Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 60

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. To quote from the begin­ning of both posts: “over the past 30 years law­mak­ers in Con­gress tend to vote in line with their party’s plat­form: 89 per­cent of the time for Repub­li­cans and 79 per­cent of the time for Democrats.” If you want to read the full par­ty plat­form state­ments they are linked in the arti­cles and weigh in at a tad over 50 pages each — these are much short­er sum­maries. They are pre­sent­ed in the order of their conventions. 
  2. Is Seg­re­ga­tion Scrip­tur­al? A Radio Address From Bob Jones On East­er Of 1960 (Justin Tay­lor, Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry): this is fas­ci­nat­ing to me as a preach­er. Notice that where Jones went off the rails was when he relied upon his inter­pre­ta­tion of a sin­gle verse as the foun­da­tion of his the­ol­o­gy. Beware of sin­gle-verse the­ol­o­gy! Also, who does­n’t talk about the res­ur­rec­tion on East­er? What was his Christ­mas ser­mon about?
  3. The False Promise Of A ‘Conversation’ About Race (John McWhort­er, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The Mar­t­ian anthro­pol­o­gist — or even a sharp 10-year-old — would be baf­fled by so many bril­liant people’s end­less­ly claim­ing in the very wake of the lat­est racial inci­dent, dis­cussed in the news cycle for weeks, that Amer­i­ca ‘doesn’t want to talk about race.‘” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia who earned his Ph.D. in lin­guis­tics at Stan­ford.
  4. In The Cul­ture War Between Stu­dents and Pro­fes­sors, The Uni­ver­si­ty Is The Real Ene­my (Don­na Zucker­berg, Jezebel): “Heller is cor­rect on one cru­cial point that I don’t think read­ers have been tak­ing seri­ous­ly enough. Col­leges like Ober­lin do encour­age indi­vid­ual expres­sion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly groom­ing all of their stu­dents to belong to a sin­gle socioe­co­nom­ic class—the intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al elite. In oth­er words, study­ing Antigone doesn’t just teach you about Greek dra­ma and female polit­i­cal resis­tance. It also turns you into the kind of per­son who has read Antigone.”
  5. As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law Brought Me Face-To-Face With Rad­i­cal Inequal­i­ty (J.D. Vance, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Very few peo­ple at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obses­sion with diver­si­ty, vir­tu­al­ly everyone—black, white, Jew­ish, Mus­lim, what­ev­er— comes from intact fam­i­lies who nev­er wor­ry about money.” I shared a link to an inter­view with J.D. Vance last week.

Amusing

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 59

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Pastoral Exhortation

Anoth­er sense­less shoot­ing. In Matthew 24:12, Jesus warns that “because of the increase of wicked­ness, the love of most will grow cold.” Wicked­ness caus­es love to grow cold by two means: allure and despair. The church tends to focus on those forms of wicked­ness which entice us as a temp­ta­tion, but there is also a wicked­ness that demor­al­izes. It leaves Chris­tians feel­ing drained and help­less. This wicked­ness, with which we are all too familiar, can make a Chris­tian’s love grow cold. Do not be deceived. Rec­og­nize this for the demon­ic work that it is and do not let it lead you astray. Cling to Christ. Let Him be your com­fort, your peace, and your wis­dom. “Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good” (Rom 12:21).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bat­tle For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (George Wood, PE News): Dr. Wood is the leader of the Assem­blies of God, which spon­sors Chi Alpha. See also this GetRe­li­gion piece on reli­gious lib­er­ty — high­ly rec­om­mend­ed
  2. Of inter­est to aca­d­e­mics
  3. Trump: Tri­bune of Poor White Peo­ple (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “And I’m always left think­ing: if this is the qual­i­ty of thought of a Har­vard Law grad­u­ate, then our soci­ety is tru­ly doomed.” This is an inter­view with the author of Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy and is much more wide-rang­ing and insight­ful than the title leads you to believe . Both the jour­nal­ist and the inter­vie­wee are Chris­tians.
  4. In Defense of Third-Par­ty Vot­ing (Zac Crip­pen, per­son­al blog): rec­om­mend­ed, dif­fi­cult to excerpt
  5. Amus­ing: This Is How We Work (Owl­turd Comix): apolo­gies for the pub­lish­er’s title.

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 58

Issachar
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Chi­na’s Chris­t­ian Future (Yu Jie, First Things):  Wow. This is very much worth your time.
  2. The ISIS Cor­re­spon­dent (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): this is time­ly in light of the ter­ror­ist attack in Nice, France. “I think there is an enor­mous amount of mis­un­der­stand­ing about this ques­tion that we get asked over and over again: Does ISIS direct this attack or does ISIS inspire this attack? ISIS-inspired attacks are part of their strat­e­gy; are part of their design; are part of what they’re try­ing to do. That’s what peo­ple miss.”
  3. Ten Thoughts On Speak­ing (And Not) In A Dig­i­tal World (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “A pas­tor does not have time to be a pro­fes­sion­al pun­dit. And even if he did, it’s fair to won­der whether he should be.” DeYoung’s thoughts par­al­lel many of my own. If you won­der why I am often silent on social media, read this.
  4. How High­ly Reli­gious Amer­i­can­s’ Lives Are Dif­fer­ent From Oth­ers (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): inter­est­ing — both the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties.
  5. Two Kinds Of Vot­ing, Two Kinds Of Dis­rup­tion, and Two Kinds of Right­eous­ness (Sen­a­tor Ben Sasse, Medi­um): “To us, vot­ing is not mere­ly about 1/130-mil­lionth of decid­ing who should pre­side over 1/3 of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from 2017 to 2021. To us, the act of vot­ing is also a civic duty that tells peo­ple what we think Amer­i­ca means, what we want to teach our kids about moral lead­er­ship, what face we want Amer­i­ca to present to the world, and what sort of can­di­dates we want more of in com­ing years.” I know noth­ing about Sen­a­tor Sasse’s vot­ing record — I just know this is an out­stand­ing essay.
  6. When Cor­re­la­tion Does Imply Cau­sa­tion (Joshua Krisch, Voca­tiv): “Additive noise mod­el test­ing is based on the sim­ple assump­tion that there is always some sta­tis­ti­cal noise cling­ing to the key vari­ables in any experiment—areas where the data becomes fuzzy and unre­li­able due to mea­sure­ment errors. Regard­less of any link, each vari­able will have its own unique noise sig­na­ture, with one caveat: If X caus­es Y, then the noise in X will be able to con­t­a­m­i­nate Y, but the noise in Y will not able to do the same to X. Because a cause can affect an effect, but an effect can­not affect a cause (read that last line a few times). … The key, then, is to fol­low the noise contamination.” See the under­ly­ing paper.
  7. These essays by an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Emory are full of prac­ti­cal advice for those of you con­sid­er­ing acad­e­mia. Read them regard­less of your pol­i­tics or your dis­ci­pline.

Amusing

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 57

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

This has been a depress­ing week. Shoot­ings by police, shoot­ings of police, the ISIS bomb­ing in Bagh­dad, reli­gious-lib­er­ty infringe­ments, dis­grace­ful polit­i­cal behav­ior and more. If you’re feel­ing down, the first few links will be espe­cial­ly help­ful to you.

  1. How To Pray In Our Time Of Nation­al Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “Many of us are anx­ious and hurt­ing. All of us are con­fused. When faced with this type of nation­al crisis we may find it dif­fi­cult to turn to our Com­forter in prayer. We are used to going to God with our requests, but this time seems dif­fer­ent. We are mired in sor­row and pain…”
  2. Lamen­ta­tions: A Bot­tle For The Tears Of the World (Christo­pher Wright, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “So much of our wor­ship is cov­er-up: pre­tend­ing to have emo­tions we don’t real­ly feel, or smoth­er­ing the emo­tions we do. That is not praise. It sim­ply leaves us to pick up our suf­fer­ing again on the way out—without bring­ing it into God’s pres­ence or hurl­ing it at him in ques­tion­ing (but trust­ing) protest. Spend­ing time in Lamen­ta­tions helps us learn how to plumb the depths of lament as well as scale the heights of rejoicing.”
  3. What Shoot­ings And Racial Jus­tice Mean For The Body of Christ (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “If we believe that every per­son will stand before a Judg­ment Seat, we can­not then stand silent­ly when we see injus­tice. But many—including evan­gel­i­cals of all ethnicities—wonder what we can real­ly do? Some are reluc­tant to speak because they do not wish to reduce these issues to a hash-tag and they don’t know what to do.”
  4. End Need­less Inter­ac­tion With Cops Dur­ing Traf­fic Stops (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): a shrewd, easy-to-imple­ment sug­ges­tion.
  5. My Four Months As A Pri­vate Prison Guard (Shane Bauer, Moth­er Jones): a very long but very engag­ing essay. “I start­ed apply­ing for jobs in pri­vate pris­ons because I want­ed to see the inner work­ings of an indus­try that holds 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 mil­lion pris­on­ers. As a jour­nal­ist, it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to get an uncon­strained look inside our penal sys­tem. When pris­ons do let reporters in, it’s usu­al­ly for care­ful­ly man­aged tours and mon­i­tored inter­views with inmates. Pri­vate pris­ons are espe­cial­ly secretive.” See also Wounds From Incar­cer­a­tion That Nev­er Heal (Tony Brown & Eve­lyn Pat­ter­son, The New Repub­lic)
  6. Two sto­ries on the reli­gious-lib­er­ty front:
  7. A group of our sum­mer Chi Alphans had a con­ver­sa­tion about how the books of the Bible got select­ed. If you’re curi­ous, here are two resources by Michael Kruger, a schol­ar in the field, that should prove help­ful: Ten Basic Facts About the NT Canon That Every Chris­t­ian Should Mem­o­rize and 10 Mis­con­cep­tions About the NT Canon

A Quote To Ponder

Think before you act; think twice before you speak; think thrice before you post to social media.

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Christianity and Patriotism

Many Stan­ford stu­dents feel ambiva­lent about cel­e­brat­ing Amer­i­ca because of her great flaws. If that’s you, I urge you to con­sid­er these three articles. They are list­ed in order of help­ful­ness.

And if you’re an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent, I hope these arti­cles encour­age you to love your own home­land — patri­o­tism right­ly under­stood is a good thing and it encom­pass­es peo­ple from all nations.
  • Amer­i­can Jesus (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): I debat­ed whether to include this one or not. I agree with enough of it to invite you to wres­tle with it.
And so, should it be legal in your juris­dic­tion, blow some­thing spark­ly up tonight.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 56

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Almost half [of unchurched Amer­i­cans] say they dis­cuss reli­gion freely if the top­ic comes up (47%). A third say they lis­ten with­out respond­ing (31%), while 11 per­cent change the sub­ject. Only about a third say some­one has explained the ben­e­fits of being a Chris­t­ian to them (35%).”
  2. Oberge­fell and the New Gnos­ti­cism (Sherif Gir­gis, First Things): “For decades, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion was sup­posed to be about free­dom. Today, it is about coer­cion. Once, it sought to free our sex­u­al choic­es from restric­tive laws and unwant­ed con­se­quences. Now, it seeks to free our sex­u­al choic­es from oth­er peo­ple’s disapproval.” Sherif has spo­ken for Chi Alpha before.
  3. As a Psy­chi­a­trist I Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness. And, Some­times, Demon­ic Pos­ses­sion (Richard Gal­lagher, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Questions about how a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trained physi­cian can believe ‘such out­dat­ed and unsci­en­tif­ic nonsense,’ as I’ve been asked, have a sim­ple answer. I hon­est­ly weigh the evidence.”
  4. Most Amer­i­can Chris­tians Believe They’re Vic­tims of Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Almost half of Amer­i­cans say dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chris­tians is as big of a prob­lem as dis­crim­i­na­tion against oth­er groups, includ­ing blacks and minorities.”
  5. Nine Prayers For The Not-Yet-Mar­ried (Mar­shall Segal, Desir­ing God): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, rel­e­vant to many of you.
  6. Man Seeks Euthana­sia To End His Sex­u­al­i­ty Strug­gle (Jonathan Blake, BBC): sanc­tion­ing euthana­sia is unwise and leads to unex­pect­ed out­comes. For a the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment see Is There No Moral Law? (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things).
  7. Russia’s Pro­posed Law: No Evan­ge­liz­ing Out­side of Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To share their faith, cit­i­zens must secure a gov­ern­ment per­mit through a reg­is­tered reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, and they can­not evan­ge­lize any­where besides church­es and oth­er reli­gious sites. The restric­tions even apply to activ­i­ty in pri­vate res­i­dences and online.”
  8. Some more on Brex­it:
    • Why Brex­it Hap­pened And What It Means (Tyler Cowen): “The actu­al prac­ti­cal prob­lems with immi­gra­tion are much greater here in Brus­sels, but the coun­try is much fur­ther from ‘doing any­thing about it,’ whether pru­dent­ly or not, and indeed to this day Bel­gium is not actu­al­ly a mature nation-state and it may splin­ter yet.  That Eng­land did some­thing is one reflec­tion of the fact that Eng­land is a bet­ter-run region than Bel­gium, even if you feel as I do that the vote was a big mis­take…. Most of all, I con­clude that the desire to pre­serve the Eng­lish nation [sic] as Eng­lish is stronger than I or indeed most oth­ers had thought.  There is a pos­i­tive side to that.  And if all along you thought there was no case for Leave, prob­a­bly it is you who is the provin­cial one.” Odd­ly, the [sic] is in the orig­i­nal.
    • A great piece from short­ly before the vote: Reflec­tions Of A Ref­er­en­dum Fence-Sit­ter (David Good­hart, Prospect Mag­a­zine)
    • An inter­est­ing piece on the the­ol­o­gy of Brex­it: For hard-line Protes­tants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of escha­tol­ogy (“Erasmus”, The Econ­o­mist)

Interesting Research Findings

  • Why Peo­ple With No Reli­gion Are Pro­ject­ed To Decline As A Share Of The World’s Pop­u­la­tion (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): “These pro­jec­tions, which take into account demo­graph­ic fac­tors such as fer­til­i­ty, age com­po­si­tion and life expectan­cy, fore­cast that peo­ple with no reli­gion will make up about 13% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion in 2050, down from rough­ly 16% as of 2010.”
  • The Data On Chil­dren In Same-Sex House­holds Get More Depress­ing (Mark Reg­nerus, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…during ado­les­cence the chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report­ed mar­gin­al­ly less depres­sion than the chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents. But by the time the sur­vey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their expe­ri­ences had reversed. Indeed, dra­mat­i­cal­ly so: over half of the young-adult chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report ongo­ing depres­sion, a surge of 33 per­cent­age points (from 18 to 51 per­cent of the total). Mean­while, depres­sion among the young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents had declined from 22 per­cent of them down to just under 20 per­cent. A few oth­er find­ings are worth men­tion­ing as well. Obe­si­ty surged among both groups, but the dif­fer­ences became sig­nif­i­cant over time, with 31 per­cent obe­si­ty among young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents, well below the 72 per­cent of those from same-sex households.”
  • Church Atten­dance Linked With Reduced Sui­cide Risk, Espe­cial­ly For Catholics, Study Says (Melis­sa Healy, LA Times): “Compared with women who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in reli­gious ser­vices, women who attend­ed any reli­gious ser­vice once a week or more were five times less like­ly to com­mit sui­cide between 1996 and 2010, says a study pub­lished Wednes­day by JAMA Psychiatry.” See the under­ly­ing study in JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.
  • Researchers Have Found That War Has A Remark­able and Mirac­u­lous Effect (Jeff Guo, Wonkblog): “the expe­ri­ence of wartime vio­lence some­how changes peo­ple for the bet­ter, mak­ing them more coop­er­a­tive and more trusting.”
  • Con­crete Prob­lems in AI Safe­ty (mul­ti­ple impres­sive authors, arXiv.org): CS peo­ple please read this, espe­cial­ly in con­junc­tion with AI Downs Fight­er Pilot.

A Quote To Ponder

“Being part of com­mu­ni­ty takes time and involves restric­tions. Mere­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­ty doesn’t. In our cul­tur­al empha­sis and life, we’ve gone from a com­mu­ni­ty focus to an iden­ti­ty focus.” David Brooks (source)

Something Amusing To End On

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 55

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Britain vot­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union.
  2. Relat­ed To Orlan­do:
    • Omar Mateen’s Mul­ti­ple Motives (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “Almost as quick­ly as the mas­sacre of inno­cents in Orlan­do unfold­ed, Amer­i­cans retreat­ed to their ide­o­log­i­cal cor­ners to inter­pret the moti­va­tions of the mass mur­der­er, Omar Mateen.”
    • FBI Inves­ti­ga­tors say they have found no evi­dence that Orlan­do shoot­er had gay lovers (Mol­ly Hen­nessy-Fiske, LA Times): huh. This is still a devel­op­ing sto­ry, do not assume this is the final word.
    • The Gun Con­trol We Deserve (Patrick Blanch­field, n+1): “As many crit­ics have observed, we would be naïve to think that heavy-hand­ed gun con­trol mea­sures would not involve the same dis­pro­por­tion­ate racial tar­get­ing and police vio­lence we right­ly con­demn in the War on Drugs and in every­day encoun­ters in places from Bal­ti­more to Fer­gu­son to Cleve­land to Oakland.” A very thought­ful piece.
  3. Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Liv­ing In A Sim­u­la­tion (Ric­car­do Man­zot­ti and Andrew Smart, Vice): “The world we live in is made of real stuff. Sim­u­la­tions are things made of the same stuff. Musk’s argu­ment does not show that we are get­ting any clos­er to pro­duc­ing an alter­na­tive real­i­ty. Rather it shows that we are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter at shap­ing the phys­i­cal world.” The authors take unwar­rant­ed pot shots at dual­ism, but make very good points over­all. Relat­ed: SMBC “Heap Prob­lem.”
  4. The Sotomay­or and Kagan Dis­sents in Utah vs Stri­eff (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “If out­stand­ing war­rants were few and far between and dis­trib­uted more or less ran­dom­ly the case would have been wrong­ly decid­ed but of lit­tle prac­ti­cal impor­tance. Out­stand­ing war­rants, how­ev­er, are com­mon and much more com­mon in some com­mu­ni­ties than oth­ers. As I wrote in 2014, in Fer­gu­son, MO a major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion had out­stand­ing war­rants and not because of high crime:”
  5. Ban the Box or Require the Box? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sadly, a pol­i­cy that was intend­ed to raise the employ­ment prospects of black men ends up hav­ing the biggest pos­i­tive effect on white men with a crim­i­nal record…. Poli­cies like ban the box try to get peo­ple to do the ‘right thing’ by blind­ing peo­ple to cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion. But blind­ed peo­ple tend to use oth­er cues to achieve their inter­ests and when those oth­er cues are less infor­ma­tive that often makes things worse.”
  6. I’m A Sin­gle-Issue Vot­er On Mul­ti­ple Issues And So Are You (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “Single-issue vot­ing is not the idea that being right on any sin­gle issue qual­i­fies a can­di­date for office. Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is the idea that being wrong on a sin­gle issue may dis­qual­i­fy a can­di­date from office.”
  7. My Holy Land Vaca­tion (Tom Bis­sell, Harpers): “I excuse myself and stroll out­side. I notice that some­one else has also walked out ear­ly: Pas­tor Mar­ty. He tells me that he was trou­bled by the vio­lence of the Israeli Redneck’s speech. I tell Pas­tor Mar­ty that I don’t fault a man who’s fought in four wars for sound­ing like a lunatic. What both­ers me is the way peo­ple were applaud­ing him.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A Quote To Ponder

“Stanford stu­dents are good at being good at things. Your Chris­tian­i­ty can’t just be one more thing you’re good at. To be good miss­es the point. The point is not what you do but what Jesus has done.” Seth Vil­le­gas

Something Amusing To End On

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 54

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A QUOTE I COULDN’T GET OUT OF MY HEAD

“I expect to die in bed, my suc­ces­sor will die in prison and his suc­ces­sor will die a mar­tyr in the pub­lic square. His suc­ces­sor will pick up the shards of a ruined soci­ety and slow­ly help rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, as the church has done so often in human history.” — Car­di­nal Fran­cis George (1937–2015)

Includ­ing a quote may or may not become a recur­ring thing. Feed­back wel­comed.

LINKS WHICH CAUGHT MY INTEREST

  1. Some help­ful arti­cles about pro­cess­ing the mass shoot­ing at a gay club in Orlan­do:
  2. A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): In the wake of Orlan­do, a lot of peo­ple are talk­ing about guns. This brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate.
  3. Why there is a “gay ban” on blood dona­tions (red­dit): also some­thing peo­ple are talk­ing about since Orlan­do. This is a very sim­ple expla­na­tion. The com­ments are infor­ma­tive. I find it par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing that describ­ing the sit­u­a­tion accu­rate­ly prac­ti­cal­ly forces a focus on behav­ior and not ori­en­ta­tion. The fact-dri­ven expla­na­tion winds up fram­ing things sim­i­lar­ly to the way evan­gel­i­cals talk when dis­cussing LGBT issues.
  4. Epic Cor­rec­tion of the Decade (Steven Hay­ward, Pow­er­line): the authors of a wide­ly-report­ed study about per­son­al­i­ty types and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions acci­den­tal­ly cod­ed their data back­wards. Their real results are the lit­er­al oppo­site of what you remem­ber see­ing in the news. Regard­less of your polit­i­cal propen­si­ties, this is kin­da hilar­i­ous. More at Retrac­tion­Watch.
  5. Study: schools that give away con­doms see more teen births, not few­er (Sarah Kliff, Vox): “A new research paper sug­gests that [giv­ing away con­doms] may have back­fired. It finds that access to con­doms in school led to a 10 per­cent increase in teen births.”
  6. The Sphinx Was Dis­ap­point­ed In Them (G.K. Chester­ton): “Now the mis­take of crit­ics is not that they crit­i­cise the world; it is that they nev­er crit­i­cise them­selves. They com­pare the alien with the ide­al; but they do not at the same time com­pare them­selves with the ide­al; rather they iden­ti­fy them­selves with the ideal.” Chester­ton was one of the most impor­tant Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­als of the 20th cen­tu­ry. This almost became the quote of the week.
  7. Amus­ing:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 53

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Why I Believe Again (A.N. Wil­son, The New States­man): this piece is about sev­en years old, but I don’t remem­ber see­ing it before. “one thing that final­ly put the tin hat on any aspi­ra­tions to be an unbe­liev­er was writ­ing a book about the Wag­n­er fam­i­ly and Nazi Ger­many, and real­is­ing how utter­ly inco­her­ent were Hitler’s neo-Dar­win­ian rav­ings, and how potent was the oppo­si­tion, much of it from Chris­tians; paid for, not with clear intel­lec­tu­al vic­to­ry, but in blood.”
  2. The Evan­gel­i­cal Roots of Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ics (Bradley Bate­man, The Atlantic): “One unlike­ly exam­ple of the Protes­tant influ­ence on Amer­i­can cul­ture is the for­ma­tion of eco­nom­ics as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline in the Unit­ed States.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. Evan­gel­i­cals like me can’t vote for Trump — or Clin­ton. Here’s what we can do instead. (Alan Noble, Vox): This is a long and thought­ful piece. “unless a third-par­ty can­di­date with broad appeal emerges, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians would be bet­ter served by abstain­ing from [the pres­i­den­tial] vote and shift­ing their ener­gy toward elect­ing peo­ple to Con­gress and local and state gov­ern­ments who have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restrain whichev­er can­di­date is elect­ed as needed.“  
  4. Here Is The Pow­er­ful Let­ter The Stan­ford Vic­tim Read Aloud To Her Attack­er (Katie J.M. Bak­er, Buz­zfeed): many of you have seen this. If not, it’s worth read­ing. Pow­er­ful and insight­ful.
    • In rela­tion to this case, an anony­mous alum­na con­tact­ed me recent­ly to say: “I’m frus­trat­ed [that peo­ple] are not mak­ing an effort or rec­og­niz­ing the role that alco­hol and the cul­ture sur­round­ing the whole sit­u­a­tion had. What they’re call­ing for is greater pun­ish­ment on col­lege kids who com­mit sex­u­al assault but I think that kin­da miss­es a huge point. They refuse to rec­og­nize the sin in being ok with col­lege drink­ing and the whole frat par­ty thing.” I replied with a sug­ges­tion that she read some­thing I shared way back in issue 25 titled Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault, which I still believe is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar analy­sis I’ve read of the issue.
    • Many peo­ple feel that to crit­i­cize the par­ty scene is to excul­pate rapists. That seems odd to me, because we rec­og­nize that when some­one dri­ves drunk they accept moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for any acci­dents they cause. Their ine­bri­a­tion is not a defense — it is an admis­sion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty. And we also rec­og­nize the prin­ci­ple does not flow in both direc­tions — if you stab me while I am drunk, the fact that I am drunk does not pro­vide you with any excuse. The same prin­ci­ple holds here: Brock Turn­er’s drunk­en­ness is no defense and the vic­tim’s drunk­en­ness is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Furthermore, our con­vic­tions about drunk dri­ving hint at a broad­er prin­ci­ple: drunk­en­ness is a sin because over time it pre­dictably leads to deplorable out­comes. This means that Brock Turn­er is to blame — and so are the parts of cam­pus cul­ture which encour­age drunkenness. The par­ty scene is no excuse for Brock’s wicked­ness, but that does not make the par­ty scene a vir­tu­ous one. 
    • In fact, the par­ty scene on our cam­pus abounds with sin even when it fails to make nation­al news. The worst sin that night (that we know of) was the sex­u­al assault com­mit­ted by Brock Turn­er. But it was far from the only sin. There were numer­ous con­sen­su­al non­mar­i­tal sex­u­al encoun­ters that night — each of them also sin­ful (although less so). There were many peo­ple drunk that night — they too sinned, every one of them. There was arro­gant pos­tur­ing, envy, lust, anger, lying, betray­al, gos­sip, slan­der and a whole host of sins exac­er­bat­ed by alco­hol and the social sce­nario. Our alum­na’s instincts are cor­rect — the sys­tem itself makes sin like­ly and it should not be embraced by Chris­tians.
    • In case you stum­bled over the “worst sin/less sin­ful” judg­ments I made, you should read All Sins Are Not Equal (J.I. Pack­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today).
    • Thank you for your patience. I rarely add lengthy edi­to­r­i­al com­ments, but my words ran away with me today.
  5. My Life as a ‘Sex Objec­t’ (Jes­si­ca Valen­ti, The Guardian): this is pow­er­ful, slight­ly vul­gar piece. I am always intrigued by authors who embrace the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion and are dis­mayed by some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions.
  6. Amus­ing:

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

[minor edit for clar­i­ty short­ly after post­ing]

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 52

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Hap­py Athe­ist Life (Nicole Cliffe, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I emailed a friend who is a Chris­t­ian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus. I instant­ly regret­ted send­ing that email and if human­ly pos­si­ble would have clawed it back through the Internet.”
  2. The Sun Is Always Shin­ing In Mod­ern Chris­t­ian Pop (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): inter­est­ing, although the author is com­par­ing con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance songs to old­er wor­ship songs, and I sus­pect the genre dif­fer­ence accounts for some of her find­ings. Doing some research on the author I dis­cov­ered that she wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at First Things called Stat­ting While Catholic — you should read it if you’re a social sci­en­tist.
  3. Why Amer­i­cans Don’t Trust Gov­ern­ment (Lar­ry Sum­mers, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I’m a pro­gres­sive, but it seems plau­si­ble to won­der if gov­ern­ment can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, man­date the design of cars, run health insur­ance exchanges, or set prop­er sex­u­al harass­ment poli­cies on col­lege cam­pus­es, if it can’t even fix a 232-foot bridge competently.“ Sum­mers is, of course, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Har­vard.
  4. Could a neu­ro­sci­en­tist under­stand a micro­proces­sor? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Could the tools of neu­ro­science be used to under­stand the much sim­pler Atari brain? The answer is most­ly no. The authors, for exam­ple, looked at three ‘behaviors’, Don­key Kong, Space Invaders and Pit­fall (!) and they are able to find tran­sis­tors which unique­ly crash one of the games but not the oth­ers. ‘We might thus con­clude they are unique­ly respon­si­ble for the game – per­haps there is a Don­key Kong tran­sis­tor or a Space Invaders transistor.’ Of course, this con­clu­sion would be very mis­lead­ing but what are we then to make of sim­i­lar brain lesion studies?”
  5. Study: Same-sex expe­ri­ences are on the rise, and Amer­i­cans are increas­ing­ly chill about it (Rachel Felt­man, Wash­ing­ton Post): noth­ing to see here, folks. Every­thing is 100% genet­ic. There are no moral choic­es involved at any point on the jour­ney. Move along, please.
  6. The Return of Bernard Lewis (Mar­tin Kramer, Mosa­ic): “Forty years ago, nobody fore­saw the rise of rad­i­cal Islam—except for the pre­em­i­nent his­to­ri­an who both pre­dict­ed and explained it, and much else besides.”
  7. Under Attack (edi­to­r­i­al, The Econ­o­mist): “…when pro­gres­sive thinkers agree that offen­sive words should be cen­sored, it helps author­i­tar­i­an regimes to jus­ti­fy their own much harsh­er restrictions…“
  8. Like A Prayer: Is Social Jus­tice The New Cam­pus Reli­gion? (Ana Marie Cox, MTV News): Cox came out as a Chris­t­ian (her words) last year. She has a much more enthu­si­as­tic take on cam­pus activism than many of the arti­cles I share (such as the ones above and below).
  9. The amaz­ing 1969 prophe­cy that racial pref­er­ences would cause the exact griev­ances of pro­test­ers today (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the dis­claimers at the bot­tom apply to this one most of all. I at first won­dered if it was based upon a hoax, but it seems legit­i­mate. If you have a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion to this piece, you’re wel­come. Think­ing through why will help you be more per­sua­sive.
  10. Amus­ing:

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.