Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 215

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. The 1619 Project (many authors, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “…[many believe] that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, how­ev­er, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unan­i­mous­ly cel­e­brat­ed every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defin­ing con­tra­dic­tions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619? Though the exact date has been lost to his­to­ry (it has come to be observed on Aug. 20), that was when a ship arrived at Point Com­fort in the British colony of Vir­ginia, bear­ing a car­go of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inau­gu­rat­ed a bar­bar­ic sys­tem of chat­tel slav­ery that would last for the next 250 years. This is some­times referred to as the country’s orig­i­nal sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very ori­gin.” The link is to a PDF of the entire issue.
    • A pos­i­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: A Brief His­to­ry of the His­to­ry Wars (Rebec­ca Onion, Slate): “For the sake of our col­lec­tive car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, we would do bet­ter to rec­og­nize these skir­mish­es over Amer­i­can history—in which con­ser­v­a­tives demand that a pos­i­tive vision of our nation’s past, stud­ded with suc­cess­es, inven­tions, and ‘great men,’ take pride of place in our pub­lic culture—as recur­rent episodes in a par­tic­u­lar decades-old front of the cul­ture wars. That way, we could stop wast­ing our good faith on old, dead-end con­ver­sa­tions.”
    • A neg­a­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: The New York Times sur­ren­ders to the left on race (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Through­out the issue of the NYTM, head­lines make, with just slight vari­a­tions, the same rhetor­i­cal move over and over again: ‘Here is some­thing unpleas­ant, unjust, or even down­right evil about life in the present-day Unit­ed States. Bet you did­n’t real­ize that slav­ery is ulti­mate­ly to blame.’ Lack of uni­ver­sal access to health care? High rates of sug­ar con­sump­tion? Cal­lous treat­ment of incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers? White record­ing artists ‘steal­ing’ black music? Harsh labor prac­tices? That’s right — all of it, and far more, fol­lows from slav­ery.”
    • A com­pli­cat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How slav­ery doomed lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in Amer­i­ca (Philip Klein, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “A num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives react­ed to the project by brand­ing it as anti-Amer­i­can. But I don’t think that’s fair, at least based on the lead essay I read from Nikole Han­nah-Jones. In fact, her piece is quite the oppo­site. Sure, it chron­i­cles the bru­tal­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the cen­tu­ry of oppres­sion, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion, and racist ter­ror­ism that fol­lowed. Yet the piece is ulti­mate­ly about how she rec­on­ciles that his­to­ry with her patri­o­tism and comes to under­stand her own father’s love of a coun­try that treat­ed him so poor­ly.”
    • A neg­a­tive con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How To Dele­git­imize A Nation (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But who we imag­ine our­selves to be today shapes who we will become tomor­row. If The 1619 Project were mere­ly about expand­ing our com­mon under­stand­ing of the Amer­i­can ori­gins, who could object? It arrives, though, in the midst of an epic cul­ture war over who we are, and who we are going to be.”
    • Relat­ed: Black Amer­i­can His­to­ry Should Give Evan­gel­i­cals a Sense of Per­spec­tive — and Hope (David French, Nation­al Review): “If men and women have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak and pos­sess the courage to tell the truth, they have hope that they can trans­form a nation. What was true for black Amer­i­cans (includ­ing the black Amer­i­can church) in the most dire of cir­cum­stances is still true for con­tem­po­rary Chris­tians in far less try­ing times”
    • In response: In Defense Of Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­tur­al Pes­simism (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This, I think, is a dis­tinc­tion that makes a big dif­fer­ence re: French’s argu­ment. You can’t cease to be black; you can cease to be Chris­t­ian, or at least mean­ing­ful­ly Chris­t­ian.” This piece is way too long but makes some good points.
  2. Don’t Use These Free-Speech Argu­ments Ever Again (Ken White, The Atlantic): “If you’ve read op-eds about free speech in Amer­i­ca, or lis­tened to talk­ing heads on the news, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly encoun­tered emp­ty, mis­lead­ing, or sim­ply false tropes about the First Amend­ment. Those tired tropes are bar­ri­ers to seri­ous dis­cus­sions about free speech. Any use­ful dis­cus­sion of what the law should be must be informed by an accu­rate view of what the law is.” White is best known under his inter­net alias Pope­hat. Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent.
  3. The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Lux­u­ry beliefs’ are the lat­est sta­tus sym­bol for rich Amer­i­cans (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Post): “…as trendy clothes and oth­er prod­ucts become more acces­si­ble and afford­able, there is increas­ing­ly less sta­tus attached to lux­u­ry goods. The upper class­es have found a clever solu­tion to this prob­lem: lux­u­ry beliefs. These are ideas and opin­ions that con­fer sta­tus on the rich at very lit­tle cost, while tak­ing a toll on the low­er class.”
  4. How Life Became an End­less, Ter­ri­ble Com­pe­ti­tion (Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic): “Escap­ing the mer­i­toc­ra­cy trap will not be easy. Elites nat­u­ral­ly resist poli­cies that threat­en to under­mine their advan­tages. But it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to get rich off your own human cap­i­tal with­out exploit­ing your­self and impov­er­ish­ing your inner life, and mer­i­to­crats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive them­selves.” The author is a Yale law pro­fes­sor. I found his diag­no­sis more per­sua­sive than his prog­no­sis.
  5. The Com­ing Migra­tion out of Sub-Saha­ran Africa (Christo­pher Cald­well, Nation­al Review): “The pop­u­la­tion pres­sures ema­nat­ing from the Mid­dle East in recent decades, already suf­fi­cient to dri­ve the Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tem into con­vul­sions, are going to pale beside those from sub-Saha­ran Africa in decades to come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Why Nice­ness Weak­ens Our Wit­ness (Sharon Hodde Miller, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We exist in a world that swings between sweet­ness and out­rage, two behav­iors that seem to be at odds with one anoth­er. In real­i­ty, they are two sides of the same coin: a lack of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion. When our civil­i­ty isn’t root­ed in some­thing stur­dy and deep, when our good behav­ior isn’t spring­ing from the core of who we are but is instead mere­ly a mask we put on, it is only a mat­ter of time before the façade crum­bles away and our true state is revealed: an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who are real­ly good at look­ing good.” I agree with the sub­stance of this arti­cle, but the title both­ers me. 
  7. Fact-Check­ing Satire — Is Snopes Seri­ous? (Bill Zeis­er, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “the Bee’s founder and minor­i­ty own­er, Adam Ford, took par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to the tone of the Snopes assess­ment. In a lengthy Twit­ter thread, he called Snopes’ han­dling of the piece on Thomas ‘par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious’ and ‘dis­turb­ing.’ He point­ed to a sub­ti­tle that cas­ti­gat­ed the Bee for ‘fan­ning the flames of con­tro­ver­sy’ and ‘mud­dy­ing the details of a news sto­ry’ to the point that it was unclear if the piece qual­i­fied as satire. Ford com­plained that through­out the Snopes sto­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly an ‘objec­tive fact check,’ the assess­ment ‘veered towards pro­nounc­ing a moral judg­ment,’ seem­ing­ly accus­ing the satir­i­cal site of will­ful decep­tion. It is cer­tain­ly under­stand­able how Ford could feel this way: Snopes referred to the Bee’s ‘ruse’ and offered that ‘the Baby­lon Bee has man­aged to fool read­ers with its brand of satire in the past.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than oth­ers.” First shared in vol­ume 165. 

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.

Celebration of Discipline: Confession

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

This week we’re talk­ing about con­fess­ing our sins to oth­er peo­ple. Bib­li­cal­ly, we always con­fess our sins to the Lord in prayer and then we usu­al­ly also con­fess direct­ly to those we have wronged. Some­times in addi­tion we con­fess our sins to oth­er believ­ers for the sake of their or our spir­i­tu­al health. As an exam­ple of con­fess­ing for the sake of some­one else’s spir­i­tu­al health, I might con­fess a sin while preach­ing about how growth comes in a cer­tain area. As an exam­ple of con­fess­ing for my own spir­i­tu­al health, I might con­fess a sin to a friend while request­ing their coun­sel.

“Con­fes­sion is a dif­fi­cult Dis­ci­pline for us because we all too often view the believ­ing com­mu­ni­ty as a fel­low­ship of saints before we see it as a fel­low­ship of sin­ners. We feel that every­one else has advanced so far into holi­ness that we are iso­lat­ed and alone in our sin. We can­not bear to reveal our fail­ures and short­com­ings to oth­ers. We imag­ine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heav­en. There­fore, we hide our­selves from one anoth­er in live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, p 145 9

A few thoughts about con­fes­sion:

  • Fos­ter’s advice is spot-on when he says, “…we must be pre­pared to deal with def­i­nite sins. A gen­er­al­ized con­fes­sion may save us from humil­i­a­tion and shame, but it will not ignite inner heal­ing” (page 151). This relat­ed quote has often run through my mind, “We con­fess our lit­tle faults to per­suade peo­ple that we have no large ones” (Rochefou­cauld). If we con­fess in a way that makes us look good, there’s some­thing amiss. When you con­fess, don’t mere­ly con­fess that you are not per­fect. Draw atten­tion to one or more of your par­tic­u­lar imper­fec­tions. Not sim­ply “I can be greedy some­times”; rather, “I have been so con­sumed with desir­ing that new iPhone that I almost stole mon­ey from my mom’s purse. I was shocked at my lev­el of greed.”
  • I said we usu­al­ly con­fess to the per­son we have wronged. That is not always the case, how­ev­er. For exam­ple, if you’ve been star­ing lust­ful­ly at some­one, it’s gen­er­al­ly unwise to tell that to the per­son you’ve been lust­ing after. You are reliev­ing your emo­tions by bur­den­ing theirs. It’s self­ish.
  • To whom do you con­fess when you are not con­fess­ing direct­ly to some­one you have wronged? Fos­ter’s coun­sel is wise: “The key qual­i­fi­ca­tions are spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty, wis­dom, com­pas­sion, good com­mon sense, the abil­i­ty to keep a con­fi­dence, and a whole­some sense of humor” (page 153).
  • In uni­ver­si­ty min­istry I some­times observe two extremes: a com­mu­ni­ty where no one con­fess­es any­thing to any­one else (usu­al­ly because of fear) or a com­mu­ni­ty whose wor­ship ser­vices some­times become pub­lic con­fes­sion cer­e­monies. I have thoughts about both:
    • A com­mu­ni­ty where no one con­fess­es any­thing to any­one else is held in bondage to sin. Peo­ple con­vince them­selves they strug­gle alone, and as result half of Satan’s work is done for him. He desires to iso­late Chris­tians as a pre­lude to destroy­ing us, and yet we fool­ish­ly iso­late our­selves.
    • A com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly con­fess their sins in a pub­lic forum runs the risk of indi­rect­ly ele­vat­ing sin. If you’ve nev­er seen this done it is hard to describe, but I have seen it sev­er­al times. Some­one heads to the micro­phone and asks if they can share some­thing that they feel like they have to get off their chest. And then they con­fess a sin. And then some­one else wrestling with that same sin or a relat­ed sin makes a bee­line for the micro­phone after this. And then the dam breaks and it takes over the entire ser­vice. This is some­times a gen­uine response to the guid­ing of the Holy Spir­it (we see an exam­ple of this in Acts 19:18–19), but some­times it is an indi­ca­tor that healthy inter­per­son­al con­fes­sion is not hap­pen­ing and so this sub­sti­tute is emerg­ing as a replace­ment. The dan­gers are (a) it can make sin seem more per­va­sive than it is (5% of the peo­ple spend­ing 95% of the time talk­ing about their biggest mis­takes cre­ates a dis­tort­ed impres­sion of the com­mu­ni­ty), and (b) with­out wise pas­toral lead­er­ship the nor­mal emo­tions that accom­pa­ny pub­lic con­fes­sion can be mis­tak­en for the work­ing of the Holy Spir­it.
    • That’s in a wor­ship ser­vice. It’s usu­al­ly a healthy thing when this hap­pens in a small group (although here, too, it can some­times nor­mal­ize sin and min­i­mize the trans­form­ing pow­er of grace).

Here is my sug­ges­tion to you: today or tomor­row exam­ine your con­science and iden­ti­fy a spe­cif­ic sin to con­fess. Med­i­tate upon the sin until you clear­ly see its wrong­ness. Then this week find a fel­low believ­er (per­haps in Chi Alpha, per­haps in your church) and con­fess the sin to them. Then ask them to pray for you that God will lib­er­ate you from the pow­er of that sin. See what hap­pens and iter­ate mov­ing for­ward.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 214

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. The Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” This is a very good piece.
  2. Skillet’s John Coop­er on Apos­ta­sy Among Young Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (George Brahm, Cogent Chris­tian­i­ty: “I’ve been say­ing for 20 years (and seemed prob­a­bly quite judg­men­tal to some of my peers) that we are in a dan­ger­ous place when the church is look­ing to 20 year old wor­ship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church cul­ture that learns who God is from singing mod­ern praise songs rather than from the teach­ings of the Word.”
  3. Jef­frey Epstein and When to Take Con­spir­a­cies Seri­ous­ly (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Most con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are false. But often some of the things they’re try­ing to explain are real.” Refresh­ing san­i­ty.
  4. Depor­ta­tion of a Chaldean Chris­t­ian to Iraq, and where he died, gets some decent cov­er­age (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “The more you look into this sto­ry, the more dis­turb­ing it gets. Mindy Belz, report­ing for World, wrote that a third coun­try had offered to take Aldaoud but that U.S. immi­gra­tion author­i­ties refused. Putting him on a plane to Najaf was an inten­tion­al twist of cru­el­ty. Appar­ent­ly, it was not an acci­dent that he was sent there instead of Bagh­dad.”
  5. The Last Days of John Allen Chau (Alex Per­ry, Out­side Mag­a­zine): “.…to those who know the tribes best, John’s mis­sion did not spell the end of the Sen­tine­lese. To them, he rep­re­sent­ed a pos­si­ble means of sur­vival.“ Chi Alpha makes an appear­ance in this arti­cle. Relat­ed links back in vol­umes 179 and 180.
  6. Jeff Bezos is qui­et­ly let­ting his char­i­ties do some­thing rad­i­cal — what­ev­er they want (Theodore Schleifer, Vox Recode): “Giv­ing $100 mil­lion to non­prof­its based on lit­tle pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion and then let­ting them run with it sounds, on its face, like a recipe for dis­as­ter. It con­jures the image of fat-and-hap­py char­i­ty lead­ers milk­ing extrav­a­gant salaries from oth­ers’ gen­eros­i­ty, or prof­li­gate spend­ing on extra­ne­ous over­head — or even out­right fraud…. Well, here’s the sur­prise: Mul­ti­ple experts told Recode this strat­e­gy actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense. They think phil­an­thropies should give non­prof­its sub­stan­tial­ly more lee­way.”
    1. Related(ish): Mis­sion­al Mis­con­cep­tion #1 (Sup­port Fig­ures) (Seth Calla­han, per­son­al blog): “If the [Post Office] were a non-prof­it, faith-based orga­ni­za­tion, with all of their employ­ees being respon­si­ble to cov­er their own oper­at­ing costs… then each employ­ee would need to have a month­ly sup­port lev­el of $11,837.69. That fig­ure does not rep­re­sent what your mail­man gets PAID, mind you. It is how much it COSTS for your mail­man to per­form the ser­vices that are required of him: trans­porta­tion and stor­age of goods, pack­ing sup­plies, vehi­cle main­te­nance, health­care, retire­ment, social security…etc. His take-home pay (what he lives off of) is a small per­cent­age of those oper­at­ing costs.”
  7. The Reli­gious Hunger of the Rad­i­cal Right (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, New York Times): “Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online com­mu­ni­ties of incels, white suprema­cists and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists make no meta­phys­i­cal truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an after­life or reward. But they ful­fill the func­tions that soci­ol­o­gists gen­er­al­ly attribute to a reli­gion: They give their mem­bers a mean­ing­ful account of why the world is the way it is.” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” First shared in vol­ume 161.

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.

Celebration of Discipline: Service

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

This week we come to the dis­ci­pline of ser­vice — the habit of “qui­et­ly and unpre­ten­tious­ly… car­ing for the needs of oth­ers.” (page 130).

This is a sol­id chap­ter and full of insights.

“Of all the clas­si­cal Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines, ser­vice is the most con­ducive to the growth of humil­i­ty. When we set out on a con­scious­ly cho­sen course of action that accents the good of oth­ers and is, for the most part, a hid­den work, a deep change occurs in our spir­its.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 130

As I some­times remark, “God’s plan A for your life is humil­i­ty. Plan B is humil­i­a­tion. Choose wise­ly.” Pur­su­ing humil­i­ty through ser­vice is coun­ter­cul­tur­al at an ambi­tious place like Stan­ford, and so we need to con­stant­ly remind our­selves of the mod­el of our Lord. Jesus showed us that lead­ers are exam­ples and not excep­tions. A posi­tion of lead­er­ship does not exempt us from ser­vice — it gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve more peo­ple.

How can we tell if we are using a posi­tion as a plat­form for ser­vice? Robert Green­leaf, who was an exec­u­tive at AT&T, wrote

“The best test [of your ser­vant lead­er­ship], and dif­fi­cult to admin­is­ter, is: Do those served grow as per­sons? Do they, while being served, become health­i­er, wis­er, freer, more autonomous, more like­ly them­selves to become ser­vants? And, what is the effect on the least priv­i­leged in soci­ety? Will they ben­e­fit or at least not be fur­ther deprived?”

Robert Green­leaf, The Ser­vant as Leader

The pas­sage I found most help­ful, though, is Fos­ter’s insight on the dif­fer­ence between serv­ing and being a ser­vant:

“When we choose to serve, we are still in charge. We decide whom we will serve and when we will serve. And if we are in charge, we will wor­ry a great deal about any­one step­ping on us, that is, tak­ing charge over us. But when we choose to be a ser­vant, we give up the right to be in charge. There is great free­dom in this. If we vol­un­tar­i­ly choose to be tak­en advan­tage of, then we can­not be manip­u­lat­ed. When we choose to be a ser­vant, we sur­ren­der the right to decide who and when we will serve. We become avail­able and vul­ner­a­ble.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 132

Years ago some­one told me that one of the truest tests of your ser­vant­hood is how you react when you are treat­ed like a ser­vant. It stuck with me, prob­a­bly because I had recent­ly felt the sting of being tak­en for grant­ed. I had been treat­ed like a ser­vant and it both­ered me, which meant that I did not yet see myself as a ser­vant. In Philip­pi­ans 2:7 we are taught that Jesus took “the very nature of a ser­vant” (NIV). I came to see that if my goal was to have the very nature of a ser­vant, then being treat­ed like a ser­vant was actu­al­ly a mark­er of suc­cess.

What pre­vents this from becom­ing destruc­tive is rec­og­niz­ing that although we are ser­vants we are not serv­ing the whims of peo­ple. Colos­sians 3:23–24 says, “What­ev­er you do, work at it with all your heart, as work­ing for the Lord, not for human mas­ters, since you know that you will receive an inher­i­tance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serv­ing.” He gets at the same idea in 2 Corinthi­ans 4:5, “For what we preach is not our­selves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and our­selves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. ”

In oth­er words, our ulti­mate ser­vice is to the Lord. This lim­its the way we serve any spe­cif­ic per­son. I must not serve oth­ers in a way that under­mines my abil­i­ty to ful­fill God’s pur­pos­es in my life.

  • I will help you move but not on my son’s birth­day. I owe ser­vice to you but I also owe ser­vice to my son, and I owe him greater pri­or­i­ty in ser­vice than I do to you. God has made me my son’s father and so my oblig­a­tions in that regard will some­times trump my oblig­a­tions to serve you.
  • You don’t need to give your friend a ride to the air­port when you are sup­posed to be tak­ing an exam. Christ brought you to Stan­ford and you need to hon­or that part of His call upon your life.
  • And see­ing your­self as ser­vant does­n’t imply that you should only apply for min­i­mum wage ser­vice jobs. If God is call­ing you to become a pro­fes­sor or an entre­pre­neur or a doc­tor or what­ev­er, pur­sue that whole­heart­ed­ly and do what you need to do to pre­pare for that — and serve peo­ple at every step along the way.

Apply­ing this prin­ci­ple requires wis­dom, because if you are suf­fi­cient­ly clever you can jus­ti­fy for­go­ing almost any act of ser­vice or expres­sion of humil­i­ty. That’s real­ly the clue, though. If you’re con­stant­ly seek­ing a way to avoid serv­ing then you don’t have the heart of a ser­vant, so stop ratio­nal­iz­ing and start serv­ing. If your heart, how­ev­er, does not first say “must I?” but “can I?” when you see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve, then you are in lit­tle dan­ger of using this prin­ci­ple to indulge your self­ish­ness.

Next week we come to the cor­po­rate dis­ci­plines — the way that we live life togeth­er in the King­dom.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 213

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. Sev­er­al arti­cles relat­ed to the mass shoot­ings:
  2. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have a porn prob­lem, stud­ies show, but not the one you think (Jana Riess, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Draw­ing on numer­ous stud­ies, Per­ry finds that, despite the sta­tis­ti­cal find­ing that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians are less like­ly to use porn, the per­cep­tion with­in evan­gel­i­cal church­es is that this has become an enor­mous prob­lem for the faith­ful.”
  3. What Ails the Right Isn’t (Just) Racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Put anoth­er way, the right is cor­rect that cry­ing wolf mat­ters. And the left is cor­rect that The Boy Who Cried Wolf ends with a wolf feast­ing on folks who con­clud­ed that they shouldn’t wor­ry about wolves because one kid fibbed.” I found this far more inter­est­ing than the title led me to antic­i­pate.
  4. Against Against Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I wor­ry the move­ment against bil­lion­aire char­i­ty is on track to dam­age char­i­ty a whole lot more than it dam­ages bil­lion­aires.” This is a very inter­est­ing essay, and he has a fol­low-up, High­lights From The Com­ments on Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy, which thought­ful­ly responds to crit­i­cisms. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. How (and Why) to KISSASS (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “…if you’re not a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al class, the key to get­ting your per­son­al essays pub­lished in promi­nent pub­li­ca­tions is KISSASS—Keep It Short, Sad, And Sim­ple, Stu­pid.” This is a fol­low-up to an arti­cle I shared pre­vi­ous­ly and I found it fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Car­ol Swain Worked to Hold Politi­cians Account­able. Then She Felt God Call Her to Run. (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Swain, change has been a recur­ring theme in her life. She went from low-income sin­gle moth­er to Ivy League aca­d­e­m­ic, from Demo­c­rat to Repub­li­can media com­men­ta­tor, and from Jehovah’s Wit­ness turned non-church­go­er to com­mit­ted fol­low­er of Christ.” What a fas­ci­nat­ing lady.
  7. Why I’m Not A Lib­er­al (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “Because lib­er­al­ism is based on indi­vid­ual rights, it nat­u­ral­ly favors the indi­vid­ual assert­ing his rights against tra­di­tion­al social sub­jects, whether they be the com­mu­ni­ty, the fam­i­ly, or even his own mar­riage. If a clas­si­cal­ly lib­er­al sys­tem has no effect on the val­ues of soci­ety, it is an aston­ish­ing coin­ci­dence that wher­ev­er lib­er­al polit­i­cal arrange­ments emerge, a new lib­er­al under­stand­ing of mar­riage even­tu­al­ly replaces the pre­vi­ous Chris­t­ian under­stand­ings as the legal and social real­i­ty.” This essay cov­ers a lot of ground.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imag­ine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

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.

Celebration of Discipline: Submission

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

I’m dou­bling up this week because I missed last week’s sum­ma­ry due to my trav­els. With this update we should be back on track.

This week, we exam­ine the dis­ci­pline of sub­mis­sion, which entails the rejec­tion of the lust for pow­er and even the pre­sump­tion of auton­o­my.

“Sub­mis­sion is an eth­i­cal theme that runs the gamut of the New Tes­ta­ment. It is a pos­ture oblig­a­tory upon all Chris­tians: men as well as women, fathers as well as chil­dren, mas­ters as well as slaves. We are com­mand­ed to live a life of sub­mis­sion because Jesus lived a life of sub­mis­sion, not because we are in a par­tic­u­lar place or sta­tion in life. Self-denial is a pos­ture fit­ting for all those who fol­low the cru­ci­fied Lord…. the one and only com­pelling rea­son for sub­mis­sion is the exam­ple of Jesus.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline page 117

Our cul­ture cel­e­brates the autonomous indi­vid­ual, and con­cepts such as “self-actu­al­iza­tion” and “self-ful­fill­ment” are per­va­sive. Our soci­ety’s main atti­tude toward the self is to indulge it, but Scrip­ture’s main atti­tude toward the self is to deny it. The habit of sub­mis­sion denies self in a pow­er­ful way, and so two of the main oppor­tu­ni­ties we have to deny self are to sub­mit to God and to sub­mit to legit­i­mate human author­i­ties.

Sub­mit­ting our­selves to God means obey­ing His Word, espe­cial­ly when we are puz­zled by His com­mands. There is a very real sense in which we are not sub­mit­ting until we dis­agree (or at least don’t under­stand). When we do what God says because it makes sense to us, it is not God we are obey­ing but our­selves. Med­i­tat­ing on Romans 12 might prove help­ful as you think about this.

Sub­mit­ting our­selves to legit­i­mate human author­i­ties means that we hon­or gov­ern­men­tal lead­ers even when we dis­agree with them. Dis­agree­ing with our polit­i­cal lead­ers is not uncom­mon; in fact, I can­not imag­ine a Cal­i­for­nia vot­er who is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly thrilled with both gov­er­nor Gavin New­some and pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Nonethe­less, we hon­or and pray for both. Not only do we hon­or and pray for them, we also obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty. Like­wise, we hon­or spir­i­tu­al author­i­ties such as pas­tors and obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty. We also hon­or our par­ents and obey them when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty.

I keep repeat­ing “when they are act­ing with­in their sphere of author­i­ty” because keep­ing that in mind is what pro­tects us from abu­sive and tox­ic sit­u­a­tions. Every human author­i­ty has lim­its placed upon them, and when they step out­side of their realm they should not be obeyed. Tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ments, cultish reli­gions, con­trol­ling work­places, tox­ic fam­i­ly sys­tems — wise Chris­tians flee from or stand against these things.

Spend time think­ing Bib­li­cal­ly about the prop­er spheres of human author­i­ty — it will bear great fruit in your life. Some­times, like in Acts 5:27–29, the point is made very clear — the gov­ern­ment has no right to for­bid you to obey God (I’m look­ing at you, Chi­na). But oth­er times the les­son is an impli­ca­tion of the text rather than its main point. For exam­ple, Acts 5:3–4 pre­sup­pos­es that Peter would have had no right to com­mand Ananais to sell his prop­er­ty or to give all of the pro­ceeds to the church. That illus­trates an impor­tant lim­it on spir­i­tu­al author­i­ty. These are just two exam­ples from one chap­ter of Scrip­ture — I encour­age you to keep the con­cept of spheres of author­i­ty in the back of your mind as you read Scrip­ture. You’ll find insights in unex­pect­ed places.

Celebration of Discipline: Solitude & Preface

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

In this chap­ter, Fos­ter invites us to the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline of soli­tude: peri­ods of phys­i­cal iso­la­tion which make us into peo­ple who are con­tent regard­less of the judg­ments of oth­ers. It is close­ly relat­ed to remain­ing silent.

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

“One rea­son we can hard­ly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so help­less. We are so accus­tomed to rely­ing upon words to man­age and con­trol oth­ers. If we are silent, who will take con­trol? God will take con­trol, but we will nev­er let him take con­trol until we trust him. Silence is inti­mate­ly relat­ed to trust. The tongue is our most pow­er­ful weapon of manip­u­la­tion. A fran­tic stream of words flows from us because we are in a con­stant process of adjust­ing our pub­lic image. We fear so deeply what we think oth­er peo­ple see in us that we talk in order to straight­en out their under­stand­ing.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 100–101

There are relat­ed com­ments in the chap­ter on study:

“If we will observe the rela­tion­ships that go on between human beings, we will receive a grad­u­ate-lev­el edu­ca­tion. Watch, for exam­ple, how much of our speech is aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing our actions. We find it almost impos­si­ble to act and allow the act to speak for itself. No, we must explain it, jus­ti­fy it, demon­strate the right­ness of it. Why do we feel this com­pul­sion to set the record straight? Because of pride and fear, because our rep­u­ta­tions are at stake!”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 74

When I was in col­lege some­one asked what per­cent­age of my words were devot­ed to influ­enc­ing how oth­ers thought about me. The ques­tion gripped me, and so I tried to keep track for a few days. Every time I said some­thing I asked myself whether or not I had said it most­ly to make oth­er peo­ple think bet­ter of me. The results were shock­ing — it was a HUGE per­cent­age of my con­ver­sa­tions. I resolved to strike any­thing from my speech whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose was either to impress oth­ers or to cor­rect a pos­si­ble mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my motives.

In ret­ro­spect, I often went too far and made things awk­ward for every­one else. Pur­su­ing soli­tude and silence is not an excuse for being rude. We are com­mand­ed to love God and peo­ple, so if your spir­i­tu­al prac­tices make you act in less lov­ing ways then you’re doing them wrong. You will like­ly make mis­takes as you exper­i­ment in this area. Don’t beat your­self up over them, just apol­o­gize and recal­i­brate as nec­es­sary. If you resolve not to speak for a day and some­one asks you for direc­tions, give them any­way. If you decide to spend the next Sat­ur­day in soli­tude and an elder­ly neigh­bor asks you to help them move some stuff, resched­ule your soli­tude. If you want to avoid jus­ti­fy­ing your­self but some­one asks you a point-blank ques­tion about your motives, answer hon­est­ly and sim­ply.

Also, don’t make your plans in this area vows to the Lord. Vows to God are potent things and should be made rarely, yet I often speak with stu­dents who have made a promise to God to do (or not do) some­thing. In almost all cas­es the vow was an unnec­es­sary add-on meant to give their plan more oomph, and now they are in dan­ger of break­ing a vow to God. If you are con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a vow, first med­i­tate on Eccle­si­astes 5:4–6, Deuteron­o­my 23:21–23, Matthew 5:33–37, and James 5:12.

My per­son­al prac­tice of soli­tude cur­rent­ly looks like this. When I wake in the morn­ing I come down­stairs and put my phone where I can­not eas­i­ly get to it. I pre­pare my break­fast and begin read­ing a spir­i­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial book. After a bit (usu­al­ly a few chap­ters), I boot up my lap­top, open a word proces­sor, and write some­thing that will be help­ful to oth­ers. I don’t check my email or any social media while I’m doing this. Once I’ve writ­ten enough, I retrieve my phone to check for any text mes­sages that may have come in overnight and also open my brows­er to check my email.

My habit is sim­i­lar to the thir­ty-minute absten­tion from tech­nol­o­gy Fos­ter describes in the pref­ace. His pre­scrip­tion reminds me of an old-school say­ing: “No Bible, no break­fast.” In oth­er words, we must remem­ber to nour­ish our spir­i­tu­al life before we nour­ish our phys­i­cal life. Per­haps a mod­ern par­al­lel is “No Spir­it, no screens.” Don’t check your email until you’ve checked in with God. Leave your text mes­sages unread until you’ve read the Word. This is not an absolute rule, for there are sea­sons of life when it might be unwise or even wicked to cut your­self off from com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Are you a sur­geon on call? Turn your ringer up to max vol­ume!

If you do engage in a dai­ly prac­tice of soli­tude you will even­tu­al­ly find your­self want­i­ng some­thing more. Remem­ber that you can always dri­ve over to Fast­ing Prayer Moun­tain of the World for a per­son­al day-long (or even overnight) retreat. More info at https://www.fpmw-sv.com/about-us

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 212

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. Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-pay­ing man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle.
  2. Six­teen and Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Slate): “A world with­out God wouldn’t make sense to me. But it now makes sense to many of my friends. I final­ly under­stand that we nev­er had a shared faith struc­ture. We went to the same church, some of us for years. We heard the same ser­mons, slept in the same cab­ins at camp, read the same books of the Bible, lis­tened to the same music. But we went home to dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies.” The author is John & Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter.
  3. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Report­ed­ly Bans All Mar­tial Arts Groups With­out Warn­ing Over Email (Jin Hyun, NextShark): “Accord­ing to Choi, the university’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion behind the shut­down can be sum­ma­rized in four points: ‘the groups like to unof­fi­cial­ly prac­tice dur­ing dead week, they recruit pro­fes­sion­al, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned coach­es to run their prac­tices, they com­pete and reg­u­lar­ly win nation­al cham­pi­onships with­out Uni­ver­si­ty help, they par­tic­i­pate heav­i­ly in the local com­mu­ni­ty by teach­ing stu­dents, alum­ni, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.’”
    • Stan­ford often seems con­flict­ed about whether its under­grads are future lead­ers to be empow­ered or lia­bil­i­ties to be micro­man­aged.
  4. As admin­is­tra­tors walk back ‘insuf­fi­cient’ response, police reveal noose may have been on cam­pus since March (Ele­na Shao and Daniel Mar­tinez-Krams, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The new infor­ma­tion comes amid crit­i­cism of Uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors’ response to the inci­dent, and one day after they held a sol­i­dar­i­ty ral­ly and town hall. A self-care event is sched­uled to take place Fri­day after­noon.” There have been a lot of arti­cles about this — but this once grabbed me with the tid­bit in the head­line. SINCE MARCH?
  5. On Court Prophets and Wilder­ness Prophets  (Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether you view Trump as a David or an Antipas, whether you serve at the court of the resplen­dent king or stand over against the court from the wilder­ness, one thing Nathan and John the Bap­tist held in com­mon was that both were will­ing to con­demn unright­eous­ness in their rulers—even if it cost them every­thing.”
    • Also polit­i­cal: The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Is Actu­al­ly Three Par­ties (Thomas Edsall, New York Times): “What the data demon­strates is that the group con­tain­ing the largest pro­por­tion of minor­i­ty vot­ers is the most skep­ti­cal of some of the most pro­gres­sive poli­cies embraced by Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates like Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Har­ris.” Per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of this op-ed is when he talks about the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of favor­ing small donors over large donors.
  6. In Hong Kong Protests, Faces Become Weapons (Paul Mozur, New York Times): “The police offi­cers wres­tled with Col­in Che­ung in an unmarked car. They need­ed his face. They grabbed his jaw to force his head in front of his iPhone. They slapped his face. They shout­ed, ‘Wake up!’ They pried open his eyes. It all failed: Mr. Che­ung had dis­abled his phone’s facial-recog­ni­tion login with a quick but­ton mash as soon as they grabbed him.”
  7. Canada’s bizarre trans-wax­ing con­tro­ver­sy (Bren­dan O’Neill, Spiked): “Yaniv says if the case is lost then a dan­ger­ous prece­dent will be set for trans peo­ple. In truth, the real dan­ger is if Yaniv wins the case, because that would set a prece­dent where­by the law could require that women must touch penis­es or risk los­ing their jobs. It would be pro­found­ly misog­y­nis­tic.” The lan­guage in this piece is vul­gar at times but in my esti­ma­tion not reck­less­ly so. Rod Dreher sums things up pith­ily with the head­line: From ‘Bake My Cake’ to ‘Wax My Tes­ti­cles’ (The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive)
    • Relat­ed: Lib­er­als’ aston­ish­ing­ly rad­i­cal shift on gen­der (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Slaves every­where pre­sum­ably know that they are unfree, even if they accept the legit­i­ma­cy of the sys­tem and the mas­ter that keeps them enslaved. But what is this bondage we could­n’t even begin to per­ceive in 2009 that in under a decade has become a bur­den so oner­ous that it pro­duces a demand for the over­turn­ing of well-set­tled rules and assump­tions, some of which (‘the gen­der bina­ry’) go all the way back to the ear­li­est ori­gins of human civ­i­liza­tion?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-covered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 158.

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.

Celebration of Discipline: Simplicity

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2019. The sched­ule is online.

book cover - Celebration Of Discipline

I’m trav­el­ing right now and don’t have a lot of time to write up my thoughts on this chap­ter, so I’ll sim­ply say that while I like this Fos­ter’s thoughts on sim­plic­i­ty this chap­ter reminds me of how quick­ly he wrote the book. His thoughts are unfor­tu­nate­ly jum­bled at times, espe­cial­ly when it comes to eco­nom­ics. He has a good advice for indi­vid­u­als, but he seems to con­fuse wise indi­vid­ual choic­es with wise social struc­tures. That aside, there’s a lot of sol­id advice in this chap­ter about liv­ing a sim­ple life.

Fos­ter does­n’t define sim­plic­i­ty clear­ly, but he most­ly seems to mean being con­tent, being gen­er­ous and being sus­pi­cious of indul­gence. I’m actu­al­ly sur­prised he did­n’t make gen­eros­i­ty one of his twelve cen­tral spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines. Gen­eros­i­ty with a side of sim­plic­i­ty seems more faith­ful to the Bib­li­cal wit­ness than sim­plic­i­ty with a side of gen­eros­i­ty. Regard­less, he made the focus sim­plic­i­ty (per­haps so he can bring in com­ments about sim­plic­i­ty in speech on pages 93–94).

If I had to pick one quote that stood out to me, it would be this one:

“The cen­tral point for the Dis­ci­pline of sim­plic­i­ty is to seek the king­dom of God and the right­eous­ness of his king­dom first and then every­thing nec­es­sary will come in its prop­er order…. Focus upon the king­dom pro­duces the inward real­i­ty, and with­out the inward real­i­ty we will degen­er­ate into legal­is­tic triv­ia. Noth­ing else can be cen­tral. The desire to get out of the rat race can­not be cen­tral, the redis­tri­b­u­tion of the world’s wealth can­not be cen­tral, the con­cern for ecol­o­gy can­not be cen­tral…. The per­son who does not seek the king­dom first does not seek it at all.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 86–87.

There are many peo­ple who pur­sue a sim­ple lifestyle for oth­er rea­sons. God­ly sim­plic­i­ty isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about reduc­ing your car­bon foot­print or engag­ing in effec­tive altru­ism. The sim­plic­i­ty we pur­sue is root­ed in our uncom­pli­cat­ed devo­tion to God.

One last com­ment and a bit of a tan­gent: “It is time we awak­en to the fact that con­for­mi­ty to a sick soci­ety is to be sick” (page 80). Sil­i­con Val­ley in gen­er­al and Stan­ford in par­tic­u­lar have very unhealthy ten­den­cies, and to the extent we feel ful­ly at home here we reveal unhealth­i­ness in our­selves. In this regard I often reflect on 2 Peter 2:7–8, “Lot, a right­eous man, who was dis­tressed by the depraved con­duct of the law­less (for that right­eous man, liv­ing among them day after day, was tor­ment­ed in his right­eous soul by the law­less deeds he saw and heard).” If we are nev­er dis­tressed at Stan­ford then we are not pay­ing suf­fi­cient atten­tion to God, to Stan­ford, or to both.

Any­way, I hope you are chal­lenged by this week’s read­ing! Remem­ber that next week we are read­ing both the chap­ter on soli­tude as well as the pref­ace.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 211

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. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have duty to report on tragedies in coun­tries like Sudan. (Isa­ha Sesay, USA Today): “If the suf­fer­ing of these girls and their par­ents is not enough to make us pay atten­tion to what has hap­pened in Chi­bok, there is some­thing else to con­sid­er: the threat to glob­al secu­ri­ty. The fate of these girls is in many ways a reflec­tion of the Niger­ian fed­er­al government’s long­stand­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the north­east of the coun­try. Amer­i­cans should see the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chi­bok girls as a flare, illu­mi­nat­ing the exis­tence of an ‘ungoverned space’ that is fer­tile ground for a pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist group.”
  2. Face­book and Google track what porn you’re watch­ing, even when you’re in incog­ni­to (Iso­bel Ash­er Hamil­ton, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mel­lon, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia ana­lyzed 22,484 pornog­ra­phy sites using a site called webXray to iden­ti­fy track­ing tools feed­ing data back to third par­ties. ‘Our results indi­cate track­ing is endem­ic on pornog­ra­phy web­sites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-par­ty,’ the study con­cludes.”
    • Num­bers 32:23 comes to mind: “be sure that your sin will find you out.”
    • An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence of porn: Stream­ing online pornog­ra­phy pro­duces as much CO2 as Bel­gium (Michael Le Page, New­Sci­en­tist): “The trans­mis­sion and view­ing of online videos gen­er­ates 300 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year, or near­ly 1 per cent of glob­al emis­sions. On-demand video ser­vices such as Net­flix account for a third of this, with online porno­graph­ic videos gen­er­at­ing anoth­er third.”
  3. An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co-work­er or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquain­tance-rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. 
  4. Oil-patch evan­gel­i­cals: How Chris­tian­i­ty and crude fueled the rise of the Amer­i­can right (Dar­ren Dochuk, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the face of the Rock­e­fellers’ pro­gres­sive way, Tex­an oil­ers cham­pi­oned a the­ol­o­gy of per­son­al encounter with scrip­ture and an active High­er Being. They her­ald­ed church auton­o­my and gospel teach­ings about pros­per­i­ty and end times, a mes­sage that antic­i­pat­ed the vio­lent dis­rup­tions of the oil age and the need to save souls and reap God’s — and the earth’s — rich­es before the world’s end.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame and describes an aspect of mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry I had not heard before.
    • An inter­view with the above author: Anoint­ed with Oil: Evan­gel­i­cals and the Petro­le­um Indus­try (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Oil his­to­ri­ans may be sur­prised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s cor­po­rate struc­tures evolved direct­ly out of the the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments of its lead­ers.” The first piece felt a lit­tle hos­tile to me, where­as this one did not at all. 
  5. Stan­ford oppos­es bill that would let col­lege ath­letes in Cal­i­for­nia prof­it from endorse­ments (Ian Park, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The NCAA earns more than $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue from broad­cast­ing rights and cham­pi­onships. In return, stu­dent-ath­letes receive lit­tle to no com­pen­sa­tion, oth­er than schol­ar­ships. Accord­ing to a study by Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Col­lege Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, schol­ar­ships aren’t enough for many stu­dent-ath­letes, as sur­veyed ath­letes had to pay col­leges schol­ar­ship short­falls of as much as $17,000.”
    • In oth­er and com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed local news: SF does not have the high­est rents in the Bay Area (Adam Brin­klow, Curbed): “Men­lo Park, home of Face­book, has the high­est rents in the region, aver­ag­ing $4,638 per month. Palo Alto also beat out SF with a star­tling $3,857 per month price tag.” 
    • Else­where in the arti­cle we learn that Red­wood City rents aver­age $1,956. I love Men­lo Park, but there’s no way it is twice as nice as Red­wood City. Sheesh!
  6. Trump vs. Dems: ‘Racist,’ ‘social­ist’ lines drawn for 2020 (Lisa Mas­caro, AP News): “With tweets and a vote, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and House Democ­rats estab­lished the sharp and emo­tion­al­ly raw con­tours of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paigns. In the process, they have cre­at­ed a fraught polit­i­cal frame: ‘racists’ vs. ‘social­ists.’”
    • What Pelosi Ver­sus the Squad Real­ly Means (David Brooks, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism arose out of the fact that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, while excit­ing at the out­set, usu­al­ly end up in bru­tal­i­ty, dic­ta­tor­ship and blood. Work­ing with­in the sys­tem is best. Peo­ple who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmos­phere of assumed lib­er­al­ism. They often grew up in an atmos­phere that cri­tiques it.”
    • ‘It Makes Us Want to Sup­port Him More’ (Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic): “A few con­ced­ed that Trump occa­sion­al­ly fires off an inap­pro­pri­ate tweet, but said his accom­plish­ments in office over­shad­ow any offense. If any­thing, they said, his lan­guage springs from an authen­tic­i­ty they find refresh­ing. None of the peo­ple I spoke with con­sid­ered his com­ments about the con­gress­women racist.”
    • Peo­ple Who Have Screamed ‘Racism’ For Decades Won­der Why No One Is Lis­ten­ing To Them About Trump (Baby­lon Bee): this would nor­mal­ly go down in the amus­ing sec­tion because the head­line is from a satire site, but this is one of those times where the Bee’s insight is rel­e­vant: “‘I mean, we com­pared John McCain to George Wal­lace,’ stat­ed Demo­c­rat Mag­gie Wilkins, ‘and I’m not sure who to com­pare Trump to in order to show he’s an even more wors­er racist.’ Activists are con­sid­er­ing com­ing up with oth­er words to express that Trump is a worse kind of racist. They con­sid­ered ‘white suprema­cist,’ but they’ve been using that a lot late­ly, so it would only mean to most peo­ple that Trump is as bad as the Bet­sy Ross flag. So they tried to invent a new term — dou­ble plus racist — to express how extra racist Trump is, but then remem­bered they already used that on Mitt Rom­ney.”
  7. 5 Rea­sons to Dis­en­tan­gle Sex­u­al­i­ty and Race (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics were as shock­ing to their orig­i­nal first-cen­tu­ry Gre­co-Roman con­text as they are today. If Chris­tians are to learn from his­to­ry, the les­son must be this: hold fast to Scripture’s rad­i­cal demands, whether the cul­tur­al tide is com­ing in or out. You won’t know which side of his­to­ry you’re on until the last day.” Dis­claimer: I know the author and have col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on events at Stan­ford.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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.