an insight­ful col­lec­tion of arti­cles in their What Would Jesus Drink? col­lec­tion.

There is diver­si­ty with­in the Chris­t­ian camp on this issue, and a sim­ple google search will find argu­ments from all cor­ners. The ones I list­ed above are the ones I find most cred­i­ble.

UPDATE: I just ran across a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at Chris­tian­i­ty Today that gives a sol­id his­tor­i­cal overview — Amassed Media: The Drink Debate.

Retreat Messages Online

The mes­sages from Col­lege Win­ter Retreat are online now in Win­dows Media for­mat.

I would have put them in MP3 for­mat, but every time I tried to con­vert the file sizes swelled by an order of mag­ni­tude and I could­n’t fig­ure out how to change it.

If you want to give it a go, feel free.

Chi Alpha blogring on Xanga

I just stum­bled across a Chi Alpha blo­gring on Xan­ga. It’s pret­ty small now and every­one seems to be from one cam­pus (the one I min­is­tered at pre­vi­ous­ly), but it’s still cool.

If you’re on Xan­ga sign up!

Retreat Rocked

Col­lege Win­ter Retreat was great, but I’m just now recov­er­ing from all the work. I was real­ly pleased with out every­thing turned out. Our speak­er, Sam Hud­dle­ston, real­ly con­nect­ed with the stu­dents and chal­lenged them deeply. The stu­dents were respon­sive to the chal­lenge and were touched by God. Every­thing was good! Num­bers were up (a lot), the loca­tion was phe­nom­e­nal, and the core goals were accom­plished. Woohoo!

You can check out our retreat pho­tos–some of them are quite good.

Off to Retreat

I’m coor­di­nat­ing the dis­trict col­lege win­ter retreat this week­end, so Paula and I are head­ing up today to start get­ting stuff set up.

I’m pret­ty excited–our atten­dance is up by about 60% over last year and so it feels like we have a lot of momen­tum going into it.

On a more per­son­al note, around half of our Stan­ford Chi Alpha group will be head­ing up. Paula and I are deeply excit­ed about that. In our expe­ri­ence, few things cause a group to bond as much as a road trip to and from retreat along with all the fun things that hap­pen while there.