{"id":7806,"date":"2025-10-03T18:07:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7806"},"modified":"2025-10-03T18:07:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:07:34","slug":"tgfi-volume-524-beauty-and-virality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/10\/03\/tgfi-volume-524-beauty-and-virality","title":{"rendered":"TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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You\u2019ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. \u2018The Idea of the Beautiful Is a Signature of God\u2019: A Q&A With Marilynne Robinson<\/a> (Peter Wehner, New York Times): \u201cCalvin says there is not a blade of grass that God created that was not meant to ravish us with its beauty. The idea of the beautiful is a signature of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many other people. This distillation of the joy, the sensory joy, of being among things in the world. I think the loss of beauty is a loss of an intellectual discipline, which science never lost because scientists always have the right to say a formula is beautiful. We in the outside world, we\u2019ve abandoned the word and the concept. It\u2019s suggestive that the scientists use it.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Performing Gender, Left and Right<\/a> (Richard Hanania, Substack): \u201cHow each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weaknesses as a movement. Conservatives fundamentally get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Liberals are thoughtful and polite but place a high priority on emotional safety and avoiding dangerous or uncomfortable situations.\u2026 These personality and aesthetic differences are central to political divides. So much of politics is who you know, and it\u2019s difficult to go somewhere in a movement if you don\u2019t get along with the people in it. Elites therefore sort according to personality in addition to ideology.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Why Evangelicalism Is Built for TikTok<\/a> (River Page, The Free Press): \u201cOf course evangelicals went viral on TikTok. The medium is perfect for the message; but also, the message is perfect for the medium. Catholics have art and ancient rituals. Evangelicals have rhetoric and emotion\u2014the kind of stuff that travels far and wide on a platform where you have 15 seconds to grab people\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Craft Is the Antidote to Slop.<\/a> (Will Manidis, Substack): \u201cFrom Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden <\/em>\u2018to dress it and to keep it\u2019<\/em> (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation. The serpent\u2019s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history.\u2026 <\/em>Humanity\u2019s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process \u2013 preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Realizing a desired family size: when should couples start?<\/a> (Habbema et al, Human Reproduction): \u201cWithout IVF, couples should start no later than age 32 years for a [90% chance of a] one-child family, at 27 years for a two-child family, and at 23 years for three children. When couples accept 75% or lower chances of family completion, they can start 4\u201311 years later.\u201d