Whew–What A Whirlwind

Just a quick update on our lives…

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any­thing on this site (although look over at the Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford site and you’ll real­ize that I’ve been quite active online).

Still, this is the site that bears my name and all…

Here are a few lit­tle tid­bits:

  • I vot­ed today. It was worth­while, but it real­ly wrecked my sched­ule.
  • I have a bone to pick with the Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal sys­tem: what’s up with statewide ref­er­en­dums? Don’t they defeat the pur­pose of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy?
  • And why do we use plu­ral­i­ty vot­ing to select pub­lic ser­vants? There are much bet­ter ways!
  • I broke the 10,000 mile mark­er on our car yes­ter­day. I’m get­ting quite famil­iar with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s inter­state sys­tem…
  • Also yes­ter­day I had a chance to meet with a real­ly neat pas­tor named Paul. He has eleven chil­dren. All by the same wife. Who still looks like a mod­el (his words). Wow.
  • While I was meet­ing with Paul, he gave me a free tick­et to a remark­able cave in Vol­cano, CA called Black Chasm. Creepy name, gor­geous cav­ern. I was the only per­son on the tour when I vis­it­ed the cave, so it was real­ly cool. If you’re ever near Vol­cano, you should real­ly try to vis­it the cave–it’s well worth the time and mon­ey.

Any­way, I’m still work­ing at rais­ing our full mis­sion­ary bud­get (hence all the miles on the car and the meet­ing with said pas­tor). Keep us in your prayers!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I am giv­ing about two hours a week of min­istry time on Stan­ford’s cam­pus. We’ll be hav­ing our sixth meet­ing of the year this Wednes­day (Paula will be speak­ing), and we’re expect­ing around 20 stu­dents to show up. Rough­ly 1/3 of them will be Sin­ga­pore­an grad­u­ate stu­dents.

Home, home on the web, where the bytes and the binaries play…

You might find this inter­est­ing: some of our very own have web­sites!

Jim­my Lim’s web­site is You ALWAYS Sing the First Line of a Blues Song Twice

Shaowei Lin’s web­site is Banana­World

Paula and I share a site: Glen & Paula Davis (although it’s more of a pro­fes­sion­al than a per­son­al site)

Any­one else out there with a home on the web?

Legal Rights Are Rooted In Divine Laws

Michael Novak has an inter­est­ing col­umn argu­ing that it’s in our nation­al self-inter­est to real­ize that there is an intrin­sic con­nec­tion between the wide­spread sense of reli­gious con­vic­tion in Amer­i­ca and the free­doms we enjoy.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Novak argues that Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vides a unique foun­da­tion for the con­cept of indi­vid­ual rights. Read all about it

(I should men­tion that it’s in the con­text of an anti-ACLU polemic).

Becoming Wise In College

I just ran across a very inter­est­ing arti­cle, How To Become Edu­cat­ed Despite Going to Col­lege (yet anoth­er entry from the engag­ing J. Budziszews­ki

soul assas­sin free down­load

).

In this dia­log, the fic­tion­al Pro­fes­sor Theophilus rec­om­mends the very real Stu­dent Self-Reliance Project from the Inter­col­le­giate Stud­ies Insti­tute (read a some­what hos­tile eval­u­a­tion of ISI’s aims).

They have some absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary guides to books and schol­ars that you should acquaint your­self with–and these are books and schol­ars who don’t often make it onto your class­room read­ing lists.

Judge With Right Judgment

J. Budziszews­ki has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle over at Bound­less about what it means to “not judge.”

“Zack, where Jesus instructs his dis­ci­ples ‘Judge not,’ what do you think He means?”

“What is there not to get?”

“You did­n’t answer my ques­tion.”

“It means don’t — judge. Don’t make judg­ments. Don’t sit in judg­ment. Stop judg­ing peo­ple.”

I laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t write dic­tio­nar­ies. ‘Judg­ing’ means sev­er­al dif­fer­ent things. Would­n’t it be good to know which one Jesus was talk­ing about?”

“He did­n’t say, so He must have meant all of them.”

“In that case, you’re guilty.”

“But I told my friends not to judge. I con­demned their judg­men­tal­ism.”

“Did­n’t you judge that Anton did­n’t mean what he adver­tised? Did­n’t you judge that Cleo was­n’t try­ing to be sleazy?”

“But I was­n’t, like, sit­ting in judg­ment.”

“Sure you were. You judged them ‘inno­cent.’ ”

does­n’t that just make you want to read it all?

Stanford Is The Fourth-Coolest University In America

Hey–how come we’re only fourth?

Accord­ing to Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine, Stan­ford is the fourth-coolest cam­pus in Amer­i­ca. What I want to know is–how in the world did we fail to attain the num­ber one spot?

In any event, the Stan­ford Dai­ly has a some­what tounge-in-cheek (yet appre­cia­tive) response.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I was unable to find the orig­i­nal arti­cle online. Here’s the Stan­ford Dai­ly’s sum­ma­ry:

“Stan­ford rev­els in its rep as the best of the West, and even more impor­tant — what oth­er school can boast its own cam­pus mall!” the arti­cle said. “Stress relief is big on this cam­pus of noto­ri­ous over­achiev­ers: Stu­dents are aggres­sive­ly casu­al, the most pop­u­lar for-cred­it sport is wind­surf­ing, and almost 20 per­cent of those who go on to grad­u­ate drop out for a semes­ter or two along the way (part of a for­mal pol­i­cy called ‘stop-out’).”

The mag­a­zine described the cam­pus as look­ing like an upscale taque­ría, and praised the warm weath­er, the sub­ur­ban set­ting that “feels secure” and the prox­im­i­ty to San Fran­cis­co.

The mag­a­zine also includ­ed a pic­ture of biki­ni-clad bik­ers, not­ing “own­ing a bike is prac­ti­cal­ly required.”

The Uni­ver­si­ty was even not­ed for the qual­i­ty of boys on cam­pus. “As for boys — ever see the hunks snapped in the tabloids with Chelsea Clin­ton before she grad­u­at­ed from here? Hope she left some for the rest of us. Boy-girl ratio: 48:52.”

One Hectic Week: 1700 Miles in 7 Days

Glen runs all over cre­ation!

Glen answering students' questions at Rock Your Campus

On a per­son­al note, last week was one of the most hec­tic I’ve had in a while. In the last sev­en days I’ve put 1700 miles on my car!

It start­ed off with a trip up to Dun­smuir, CA to meet with a pas­tors’ gath­er­ing, and it was con­stant motion from then on.

The week­end did­n’t pro­vide a sin­gle bit of respite–if any­thing, the pace picked up! Sat­ur­day morn­ing I taught a work­shop in Davis, and then I preached in Burlingame Sat­ur­day night, in San Bruno Sun­day morn­ing, and attend­ed a mis­sions ban­quet in San Jose Sun­day evening.

Glen and Paula with some Stanford students at Rock Your Campus

Yikes!

By the way, the top pic­ture is of me con­duct­ing the work­shop at Rock Your Cam­pus which I titled “Rea­son­able Answers to Hon­est Ques­tions” and I helped stu­dents process top­ics rang­ing from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and just-war the­o­ry to the levit­i­cal code and the exis­tence of suf­fer­ing. It was fun!

The bot­tom pic­ture is Paula and I with some of the Stan­ford stu­dents we brought to this min­istry train­ing event.

USC Prof Dallas Willard On Christianity

Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia phi­los­o­phy prof Dal­las Willard was just inter­viewed by Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine.

He had some inter­est­ing things to say: I encour­age you to read the arti­cle. One excerpt which I thought was par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to us at Stan­ford: You know, what we need to do as Chris­tians is to learn to think care­ful­ly and well. And that means, as Paul says, try all things, put every­thing to the test. But you know, we’re real­ly quite lazy men­tal­ly as Chris­tians. We don’t feel, I believe, that God is real­ly on the side of think­ing or think­ing on the side of God, and as a result, we don’t dis­ci­pline our­selves to think. Now, I must tell you there are a lot of young Chris­tians who are com­ing through the uni­ver­si­ties now who are good thinkers. I think we’re real­ly going to see a change in the future on this. J.P. More­land has a won­der­ful book: Love God With All Your Mind, which is a beau­ti­ful expres­sion of the right approach to these issues. Then we don’t have to wor­ry about mod­ernism or post­mod­ernism, or any­thing else. We just put every­thing to the test. (read the whole thing)

It’s Not Lycanthropy That Threatens Stanford

In which Stan­ford stu­dents dis­play that wis­dom and intel­li­gence are not syn­ony­mous.

Well, tonight will see the annu­al prac­tice of a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­il­ish Stan­ford tra­di­tion: Full Moon on the Quad.

In most of our minds, the only cul­tur­al ref­er­ence we have to full moons involves lycan­thropy (that’s a 50 cent word refer­ring to were­wolves).

At Stan­ford, Full Moon means some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent (and I’m not sure the metaphor of man turn­ing into beast is entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate).

For Stan­ford stu­dents, Full Moon on the Quad is a major cul­tur­al ini­ti­a­tion: fresh­men head to the quad and get roy­al­ly smooched (kissed with­in an inch of their lives) by seniors. As you might imag­ine, the evening has more than a hint of debauch­ery about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Stan­ford Dai­ly: In the­o­ry the very idea of it is quite roman­tic — lovers kiss­ing under the gen­tle moon­light amidst a sea of end­less stars, a beau­ti­ful church hangs as a back­drop, and all around you frol­ick­ing naked peo­ple dance drunk­en­ly to tech­no music. Well, on sec­ond thought, Full Moon on the Quad is devoid of all romance. (full arti­cle)

FMOTQ is a true Stan­ford tra­di­tion… and one more evi­dence that Stan­ford needs Jesus!

There are lots of web links relat­ed to this fes­ti­val, includ­ing a poem, tame pho­to gal­leries (here’s one and here’s anoth­er), and a mild­ly humor­ous essay enti­tled Got Mono?.

Cool Archaelogical Discovery Corroborates the New Testament

In yet anoth­er case of archael­o­gy con­firm­ing the bib­li­cal record, schol­ars recent­ly announced the dis­cov­ery of an ancient ossuary bear­ing the inscrip­tion James, son of Joseph, broth­er of Jesus.

The rel­ic has been dat­ed to just before 70 A.D., which jives with the bib­li­cal dat­ing of the death of James.

You can read the details at Chris­tian­i­ty Today (very pro), Nation­al Geo­graph­ic (pret­ty neu­tral), and the New York Times (slight­ly skep­ti­cal).

Inci­den­tal­ly, you might be intrigued to note that the inscrip­tion pro­nounced pho­net­i­cal­ly sounds like “Yacob son of Yussef broth­er of Yeshua.”

Yacob? Who’s Yacob?

James and Jacob are both legit­i­mate Eng­lish equiv­a­lents of the Hebrew Yacob.
Betcha did­n’t learn that in Sun­day School…

I’ve heard that this dates back to trans­la­tion of the King James Bible. As you prob­a­bly know, names are often rad­i­cal­ly changed when Angli­cized, and often for non­pho­net­ic rea­sons. The sto­ry I heard claimed that the trans­la­tors of the King James Bible decid­ed to dub the broth­er of Jesus James as a thank-you to their spon­sor. It sounds like an urban leg­end to me, but stranger things have hap­pened.