{"id":7878,"date":"2025-12-19T14:31:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T22:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7878"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:31:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T22:31:42","slug":"tgfi-volume-535-marrying-young-and-the-depths-of-tolkien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/12\/19\/tgfi-volume-535-marrying-young-and-the-depths-of-tolkien","title":{"rendered":"TGFI, Volume 535: marrying young and the depths of Tolkien"},"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. The Brother I Lost<\/a> (Megan McArdle, The Dispatch): \u201cFor as long as I can remember, I have believed that a woman should be able to decide whether to become a mother, and also believed that the life growing inside her should get the same shot as the rest of us at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Since these two beliefs are fundamentally incompatible, I usually managed the contradiction by avoiding the subject.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Tough Love: I Don\u2019t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Married<\/a> (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): \u201cIn case you don\u2019t know how most young women your daughter\u2019s age are spending their twenties, allow me to fill you in: surfing dating apps, growing more cynical and jaded by the year, maintaining \u2018situationships\u2019 with hot guys who sleep with them whenever it suits them and vanish when it doesn\u2019t. An entire generation of young women are letting their most formative, eligible decade slip through their fingers like olive oil. A hundred first dates. Dozens of booty calls. Learning little\u2014because you cannot learn much from a non-relationship\u2014calling it \u2018self-knowledge\u2019 while gaining nothing but UTIs and a drawerful of Plan B.\u2026 the truth is: No one\u2019s ever mature enough for marriage. No one\u2019s ever entirely ready. Nor for the labors and joys of motherhood. We splash through these stages a little batty and half-blind. If we meet the demands, they change us. That much is inevitable. But until we start to swim, we never really know we can.\u201d