{"id":7596,"date":"2024-12-27T16:00:54","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T00:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7596"},"modified":"2024-12-27T16:00:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T00:00:54","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-484","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2024\/12\/27\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-484","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 484"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the year comes to a close, remember that this post is the overflow of a nonprofit ministry. Compiling these links is something I do for the students I minister to at Stanford University, sharing it here is just me making it available more broadly. You can donate to support the ministry<\/a> if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock<\/a>). Don\u2019t give to pay for the content \u2014 it only takes me five minutes a week to take the email I send to the Chi Alpha students and reformat it for this platform. If you choose to give, give because you believe in the mission of reaching Stanford students with a thoughtful gospel message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the last time I\u2019ll share about that until next December. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email blesses you and helps you think about God and our world more clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Tom Holland on How Christianity Remade the World<\/a> (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): \u201cIt is very difficult to overemphasize how completely mad it was for everybody in the ancient world that someone who suffers crucifixion could in any way be the Messiah, let alone part of the one God.\u2026 The fact that such a person could conceivably be raised up by citizens of the Roman Empire as someone greater than Caesar himself, greater than Augustus, is a completely shocking maneuver. Judeans, Greeks, Romans\u2014it\u2019s shocking to them all. The radical message of the crucifixion is that, in Christ\u2019s own words, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. How historian Niall Ferguson became a religious believer<\/a> (Greg Sheridan, The Weekend Australian): \u201cI have embraced Christianity,\u201d he tells me. \u201cWe were all baptised, Ayaan and our two sons, together in September (2023). It was the culmination of a quite protracted process. My journey was from atheism. My parents had left the Church of Scotland, I think even before I was born. I grew up in a household of science-minded religious sceptics. I didn\u2019t go to church and felt quite sure of the wisdom of that when I was young. However, in two phases, I lost my faith in atheism.\u2026 The first phase was that as a historian I realised no society had been successfully organised on the basis of atheism. All attempts to do that have been catastrophic. That was an insight that came from studying 18th, 19th and 20th-century history. But then the next stage was realising that no individual can in fact be fully formed or ethically secure without religious faith. That insight has come more recently and has been born of our experience as a family.\u201d