The Screwtape Letters: Six Through Twelve

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week’s read­ing (let­ters six through twelve) was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly short and full of insight­ful obser­va­tions.

A few of Lewis’s com­ments stood out to me:

Nev­er for­get that when we are deal­ing with any plea­sure in its healthy and nor­mal and sat­is­fy­ing form, we are, in a sense, on the Ene­my’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through plea­sure. All the same, it is His inven­tion, not ours. He made the plea­sures: all our research so far has not enabled us to pro­duce one. All we can do is to encour­age the humans to take the plea­sures which our Ene­my has pro­duced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has for­bid­den. (Let­ter Nine, page 210)

Lewis is spot-on here. Plea­sure is a gift from God. As James 1:27 reminds us, “every good and per­fect gift is from above.” Tru­ly inter­nal­iz­ing this is trans­for­ma­tive. The plea­sures of God are pre­mi­um, grade A stuff. It is true that Satan is a skill­ful knock­off artist, and this means that the oppor­tu­ni­ties he lures us with can seem as good as (or even supe­ri­or to) God’s plea­sures at first, but at the end of the day they are still knock­offs. The plea­sures they pro­duce don’t last. Hebrews 11:25 calls them “the fleet­ing plea­sures of sin.”

The upshot: few things dis­rupt Satan’s schemes for your life like a fierce love of whole­some plea­sure. One of the best ways to resist temp­ta­tion is to be full of god­ly joy.

Mov­ing on, let­ter ten seems espe­cial­ly help­ful to Stan­ford stu­dents.

[When try­ing to impress new, sophis­ti­cat­ed friends] he will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his man­ner, but present­ly by his words, all sorts of cyn­i­cal and scep­ti­cal atti­tudes which are not real­ly his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mor­tals tend to turn into the thing they are pre­tend­ing to be. This is ele­men­tary. (Let­ter Ten, pages 212–213)

Boom! Not much to add to that except pray for all the frosh head­ing to Stan­ford in a few weeks.

Also of rel­e­vance to the Stan­ford cul­ture:

But flip­pan­cy is the best [source of laugh­ter] of all. In the first place it is very eco­nom­i­cal. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about any­thing else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were fun­ny. Among flip­pant peo­ple the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actu­al­ly makes it; but every seri­ous sub­ject is dis­cussed in a man­ner which implies that they have already found a ridicu­lous side to it. If pro­longed, the habit of Flip­pan­cy builds up around a man the finest armour-plat­ing against the Ene­my that I know, and it is quite free from the dan­gers inher­ent in the oth­er sources of laugh­ter. (Let­ter Eleven, page 217)

Again, lit­tle com­men­tary is need­ed. You will find it worth­while, though, to pay atten­tion to the things that are sim­ply assumed to be false by your com­mu­ni­ty. What Lewis calls flip­pan­cy is an indi­ca­tion that there might not be sol­id argu­ments against the opin­ion being mocked. Inter­net cul­ture is espe­cial­ly prone to this sort of super­fi­cial com­men­tary. Social media, in par­tic­u­lar, incen­tivizes it. There may very well be good rea­sons that your com­mu­ni­ty believes what it does about the good life, the prob­lems fac­ing soci­ety, the true reli­gion, and right-think­ing pol­i­tics… but per­haps there are not. Seek out the non-flip­pant opin­ions before you allow the juve­nile ban­ter to sway you undu­ly.

Any­way, I hope you derived as much ben­e­fit from this week’s read­ing as I did. Enjoy the book!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 164

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. Two con­trast­ing per­spec­tives on who is real­ly win­ning in Amer­i­ca, both inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished by smart peo­ple in the same high-pro­file mag­a­zine:
    • Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jor­dan Peter­son (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “There are many legit­i­mate rea­sons to dis­agree with him on a num­ber of sub­jects, and many peo­ple of good will do. But there is no coher­ent rea­son for the left’s oblit­er­at­ing and irra­tional hatred of Jor­dan Peter­son. What, then, accounts for it? It is because the left, while it cur­rent­ly seems ascen­dant in our hous­es of cul­ture and art, has in fact entered its deca­dent late phase, and it is deeply vulnerable.”
    • Con­ser­v­a­tives Are Scared, Even Under Trump (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “While lib­er­al activist groups paint Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Wash­ing­ton as an unmit­i­gat­ed for­ward march of con­ser­v­a­tive vic­to­ries, con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups—including Weber’s—don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­ceive things the same way. Rather, some of these groups see the next few years under Trump as a brief win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate defens­es against a cul­ture that is mov­ing away from them. In parts of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, the long-game strat­e­gy is to defend their posi­tion by devolv­ing pow­er away from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Supreme Court, using the momen­tum of the Trump years to bat­ten down the hatch­es against the inevitable cul­tur­al storms ahead.”
  2. Final text of Jew­ish nation-state law, approved by the Knes­set ear­ly on July 19 (Raoul Wootliff, Times of Israel): “The law for the first time enshrines Israel as ‘the nation­al home of the Jew­ish people.’ The law becomes one of the so-called Basic Laws, which, like a con­sti­tu­tion, guide Israel’s legal sys­tem and are usu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult to repeal than reg­u­lar laws.” Unlike most arti­cles, this includes the full (trans­lat­ed) text of the law, and it is worth read­ing if you’ve only seen it excerpt­ed. It’s not long.
    • I believe this is the Israeli law that infu­ri­at­ed Stan­ford stu­dent Hamzeh Daoud (see last week’s install­ment for details).
    • Israel’s New Law: A Tale of Two Nation-States (Robert Nichol­son, Prov­i­dence): “The Pales­tine Basic Law (2003) defines Pales­tine as part of the Arab world and Arab uni­ty as a sin­gu­lar goal of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. The law also defines Ara­bic as Palestine’s offi­cial lan­guage, Jerusalem as its offi­cial cap­i­tal, and Islam as its offi­cial reli­gion. This basic law serves as a tem­po­rary con­sti­tu­tion for the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty until a sov­er­eign State of Pales­tine is estab­lished. In the mean­time, the law gov­erns dai­ly life inside the West Bank and to some extent Gaza. On July 19 the Israeli Knes­set passed a sim­i­lar basic law.” This was incred­i­bly help­ful con­text to me.
    • Under the Law: Israeli Chris­tians Wor­ry About Sec­ondary Sta­tus in Jew­ish Nation-State (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “’This law out­lines that Israel’s demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues are sec­ondary for non-Jews,’ said Sha­dia Qubti, a Pales­tin­ian evan­gel­i­cal liv­ing in Nazareth. ‘It sends a clear mes­sage that my lan­guage is not wel­come and con­se­quent­ly, nei­ther is my cul­tur­al and eth­nic identity.‘”
  3. A Bet­ter Way to Ban Alex Jones (David French, New York Times): “The good news is that tech com­pa­nies don’t have to rely on vague, mal­leable and hot­ly con­test­ed def­i­n­i­tions of hate speech to deal with con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists like Mr. Jones. The far bet­ter option would be to pro­hib­it libel or slan­der on their plat­form­s…. Pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions can ban who­ev­er they like. But if com­pa­nies like Face­book are eager to nav­i­gate speech con­tro­ver­sies in good faith, they would do well to learn from the cen­turies of legal devel­op­ments in Amer­i­can law. When cre­at­ing a true mar­ket­place of ideas, why not let the First Amend­ment be your guide?”
    • His fol­low-up: A First Amend­ment Peace Plan for the Twit­ter Wars (David French, Nation­al Review): “As I dug down into objec­tions to my pro­posed First Amend­ment frame­work, I often found that the objec­tions were ulti­mate­ly based on a desire to dis­crim­i­nate on the basis of view­point, on a desire to use the pow­er of the plat­form to priv­i­lege some voic­es and sup­press others.”
  4. A Kind of Home­less­ness: Evan­gel­i­cals of Col­or in the Trump Era (Melani McAl­is­ter, Reli­gion & Pol­i­tics): “Yet the head­lines about ‘evangelical’ sup­port for the pres­i­dent and his agen­da mean that evan­gel­i­cals of col­or can seem to be an invis­i­ble community—rarely acknowl­edged by jour­nal­ists even when they go to the same church­es or claim a sim­i­lar the­ol­o­gy. White evan­gel­i­cals are numer­i­cal­ly dominant—although declining—but their opin­ions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dom­i­nate U.S. media report­ing on how the­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants think, vote, and believe. At one lev­el, the racial dif­fer­ence is emi­nent­ly pre­dictable. Sure­ly the white­ness of white evan­gel­i­cals is cru­cial to under­stand­ing their polit­i­cal beliefs and their vot­ing pat­terns. As Janelle Wong shows in her new book, Immi­grants, Evan­gel­i­cals, and Pol­i­tics in an Era of Demo­graph­ic Change, although evan­gel­i­cals of any giv­en race are more con­ser­v­a­tive than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of that race, evan­gel­i­cals of col­or over­all are far less con­ser­v­a­tive than white evan­gel­i­cals. Indeed, they are less con­ser­v­a­tive than white peo­ple overall.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. How Trump Rad­i­cal­ized ICE (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic): “By the begin­ning of Barack Obama’s sec­ond term, immi­gra­tion had become one of the high­est pri­or­i­ties of fed­er­al law enforce­ment: Half of all fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tions were for immi­gra­tion-relat­ed crimes. In 2012, Con­gress appro­pri­at­ed $18 bil­lion for immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. It spent $14 bil­lion for all the oth­er major crim­i­nal law-enforce­ment agen­cies com­bined: the FBI; the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion; the Secret Ser­vice; the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms, and Explo­sives; and the U.S. Mar­shals Service.” ICE is much, much big­ger than I real­ized. This is a real­ly impor­tant arti­cle.
  6. Oh, The Human­i­ties! (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the years since the Great Reces­sion have been ‘brutal for almost every major in the humanities.’ They’ve also been bad for ‘social sci­ence fields that most close­ly resem­ble human­is­tic ones — soci­ol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions and polit­i­cal science.’ Mean­while the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing have gained at the expense of humanism…”
  7. Bethel Church Sur­vives Red­ding Carr Fire, But Still Faces Heat (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Bethel’s part, staff said the church could not act as an evac­u­a­tion zone because of its prox­im­i­ty to the blaze and because there is a sin­gle entry and exit point to the cam­pus, which is itself sur­round­ed by brush. The Red Cross said Bethel offered to be an evac­u­a­tion site, but was turned down because of the campus’s near­ness to the fire…. The church has, how­ev­er, flexed its con­sid­er­able min­istry mus­cle and finan­cial resources, encour­ag­ing dona­tions to aid relief efforts. Bethel is also part­ner­ing with the Red Cross and the Sal­va­tion Army in response to the Carr fire, Far­rel­ly said.”
    • Relat­ed: Osteen’s church was sim­i­lar­ly crit­i­cized after Hur­ri­cane Har­vey, also with what seem to me to be scant fac­tu­al grounds. Dis­cussed back in vol­ume 116.
    • Also (ten­u­ous­ly) relat­ed: Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Dev­as­tat­ing Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us (Chuck DeVore, Forbes): “ In the 1850s and 1860s, the typ­i­cal Sier­ra land­scape was of open fields of grass punc­tu­at­ed by iso­lat­ed pine stands and a few scat­tered oak trees. The first branch­es on the pine trees start­ed about 20 feet up—lower branch­es hav­ing been burned off by low-inten­si­ty grass­fires. California’s Native Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion had for years shaped this land­scape with fire to encour­age the grass­lands and boost the game ani­mal pop­u­la­tion. As the Gold Rush remade mod­ern Cal­i­for­nia, tim­ber was har­vest­ed and replant­ed. Fires were sup­pressed because they threat­ened homes as well as burned up a valu­able resource. The land­scape filled in with trees, but the trees were har­vest­ed every 30 to 50 years. In the 1990s, how­ev­er, that cycle began to be dis­rupt­ed with increas­ing­ly bur­den­some reg­u­la­tions. The tim­ber har­vest cycle slowed, and, in some areas, stopped com­plete­ly, espe­cial­ly on the almost 60% of Cal­i­for­nia for­est land owned by the fed­er­al government.”

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 Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘perfect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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The Screwtape Letters: Preface and the First Five Letters

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week we begin our final sum­mer bookk, The Screw­tape Let­ters. Before I give some thoughts on this week’s read­ing, I have some gen­er­al obser­va­tions.

  • The let­ters were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as a week­ly ser­i­al, one let­ter at at time, in a church mag­a­zine.
  • The full text of The Screw­tape Let­ters is avail­able online at http://www.truechristianity.info/en/the_screwtape_letters.php
  • The Screw­tape Let­ters is also avail­able as an audio­book read by John Cleese(!) — check it out on YouTube.

On to the main course:

Demon­ic cor­re­spon­dence in a hell­ish bureau­cra­cy is a genius idea for a book and I assumed it would have been fun to write, but Lewis said “Of all my books, there was only one I did not take plea­sure in writing.” The Screw­tape Let­ters “were dry and grit­ty going. At the time, I was think­ing of objec­tions to the Chris­t­ian life, and decid­ed to put them into the form, ‘That’s what the dev­il would say.’ But mak­ing goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatigu­ing.” (source)

I’m glad Lewis put up with the fatigue. The result is tremen­dous. Let me begin with one of my favorite quotes from the book (from the pref­ace):

There are two equal and oppo­site errors into which our race can fall about the dev­ils. One is to dis­be­lieve in their exis­tence. The oth­er is to believe, and to feel an exces­sive and unhealthy inter­est in them. They them­selves are equal­ly pleased by both errors and hail a mate­ri­al­ist or a magi­cian with the same delight.

This para­graph has spe­cial mean­ing to me as a Pen­te­costal. Some cor­ners of the Pen­te­costal world seem to believe there is a demon behind every headache and traf­fic jam. But much of our soci­ety has a hard time acknowl­edg­ing that there is any­thing demon­ic about some­thing as overt as Satan wor­ship. There is a more sen­si­ble posi­tion which Lewis here describes and which the Apos­tle Paul modeled: Paul was com­fort­able with the spir­it realm and demons rec­og­nized that he was a force to be reck­oned with (Acts 19:11–16), but he did not obsess over it. He was not an easy man to dis­tract. Once a demon was harass­ing him, but it took sev­er­al days before it got on Paul’s nerves enough for him to respond to it (Acts 16:16–18). Strive to be like Paul — deal with the demon­ic realm with­out becom­ing con­sumed by the demon­ic realm.

In the first let­ter, Screw­tape writes to Worm­wood about how mod­ern trends have made demon­ic work eas­i­er:

Your man has been accus­tomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incom­pat­i­ble philoso­phies danc­ing about togeth­er inside his head. He does­n’t think of doc­trines as pri­mar­i­ly “true” or “false”, but as “aca­d­e­m­ic” or “prac­ti­cal”, “out­worn” or “con­tem­po­rary”, “con­ven­tion­al” or “ruth­less”. Jar­gon, not argu­ment, is your best ally in keep­ing him from the Church. Don’t waste time try­ing to make him think that mate­ri­al­ism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the phi­los­o­phy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.

Read­ing this para­graph remind­ed me of the Prime Min­is­ter of Cana­da, Justin Trudeau. He once famous­ly answered a ques­tion about his cab­i­net com­po­si­tion by say­ing, “Because it’s 2015!” This is the kind of thing Screw­tape is talk­ing about. It’s the kind of answer we have been con­di­tioned to respond to, and so it’s the kind of answer a skill­ful politi­cian gives.

Lat­er in the same let­ter, Screw­tape makes a good point about sci­ence:

Above all, do not attempt to use sci­ence (I mean, the real sci­ences) as a defence against Chris­tian­i­ty. They will pos­i­tive­ly encour­age him to think about real­i­ties he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cas­es among the mod­ern physi­cists. If he must dab­ble in sci­ence, keep him on eco­nom­ics and soci­ol­o­gy; don’t let him get away from that invalu­able “real life”. But the best of all is to let him read no sci­ence but to give him a grand gen­er­al idea that he knows it all and that every­thing he hap­pens to have picked up in casu­al talk and read­ing is “the results of modem inves­ti­ga­tion”.

I’ve min­is­tered at Stan­ford since 2002, and in my expe­ri­ence math­e­mati­cians and stu­dents of the hard sci­ences have an eas­i­er time embrac­ing the gospel than do stu­dents of the social sci­ences or the human­i­ties. In part, it seems to me, it is because social sci­en­tists tend to look for answers that “explain away” where­as hard sci­en­tists tend to look for explanations. 

The final sen­tence, though, is the real kick­er. We assume some­thing is true because a lot of peo­ple keep say­ing it and there­by mis­take rep­e­ti­tion for rea­son. When some­one tells me “the Bible is full of con­tra­dic­tions” I often dis­cov­er they don’t have any to offer. They’re not lying — they are mere­ly repeat­ing some­thing they have heard so often that they assume it must have a sol­id foundation.  Some­times there’s more cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, such as when some­one assumes the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion has been a net pos­i­tive for soci­ety. In that case my inter­locu­tor is usu­al­ly ignor­ing or dis­count­ing evi­dence they have per­son­al­ly observed. But again, they’re not con­scious­ly lying. The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion is near­ly always pre­sent­ed as progress, and peo­ple assume that there must be some­thing to that since it keeps get­ting repeat­ed.

I am not say­ing we should mis­trust the con­sen­sus of experts who are speak­ing to us about some­thing we have no knowl­edge of. Defer­ring to expert con­sen­sus is an excel­lent heuris­tic, except when the con­sen­sus con­flicts with some­thing we know. In that case we humbly return to the evi­dence and think things through again, with open­ness to the idea that we might be wrong but so might the experts. Here’s the rub: when it comes to things like moral­i­ty and reli­gion we will almost always have some direct knowl­edge which we need to con­sid­er. And espe­cial­ly with sub­jects like moral­i­ty and reli­gion we need to remem­ber that both the experts as well as our­selves have pow­er­ful motives to not think things through all the way. All that to say: trust the experts, but not too much. Fur­ther­more, don’t assume our cul­tur­al con­sen­sus is the same thing as the expert con­sen­sus. If that was always the case, we would­n’t need experts!

I’ll con­tent myself with shar­ing one final quote from the read­ing, this one from Let­ter Four:

It is fun­ny how mor­tals always pic­ture us as putting things into their minds: in real­i­ty our best work is done by keep­ing things out.

Dis­trac­tion is one of the chief ene­mies of spir­i­tu­al growth, and we live in an age that is full of it. Sus­tained and slow thought is one of the chief instru­ments in our trans­for­ma­tion. If Lewis is right and one of the infer­nal legion’s goals is to keep you dis­tract­ed and pre­vent you from focus­ing, let that inform your use of apps and the inter­net. Just a thought.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 163

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. Chi­na and its creepy facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy tar­gets Uighur Mus­lims (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “China’s Mus­lims are akin to Germany’s Jews in the 1930s; a group of hap­less peo­ple of a dif­fer­ent reli­gion that the gov­ern­ment gets to exper­i­ment on. They’re already shov­ing rough­ly 800,000 Mus­lims into intern­ment camps and oth­er Mus­lims world­wide aren’t real­ly noticing.” This is hor­ri­fy­ing.
  2. There was quite the clam­or recent­ly about anti­semitism at Stan­ford.
    • Stan­ford Stu­dent Threat­ens Vio­lence against Pro-Israel Stu­dents (Dov Green­burg, Nation­al Review): “In mid July, Hamzeh Daoud, a stu­dent at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­licly post­ed on Face­book: ‘I’m gonna phys­i­cal­ly fight Zion­ists on cam­pus next year.’ If his mean­ing wasn’t clear enough, Hamzeh con­tin­ued, ‘And after I abol­ish your ass I’ll go ahead and work every day for the rest of my life to abol­ish your pet­ty ass eth­no-suprema­cist, set­tler-colo­nial state.’ While not reflec­tive of Stanford’s val­ues, the sen­ti­ment of this hate­ful post reveals the state of con­tem­po­rary life on campuses.”
    • Daoud resigns from Nor­cliffe RA posi­tion (Julia Ingram and Hold­en Fore­man, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Hamzeh Daoud ’20 has resigned from his Res­i­dent Assis­tant posi­tion in Nor­cliffe House, he announced in a state­ment to The Dai­ly on Fri­day afternoon.”
    • Op Ed: State­ment from Hamzeh Daoud (Hamzeh Daoud, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “After spend­ing a few hours away from Face­book, I read over my post again and real­ized how infused it was with the same hatred that has caused my own fam­i­ly so much suf­fer­ing. It was the antithe­sis of why I chose this path in life. A slop­py com­ment made dur­ing an emo­tion-filled reac­tion to yet anoth­er lay­er of trau­ma, the com­ment did not con­vey my val­ues, who I am cur­rent­ly, or who I hope to become.”
    • I know some of you know Hamzeh, so this prob­a­bly feels a good deal more per­son­al than many of the arti­cles I share. Please remem­ber that what you put on social media actu­al­ly mat­ters. James 1:19 is a use­ful mem­o­ry verse for every­one with a Face­book or Twit­ter account: “My dear broth­ers and sis­ters, take note of this: Every­one should be quick to lis­ten, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
  3. At Prayer Break­fast, Guests Seek Access to a Dif­fer­ent High­er Pow­er (Ken­neth P. Vogel and Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “Some describe the gath­er­ing as sim­i­lar to the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, except that Jesus is the orga­niz­ing principle….With its rel­a­tive lack of diplo­mat­ic pro­to­cols and press cov­er­age, the prayer break­fast set­ting is ide­al for for­eign fig­ures who might not oth­er­wise be able to eas­i­ly get face time with top Amer­i­can offi­cials, because of unsa­vory rep­u­ta­tions or a lack of an offi­cial gov­ern­ment perch, accord­ing to lob­by­ists who help arrange such trips. They also con­tend that it is eas­i­er to secure visas when the break­fast is list­ed as a destination.”
  4. Jeff Ses­sions announces a reli­gious lib­er­ty task force to com­bat “dangerous” sec­u­lar­ism (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Vox): “In a bold speech deliv­ered at the Jus­tice Department’s Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Sum­mit, Ses­sions char­ac­ter­ized the task force as a nec­es­sary step in fac­ing down the pre­vail­ing forces of sec­u­lar­ism. ‘A dan­ger­ous move­ment, unde­tect­ed by many, is now chal­leng­ing and erod­ing our great tra­di­tion of reli­gious freedom,’ he said, which ‘must be con­front­ed and defeated.’”
    • Relat­ed: Why Jeff Ses­sions thinks Chris­tians are under siege in Amer­i­ca (Christo­pher Shea inter­views Nel­son Tebbe, Vox): One part stood out to me: “The Supreme Court has not decid­ed a reli­gious free­dom case in a way that’s adverse to the inter­est of Chris­tians for the past few terms. I can’t think of a sin­gle reli­gious free­dom case that they’ve lost.”
    • The above point is very mud­dled. The things that keep going to the Supreme Court are pre­cise­ly the things we have a prob­lem with. Do you know what we don’t have a prob­lem with? Can­ni­bal­ism. We’ve got cul­tur­al con­sen­sus on that. But reli­gious lib­er­ty? That keeps going to the courts and get­ting suc­cess­ful­ly appealed to the very top because local and state gov­ern­ments keep try­ing to vio­late it. It is a sim­ple fact that sig­nif­i­cant voic­es in our cul­ture view reli­gious lib­er­ty with reac­tions rang­ing from sus­pi­cion to hos­til­i­ty. Exam­ples abound (includ­ing these two Vox arti­cles).
  5. How Catholic Bish­ops Are Shap­ing Health Care In Rur­al Amer­i­ca (Anna Maria Bar­ry-Jester and Amelia Thom­son-DeVeaux, FiveThir­tyEight): “Best esti­mates sug­gest that one in six hos­pi­tal beds and many of the nation’s largest non­prof­it health sys­tems are Catholic-owned or ‑affil­i­at­ed. From 2001 to 2016, the num­ber of Catholic-affil­i­at­ed hos­pi­tals in the U.S. grew by 22 per­cent, even as the total num­ber of hos­pi­tals in the U.S. shrunk, accord­ing to research by Merg­er­Watch and the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union.”
    • A response: Stan­dard Pro­ce­dures (Leah Libresco Sargeant, First Things): “When she lays out my options, there real­ly is just one option: the stan­dard of repro­duc­tive care. But I have two rea­sons to say no: I am a Catholic and I am a sta­tis­ti­cian. It was faith and rea­son, the two ways of know­ing that St. John Paul II called the ‘two wings on which the human spir­it ris­es to the con­tem­pla­tion of truth,’ that led me to dig in my heels dur­ing my third miscarriage.” FYI: the author used to write for FiveThir­tyEight.
    • Anoth­er response: What FiveThir­tyEight gets wrong about Catholic hos­pi­tals (Stephanie Slade, Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine): “That the A.C.L.U. threw away its com­mit­ment to reli­gious free­dom in the name of abor­tion rights is bad enough. A jour­nal­is­tic enter­prise as osten­si­bly sane and data-dri­ven as FiveThir­tyEight­should think twice before fol­low­ing the same path.”
  6. “Hypnotic Mass Phe­nom­e­na” (Flo­ri­an Schwab inter­view with Peter Thiel, Die Welt­woche): “The advanced tech­no­log­i­cal civ­i­liza­tion of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry is a com­pli­cat­ed world where it is not pos­si­ble for any­body to think through every­thing for them­selves. You can­not be a poly­math in quite the way peo­ple were in the 18th cen­tu­ry enlight­en­ments. You can­not be like Goethe. So there is some need to lis­ten to experts, to defer to oth­er peo­ple. And then, there is always the dan­ger of that going too far and peo­ple not think­ing crit­i­cal­ly. This hap­pens in spades in Sil­i­con Valley.”
  7. Spies Are More Com­mon, and Bor­ing, Than You Think (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “John Negro­ponte, for­mer direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence, admit­ted in 2006 that the U.S. was deploy­ing about 100,000 spies around the world. Giv­en that the U.S. is the world’s tech­nol­o­gy and mil­i­tary leader, and yet has a rel­a­tive­ly small share of glob­al pop­u­la­tion, is it so crazy to think the num­ber of peo­ple spy­ing on us is larg­er than that?”

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 The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

The Four Loves: Charity

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

I hope you’ve been enjoy­ing the read­ings as much as I have. I send these week­ly reminders out both as a lit­tle nudge to remind you to pick up the book and also as a quick overview of some of Lewis’s best insights in case you’re hope­less­ly busy and unable to get to this week’s read­ing.

This week we fin­ish up The Four Loves with Lewis’s thoughts on agape (ἀγάπη — benev­o­lent love). Old­er Bible trans­la­tions some­times ren­dered this word as char­i­ty, as does the King James in 1 Corinthi­ans 13.

Inter­est­ing­ly to me, Lewis does not use the word agape at all in this chap­ter. He assumes his audi­ence is well-edu­cat­ed enough to know that agape is the word under­ly­ing his com­men­tary on char­i­ty.

I’m feel­ing a lit­tle under the weath­er today, so I’ll con­tent myself with three quotes from the chap­ter and some very brief com­men­tary on them.

I’ll begin with what may be Lewis’s most famous obser­va­tion in The Four Loves — the inher­ent risk­i­ness of love. If you read noth­ing else, read this and pon­der it. It’s straight fire and stands on its own apart from the chap­ter.

To love at all is to be vul­ner­a­ble. Love any­thing, and your heart will cer­tain­ly be wrung and pos­si­bly be bro­ken. If you want to make sure of keep­ing it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an ani­mal. Wrap it care­ful­ly round with hob­bies and lit­tle lux­u­ries; avoid all entan­gle­ments; lock it up safe in the cas­ket or cof­fin of your self­ish­ness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motion­less, airless—it will change. It will not be bro­ken; it will become unbreak­able, impen­e­tra­ble, irre­deemable. The alter­na­tive to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damna­tion. The only place out­side Heav­en where you can be per­fect­ly safe from all the dan­gers and per­tur­ba­tions of love is Hell. (pages 823–824)

I also found this obser­va­tion both help­ful and chal­leng­ing.

It remains cer­tain­ly true that all nat­ur­al loves can be inor­di­nate. Inor­di­nate does not mean “insufficiently cautious.” Nor does it mean “too big.” It is not a quan­ti­ta­tive term. It is prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to love any human being sim­ply “too much.” We may love him too much in pro­por­tion to our love for God; but it is the small­ness of our love for God, not the great­ness of our love for the man, that con­sti­tutes the inor­di­na­cy. (page 824)

When­ev­er I love some­one or some­thing more than God it is very like­ly the case that I do not love the rival too much but that I love God too lit­tle. There are excep­tions, of course. There are some bro­ken impuls­es which I might mis­tak­en­ly label love and the solu­tion there is not mere­ly to love God more but also to repent of my aber­rant attrac­tion.

And I thought his obser­va­tion on what the rare Bib­li­cal com­mands to hate mean was quite insight­ful:

Con­sid­er again, “I loved Jacob and I hat­ed Esau” (Malachi I, 2–3). How is the thing called God’s “hatred” of Esau dis­played in the actu­al sto­ry? Not at all as we might expect. There is of course no ground for assum­ing that Esau made a bad end and was a lost soul; the Old Tes­ta­ment, here as else­where, has noth­ing to say about such mat­ters. And, from all we are told, Esau’s earth­ly life was, in every ordi­nary sense, a good deal more blessed than Jacob’s. It is Jacob who has all the dis­ap­point­ments, humil­i­a­tions, ter­rors, and bereave­ments. But he has some­thing which Esau has not. He is a patri­arch. (page 825)

The entire sec­tion from which this last excerpt is tak­en is quite good — I rec­om­mend it high­ly even if you skim the rest of the chap­ter.

Next week we begin The Screw­tape Let­ters!

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 162

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. How to Wit­ness to a Dis­tract­ed World (O. Alan Noble, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Let me give you a sce­nario. I believe it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble today to sit down with a non-believ­ing friend and have a pas­sion­ate, lengthy con­ver­sa­tion about the gospel and nev­er plant a seed deeply. Because as soon as you both rise from the table, he pulls out his phone and checks Face­book or responds to a text from his wife…. It was all a kind of rhetor­i­cal dance or game that we play. And the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the dance is not to win over the oth­er per­son but to define your iden­ti­ty. The game is called expres­sive indi­vid­u­al­ism. And most of us play it.”
  2. A Glob­al Guide To State-Spon­sored Trolling (Michael Riley, Lau­ren Etter, and Bib­hu­dat­ta Prad­han, Bloomberg): “‘People some­times wor­ry that Azer­bai­jan will shut down Facebook,’ said Katy Pearce, a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton who has stud­ied the plat­for­m’s use in that coun­try. ‘Why would it? Face­book is the most effec­tive tool of con­trol the gov­ern­ment has.’”
  3. Hous­ing Costs Reduce The Returns To Edu­ca­tion (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The return to edu­ca­tion, for exam­ple, has increased in the Unit­ed States but it’s less well appre­ci­at­ed that in order to earn high wages col­lege edu­cat­ed work­ers must increas­ing­ly live in expen­sive cities. One con­se­quence is that the net col­lege wage pre­mi­um is not as large as it appears and inequal­i­ty has been over-estimated.”
  4. The many deaths of lib­er­al­ism (Daniel Cole and Aure­lian Craiu­tu, Aeon): “The prob­lem for any­one declar­ing the death of lib­er­al­ism is that it has not one but sev­er­al pil­lars and dimen­sions: legal, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and moral (or reli­gious). The weak­en­ing or dis­ap­pear­ance of one or two lib­er­al pil­lars or tenets would not be enough to declare lib­er­al­ism as a whole dead.”
  5. Epis­toc­ra­cy: a polit­i­cal theorist’s case for let­ting only the informed vote (Sean Illing inter­view­ing Jason Bren­nan, Vox): “I like to say I’m a fan of democ­ra­cy, and I’m also a fan of Iron Maid­en, but I think Iron Maid­en has quite a few albums that are ter­ri­ble — and I think democ­ra­cy is kind of like this. It’s great, it’s the best sys­tem we have so far, but we shouldn’t accept that it can’t be improved.” The title is inac­cu­rate — Bren­nan goes so far as to favor extend­ing the right to vote to chil­dren.
  6. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Con­venes the ‘Super Bowl’ of Reli­gious Free­dom (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “This min­is­te­r­i­al, which is real­ly just a fan­cy word for ‘big meeting,’ could be inter­pret­ed as the unveil­ing of an ele­ment of the Trump administration’s for­eign-pol­i­cy strat­e­gy. For the last three days, del­e­ga­tions from around the world have gath­ered to hear vic­tims of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion share their sto­ries. Amer­i­can offi­cials have declared in no uncer­tain terms that they believe the Unit­ed States should evan­ge­lize reli­gious lib­er­ty around the world, and that democ­ra­cy is built on a foun­da­tion of free­dom in faith.”
    • Relat­ed: Pence and Pom­peo Make Big Reli­gious Free­dom Pledges (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Vice Pres­i­dent called out coun­tries across the globe, start­ing with Nicaragua where he accused the Orte­ga admin­is­tra­tion of ‘virtually wag­ing war on the Catholic Church.’ He con­demned China’s per­se­cu­tion of its Tibetan Bud­dhists, Uyghur Mus­lims, and Chris­tians, as well as the actions of its author­i­tar­i­an neigh­bor: North Kore­a…. Pence also called out Iran. While acknowl­edg­ing that its Chris­tians, Jews, and Baha’i are all per­se­cut­ed by its Shia gov­ern­ment, he specif­i­cal­ly sin­gled out its Sun­ni Kurd pop­u­la­tion…. Russia’s Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, who have been sub­ject to intense per­se­cu­tion in recent years, were also rec­og­nized by Pence…. The Vice Pres­i­dent also called for an end to anti-Semit­ic attacks in West­ern Europe.”
    • Relat­ed: Turkey Lets Andrew Brun­son Leave Prison (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)
    • Relat­ed: The World’s Next Reli­gious Free­dom Suc­cess Sto­ry: Uzbek­istan? (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘That [pan­el was] dif­fer­ent than any­thing you’ve ever heard from almost any place in the for­mer Sovi­et Union,’ said Chris Seiple, pres­i­dent emer­i­tus of the Insti­tute for Glob­al Engage­ment, who orga­nized the pan­el and will lead a del­e­ga­tion to Uzbek­istan this fall. ‘… They’re insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing the process of change. That’s the key. The process is the goal.’”
  7. Is There Recourse When Fact Check­ers Get It Wrong? (Kalev Lee­taru, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “In short, through the busi­ness deci­sion of a sin­gle Sil­i­con Val­ley cor­po­ra­tion, fact check­ers have been ele­vat­ed from help­ful ref­er­ence librar­i­ans into a posi­tion of ulti­mate arbi­tra­tor of truth in our online world, with­out the atten­dant checks and bal­ances to mit­i­gate abuse.”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

The Four Loves: Eros

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

I’m at a con­fer­ence right now with a pret­ty packed sched­ule, so I’m dash­ing this email off quick­er than nor­mal. Apolo­gies for typos or inco­her­ent thoughts. 🙂

One thing I great­ly appre­ci­at­ed in this chap­ter is Lewis’s dis­cus­sion of how amus­ing human romance is. Not every­one gets this.

I remem­ber I was once at a con­fer­ence host­ing a table dis­cus­sion with stu­dents about romance and rela­tion­ships and sex. I was mak­ing the point that sex is an objec­tive­ly absurd thing. I was, if I may say so, on top of my game that day and they were roar­ing with laugh­ter.

One of the stu­dents at my table sud­den­ly stopped laugh­ing and said, “I have a ques­tion. I just over­heard the table host at the oth­er table crit­i­cize us for laugh­ing at sex. He said that we don’t under­stand how seri­ous and sacred sex is. That laugh­ing at it like this shows that we’re imma­ture and we’re going to get our­selves into trou­ble because we don’t approach it with solem­ni­ty. What do you think about that?”

Every­one stopped laugh­ing as though they had been slapped, for indeed they had been.

I can­not remem­ber in detail how I went on to defend my thoughts that day (although I recall fur­ther and per­haps exces­sive ridicule of my critic’s per­spec­tive was deployed), but I am pleased to report that this chap­ter reveals that C.S. Lewis shared my per­spec­tive.

For I can hard­ly help regard­ing it as one of God’s jokes that a pas­sion so soar­ing, so appar­ent­ly tran­scen­dent, as Eros, should thus be linked in incon­gru­ous sym­bio­sis with a bod­i­ly appetite which, like any oth­er appetite, tact­less­ly reveals its con­nec­tions with such mun­dane fac­tors as weath­er, health, diet, cir­cu­la­tion, and diges­tion. In Eros at times we seem to be fly­ing; Venus gives us the sud­den twitch that reminds us we are real­ly cap­tive bal­loons.

And lat­er:

So the body. There’s no liv­ing with it till we recog­nise that one of its func­tions in our lives is to play the part of buf­foon. Until some the­o­ry has sophis­ti­cat­ed them, every man, woman and child in the world knows this. The fact that we have bod­ies is the old­est joke there is.

And again:

Noth­ing is falser than the idea that mock­ery is nec­es­sar­i­ly hos­tile. Until they have a baby to laugh at, lovers are always laugh­ing at each oth­er.

So here is my encour­age­ment to you in your roman­tic jour­ney: see the humor in it.

But romance is not just amus­ing — it is also pro­found. If it was only amus­ing it would not be worth so much ener­gy and atten­tion. It would be at most a hob­by. Romance is far more than that. Lewis explains one of the spir­i­tu­al dynam­ics at work in roman­tic love:

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intol­er­a­ble the idea that it should be tran­si­to­ry. In one high bound it has over­leaped the mas­sive wall of our self­hood; it has made appetite itself altru­is­tic, tossed per­son­al hap­pi­ness aside as a triv­i­al­i­ty and plant­ed the inter­ests of anoth­er in the cen­tre of our being. Spon­ta­neous­ly and with­out effort we have ful­filled the law (towards one per­son) by lov­ing our neigh­bour as our­selves. It is an image, a fore­taste, of what we must become to all if Love Him­self rules in us with­out a rival. It is even (well used) a prepa­ra­tion for that…. Can we be in this self­less lib­er­a­tion for a life­time? Hard­ly for a week. Between the best pos­si­ble lovers this high con­di­tion is inter­mit­tent. The old self soon turns out to be not so dead as he pretended—as after a reli­gious con­ver­sion. In either he may be momen­tar­i­ly knocked flat; he will soon be up again; if not on his feet, at least on his elbow, if not roar­ing, at least back to his surly grum­bling or his men­di­cant whine.

That’s it for this week. Next week: agape!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 161

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. Trevor Responds To Crit­i­cism From The French Ambas­sador (Trevor Noah, YouTube): this is a wit­ty and insight­ful 8 minute reflec­tion on the inter­play between eth­nic her­itage and nation­al iden­ti­ty and the ways that Amer­i­cans process things dif­fer­ent­ly than the French.
  2. The New York Yan­kees Are A Moral Abom­i­na­tion (David Bent­ley Hart, New York Times): “Really, how does a Yan­kees fan’s pride in all those pur­chased cham­pi­onships dif­fer from the self-delu­sion of a man stag­ger­ing out of a bawdy house at dawn, com­pli­ment­ing him­self on his mag­nif­i­cent pow­ers of seduction?” A fun­ny piece of cul­tur­al com­men­tary in the New York Times writ­ten by a the­olo­gian? Yes, please. This col­umn is about way more than base­ball.
  3. Uncom­fort­able Ques­tions in the Wake of Rus­sia Indict­ment 2.0 and Trump’s Press Con­fer­ence With Putin (Jack Gold­smith, Law­fare): “It is no response to say that the Unit­ed States doesn’t med­dle in for­eign elec­tions, because it has in the past—at least as recent­ly as Bill Clinton’s inter­ven­tion in the Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1996 and pos­si­bly as recent­ly as the Hillary Clin­ton State Department’s alleged inter­ven­tion in Russia’s 2011 leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And dur­ing the Cold War the Unit­ed States inter­vened in numer­ous for­eign elec­tions, more than twice as often as the Sovi­et Union.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School. The whole thing is fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Free Speech, Cen­sor­ship, Hate Speech, Twit­ter (Steven Brust, per­son­al blog): “Here’s the thing: every defense, every anal­o­gy I’ve seen to jus­ti­fy ask­ing twit­ter to shut down hate speech, has come down, in the last analy­sis, to a defense of prop­er­ty rights. And yet, the most casu­al obser­va­tion ought to tell you that we are now locked in a bat­tle between prop­er­ty rights and human rights. If you must resort to a defense of prop­er­ty rights to bol­ster your argu­ment, I beg to sub­mit that you should either take anoth­er look at what you’re defend­ing, or stop call­ing your­self a progressive.” A social­ist defense of free speech.
    • Relat­ed: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me (Bar­rett Wil­son, Quil­lette): “In my pre­vi­ous life, I was a self-right­eous social jus­tice cru­sad­er. I would use my mid-sized Twit­ter and Face­book plat­forms to sig­nal my wok­e­ness on top­ics such as LGBT rights, rape cul­ture, and racial injus­tice…. Then one day, sud­den­ly, I was accused of some of the very trans­gres­sions I’d called out in oth­ers. I was guilty, of course: There’s no such thing as due process in this world.”
    • Also relat­ed: 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.” This is an old­er piece but I saw it for the first time recent­ly.
  5. For Some Gang Mem­bers In El Sal­vador, The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Offers A Way Out (Emi­ly Green, NPR): “Becoming a devot­ed mem­ber of an evan­gel­i­cal church at a young age is the only way many ado­les­cent boys are able to avoid being roped into a gang, Cruz says. And it’s also the only way for them to get out of a gang if they’re in it, short of leav­ing the country.”
  6. Sanc­tu­ary amid hous­ing cri­sis (Wendy Lee, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “With no end in sight to soar­ing hous­ing costs, sev­er­al Bay Area faith orga­ni­za­tions have become a sanc­tu­ary of sorts — not just chan­nel­ing dona­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing food, but also offer­ing a safe place for peo­ple liv­ing in cars or RVs. The arrange­ment has some­times grat­ed on neigh­bors, but for pas­tors, it’s sim­ply an exten­sion of their mis­sion to serve humanity.”
  7. Bald­ing Out (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “In Chi­na, there are very few peo­ple who I wit­ness live a tes­ta­ment of their belief. Who knows if the Par­ty mem­ber is a mem­ber because he believes in Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism, Xi-ism, or sim­ply wants a bet­ter apart­ment? Who knows if the per­son who claims to be a believ­er in democ­ra­cy but com­plies with the Par­ty actu­al­ly believes that or just tells the for­eign­er? For­eign­ers in Chi­na in posi­tions of influ­ence who claim to believe in human rights but col­lab­o­rate with the Par­ty to deny Chi­nese cit­i­zens rights need to answer for their actions. I have lit­tle idea what peo­ple in Chi­na believe but I know that if the Par­ty ever falls, there will be more than a bil­lion more peo­ple claim­ing they were clos­et democ­ra­cy advocates.” An Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor reflects on Chi­na as he pre­pares to leave. Very inter­est­ing, a bit ram­bly.

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 This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

The Four Loves: Friendship

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

Now we turn to the sec­ond human love Lewis con­sid­ers: phil­ia (φιλία — friend­ship). 

Even if you’ve got­ten behind on the read­ings I encour­age you to go through this chap­ter. While much has changed in the way we think about friend­ship nowa­days (for instance, we val­ue it more than did Lewis’s con­tem­po­raries), much has not. And the nature of friend­ship has changed not at all. Lewis’s insights will help you forge bet­ter friend­ships and be a bet­ter friend.

Three com­ments before we dive in:

On to the con­tent! This is one of my favorite obser­va­tions by Lewis:

In each of my friends there is some­thing that only some oth­er friend can ful­ly bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activ­i­ty; I want oth­er lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall nev­er again see Ronald’s reac­tion to a specif­i­cal­ly Car­o­line joke. Far from hav­ing more of Ronald, hav­ing him “to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friend­ship is the least jeal­ous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the new­com­er is qual­i­fied to become a real friend. (page 783)

In case you were won­der­ing, Charles is Charles Williams (a nov­el­ist, poet, and edi­tor at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press) and Ronald is J. R. R. Tolkien (yes — that Tolkien). They along with Lewis were the cen­tral mem­bers of a lit­er­ary dis­cus­sion group called the Inklings. They would read their writ­ings aloud to one anoth­er and cri­tique each oth­er. If you’re ever in Oxford you can vis­it the pub they used to meet in — The Eagle and Child.

Back to the main topic. This idea of two friends bring­ing things out of each oth­er that allow me to appre­ci­ate each of them more is beau­ti­ful, and Lewis’s the­o­log­i­cal appli­ca­tion of it is one that I have found help­ful when think­ing about the glo­ry of heav­en:

…the very mul­ti­tude of the blessed (which no man can num­ber) increas­es the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, see­ing Him in her own way, doubt­less com­mu­ni­cates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are cry­ing “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one anoth­er (Isa­iah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heav­en­ly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. (page 783)

More prac­ti­cal­ly, Lewis has some thoughts on how friend­ships begin:

Friend­ship aris­es out of mere Com­pan­ion­ship when two or more of the com­pan­ions dis­cov­er that they have in com­mon some insight or inter­est or even taste which the oth­ers do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique trea­sure (or bur­den). The typ­i­cal expres­sion of open­ing Friend­ship would be some­thing like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” (page 785)

This is one rea­son why col­lege is so exhil­a­rat­ing. You have so many more peers than you did in high school that you can eas­i­ly find peo­ple who share your inter­ests. Your friend­ships in Chi Alpha espe­cial­ly have the poten­tial to become so sat­is­fy­ing because you’ve already got your faith in com­mon, and on top of that Stan­ford itself, and on top of that your expe­ri­ence of Chi Alpha instead of anoth­er Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, and if you add on top of that just one more thing like a cer­tain sport or a spe­cif­ic fan­dom or a shared sense of humor then the odds that a sig­nif­i­cant friend­ship will form are quite high. 

Not every­one acquires those friend­ships, of course. Some respond by look­ing for friends. Lewis points out why look­ing for friends direct­ly is often coun­ter­pro­duc­tive:

That is why those pathet­ic peo­ple who sim­ply “want friend­s” can nev­er make any. The very con­di­tion of hav­ing Friends is that we should want some­thing else besides Friends. Where the truth­ful answer to the ques­tion Do you see the same truth? would be “I see noth­ing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friend­ship can arise— though Affec­tion of course may. There would be noth­ing for the Friend­ship to be about; and Friend­ship must be about some­thing, even if it were only an enthu­si­asm for domi­noes or white mice. Those who have noth­ing can share noth­ing; those who are going nowhere can have no fel­low-trav­ellers. (page 786)

So if you feel lone­ly — pur­sue some­thing you’re inter­est­ed in. And then chat with those around you who are engaged in the same pur­suit. Friend­ship will often emerge. This will prove to be espe­cial­ly use­ful advice once you grad­u­ate and have to forge friend­ships with­out the aggres­sive help of Stan­ford Res Ed.

Lewis also address­es a peren­ni­al ques­tion among col­lege stu­dents: can guys and girls can be just friends?

When the two peo­ple who thus dis­cov­er that they are on the same secret road are of dif­fer­ent sex­es, the friend­ship which aris­es between them will very eas­i­ly pass—may pass in the first half-hour—into erot­ic love. Indeed, unless they are phys­i­cal­ly repul­sive to each oth­er or unless one or both already loves else­where, it is almost cer­tain to do so soon­er or lat­er. (page 786)

Lewis is cor­rect, and at this junc­ture I refer you to one of my favorite YouTube videos: Why Men and Women Can’t Be Friends

Near the end of the chap­ter he gives us a help­ful reminder:

…we think we have cho­sen our peers. In real­i­ty, a few years’ dif­fer­ence in the dates of our births, a few more miles between cer­tain hous­es, the choice of one uni­ver­si­ty instead of anoth­er, post­ing to dif­fer­ent reg­i­ments, the acci­dent of a top­ic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Chris­t­ian, there are, strict­ly speak­ing, no chances. A secret Mas­ter of the Cer­e­monies has been at work. Christ, who said to the dis­ci­ples “Ye have not cho­sen me, but I have cho­sen you,” can tru­ly say to every group of Chris­t­ian friends “You have not cho­sen one anoth­er but I have cho­sen you for one another.” (pages 801–802)

Thank God for your friends!

Next week, roman­tic love…

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 160

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. Democ­rats Are Wrong About Repub­li­cans. Repub­li­cans Are Wrong About Democ­rats. (Per­ry Bacon Jr., FiveThir­tyEight): “Blacks made up about a quar­ter of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, but Repub­li­cans esti­mat­ed the share at 46 per­cent. Repub­li­cans thought 38 per­cent of Democ­rats were gay, les­bian or bisex­u­al, while the actu­al num­ber was about 6 per­cent. Democ­rats esti­mat­ed that 44 per­cent of Repub­li­cans make more than $250,000 a year. The actu­al share was 2 per­cent. Peo­ple also over­stat­ed the num­bers of these stereo­typ­i­cal groups with­in their own par­ty — Democ­rats thought 29 per­cent of their fel­low Democ­rats were gay, les­bian or bisex­u­al — but they weren’t off by as much as mem­bers of the oth­er party.”
  2. The Social­ist Net­work (Gilad Edel­man, Wash­ing­ton Month­ly): “At the heart of the split between lib­er­als and social­ists, at least in the­o­ry, is the ques­tion of what to do about cap­i­tal­ism. Lib­er­als tend to see it as some­thing that needs to be fixed. Social­ists see it as some­thing to be defeat­ed. They say they do, any­way. As we’ve seen, the Mil­len­ni­al social­ist intel­lec­tu­als aren’t real­ly call­ing for gov­ern­ment takeover of industry.”
  3. Affirm­ing Dis­ad­van­tage (John McWhort­er, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Do I oppose affir­ma­tive action? Not at all. But I sug­gest that what we now ‘affirm’ is dis­ad­van­tage suf­fered by all kinds of people.” The author is a lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia. He earned his Ph.D. at Stan­ford, btw.
  4. Cul­ture War As Class War: How Gay Rights Rein­force Elite Pow­er (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Privileging the nor­mal­iza­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty rather than, say, racial inte­gra­tion allows elites to have their diver­si­ty cake and eat it, too.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
  5. If You Care About NATO You Should Care About Ger­man Mil­i­tary Readi­ness (David French, Nation­al Review): “…Germany’s mil­i­tary made head­lines when it used broom­sticks instead of machine guns dur­ing a NATO exer­cise because of a short­age of equip­ment. The lack of real weapons in the Euro­pean Union’s most pop­u­lous nation was seen as symp­to­matic of how under­fund­ed its mil­i­tary has long been.” This is scary.
  6. Learn­ing From ‘The Final Pagan Gen­er­a­tion’ (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): this is a long and illu­mi­nat­ing post. “Understand that we, like the final pagan gen­er­a­tion [in ancient Rome], might think we are fight­ing for tol­er­ance, but our oppo­nents are fight­ing for vic­to­ry. We have to change our tactics.” (empha­sis removed)
  7. Pres­i­dent Trump has nom­i­nat­ed Brett Kavanaugh to be a Supreme Court Jus­tice. I’ve got a lot of links here — just pick one or two.
    • It Took a Vil­lage to Raise Kavanaugh (David Brooks, New York Times): “Kavanaugh is the prod­uct of a com­mu­ni­ty. He is the prod­uct of a con­ser­v­a­tive legal infra­struc­ture that devel­ops ideas, recruits tal­ent, links ris­ing stars, nur­tures genius, molds and launch­es judi­cial nom­i­nees…. If you empha­size pro­fes­sion­al excel­lence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s main­stream insti­tu­tions, if you build a cohe­sive band of broth­ers and sis­ters, you can trans­form the land­scape of your field.”
    • As Trump picks Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, evan­gel­i­cals rejoice: ‘I will vote for him again’ (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and activists said they would have been pleased with any of the names report­ed to be on Trump’s short­list for the nom­i­na­tion. After all, that was the gam­bit that won Trump so many evan­gel­i­cal votes in 2016: He made the unusu­al move of releas­ing, before he was even pres­i­dent, a list of judges he would con­sid­er for the Supreme Court if elect­ed. And evan­gel­i­cals liked what they saw.”
    • Brett Kavanaugh, Don­ald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, explained (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Kavanaugh con­tin­ued to com­pile a legal record that would lead to Durbin’s descrip­tion of him as ‘the Zelig or For­rest Gump of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. You show up at every scene of the crime … whether it is Elián González or the Starr Report, you are there.’”
    • Will Brett Kavanaugh Pass the Reli­gious Right’s New Lit­mus Test? (Sarah Pos­ner, The Nation): “Even with­out the Trump-appoint­ed Kennedy suc­ces­sor, the Court had already expand­ed ‘religious free­dom’ to include pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined reli­gious rights.” This is an extreme­ly mis­lead­ing arti­cle, but inter­est­ing in the mis­un­der­stand­ings it reveals.
    • You’ll Hate This Post On Brett Kavanaugh And Free Speech (Ken White, Pope­hat): “Kavanaugh has been an appel­late judge for 12 years and has writ­ten many opin­ions on free speech issues. They trend very pro­tec­tive of free speech, both in sub­stance and in rhetoric.”
    • Judge Kavanaugh and the Sec­ond Amend­ment (David Kopel, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “Judge Kavanaugh­’s text, his­to­ry, and tra­di­tion method­ol­o­gy for Sec­ond Amend­ment cas­es will not please peo­ple who believe that all gun con­trol is imper­mis­si­ble, nor will it please advo­cates who want to make the Sec­ond Amend­ment a sec­ond-class right.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

I thought the Baby­lon Bee was excep­tion­al­ly fun­ny this week. Maybe I was just feel­ing gig­gly.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.