TGFI, Volume 540: marrying atheists and using AI to avoid awkwardness

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Tough Love: Can I Marry an Atheist? (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): “You can have all kinds of successful relationships with someone whose worldview is profoundly different from yours—but not marriage. I’ve only been married 18 years, but I know this: Good marriage requires, at a minimum, staying on the same page as your spouse. Compromise on the small stuff, fine. Not on the foundations of the home. That can only create distance between you, a distance that will grow as your children ask you to interpret their world.… Don’t marry a woman you hope, even secretly, will change.”
  2. Students Are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up (Clay Shirky, New York Times): “One study found that 18-to-25-year-olds alone accounted for 46 percent of ChatGPT use. And this analysis didn’t even include users 17 and under. Teenagers and young adults, stuck in the gradual transition from managed childhoods to adult freedoms, are both eager to make human connection and exquisitely alert to the possibility of embarrassment.… teens were adamant that they did not want to go directly to their parents or friends with these issues and that the steady availability of A.I. was a relief to them. They also rejected the idea of A.I. therapists; they weren’t treating A.I. as a replacement for another person but instead were using it to second-guess their developing sense of how to treat other people. A.I. has been trained to give us answers we like, rather than the ones we may need to hear. The resulting stream of praise — constantly hearing some version of ‘You’re absolutely right!’ — risks eroding our ability to deal with the messiness of human relationships. Sociologists call this social deskilling. Even casual A.I. use exposes users to a level of praise humans rarely experience from one another, which is not great for any of us but is especially risky for young people still working on their social skills.” 
    • The author is vice provost at NYU. It’s a long excerpt, but I can’t find a way to abridge it much more.
  3. Some more reflections on Minnesota: 
    • From the left: Alex Pretti’s death and the elite bargain (Jerusalem Demsas, The Argument): “The progressive omnicause ended up undermining its own interests by binding them all together. If being an environmentalist meant you also had to be pro-choice and also had to be anti-cop and also had to be anti-Trump, then well, that shrinks the set of people willing to be environmentalists. But there is one omnicause worth joining. It presented itself on Saturday when an American citizen was shoved to the ground and sprayed with gunfire.… The truth is, widespread discontent across industry, ideology and interest groups is the most effective way to halt governments in their tracks. Even in fully authoritarian countries, mass discontent is incredibly effective at securing policy change.”
    • From the right: Immigration Enforcement Is Unavoidably Upsetting. But This Is Something Else. (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “It’s true that you can’t have sustained immigration enforcement without also having upsetting cases and sympathetic deportees. If you deport illegal immigrants with families, you will have to choose between family separation and deporting children. If you conduct arrests in homes and neighborhoods, you will be accused of traumatizing kids and communities; if you conduct them in workplaces, you will be going after the hardest-working migrants.… There are conflicts here that can’t be wished away. But the fact that some backlash and resistance are inescapable doesn’t mean that all enforcement strategies that generate backlash are sound or wise.”
    • From an international who doesn’t exactly map onto our politics: The American People Fact-Checked Their Government (Jacob Mchangama, Persuasion): “The current obsession with misinformation tends to focus on the public: online mobs, foreign influencers, flaming trolls. But history suggests a more inconvenient truth: in times of crisis, disinformation often comes from above. Governments, including democratic ones, have powerful incentives to shape information.” 
      • The author is a professor of political science at Vanderbilt.
    • From evangelicalism: In a Tense Minnesota, Christians Help Immigrant Neighbors (Emily Belz, Christianity Today): “This church, with the support of many non-Christian volunteers, has been delivering food six days per week for thousands of immigrant families who are staying home in fear. Two days before, the church had trained 600 new volunteers for food distribution, with a list now of 28,000 people who want food. One room at the church was full of diapers. Another was packed with a mountain of toilet paper. Across the Twin Cities, neighbors pile supplies for immigrants into other churches, too, as well as restaurants and coffee shops, in scenes that look like a community recovering from a natural disaster. In just a few weeks, churches have created a sprawling, informal network for grocery deliveries to immigrant families.”
    • Related to the above: I Trained to Monitor ICE but Found Myself Feeding the Hungry (Elizabeth Berget, Christianity Today): “In the following days, I discovered a safety net that Christians around the city had woven. I joined a neighborhood care group co-run by John Hildebrand, a member and elder of Calvary Baptist Church here in Minneapolis, which has been fielding needs from vulnerable families in their neighborhoods. Vetted members of the group respond to needs as they arise, offering to give rides, do laundry, bring groceries, or shovel front walks for people—even strangers—afraid to leave their homes.  As I became more involved in this and other care networks, my phone pinging all day with new needs, it occurred to me that this is what it may have been like if the church of Acts 2 had used a group text…” 
      • Note: I checked and Calvary Baptist Church represents a mainline denomination, not an evangelical one.
  4. Elites and the Evangelical Class War (John Ehrett, Mere Orthodoxy): “Picture, if you will, the lush campus of an international research university, firmly ensconced in one of the least religious areas of the country. It’s the mid-2010s, and the Collegiate Gothic thoroughfares are bustling. On that campus are three Christians, each engaged in distinctive forms of on-campus ministry: (1)  A thirtysomething man in a dingy polo shirt stands at the corner of one of the busiest campus intersections, holding a bullhorn and displaying a ten-foot banner proclaiming EVOLUTION IS A LIE. Over and over, he declares the realities of sin and judgment, so loudly that his proclamations can be heard even from several blocks away. (2) A well-dressed, sixtyish pastor, hailing from a prominent New York City church, sits on a university-provided stage across from a former dean of the university’s law school. They are there to discuss the academic’s recent book, a theological-philosophical argument for Spinozistic pantheism over against traditional Christianity and secular materialism alike. Before an audience of several hundred students and faculty, the pastor delivers a distinctively Christological critique of the volume. (3) middle-aged man in a business suit stands along the edge of a busy roadway. He says little, but at his feet is a box of Gideon New Testaments, and he’s handing them out to anyone, student or townie, walking past who will accept them. (He even gives one to a runner sprinting by.) With these three now in view, one might ask a provocative question: which of these Christians was best in witness in a hostile culture?” 
    • The author is describing scenes he witnessed at Yale Law School.
  5. The Day I Wanted to Be a Father (Colin Wright, Twitter): “The postdoc years, the geographic instability that made establishing roots nearly impossible, and the uncertainty of tenure all felt incompatible with building a family. I was convinced that children simply weren’t in my future. I was certain of that until I was thirty-six years old. Then one moment changed everything.… For most of my life, I had thought of having children as the end of my life. Now I understand it as the beginning of a new one. In truth, until I have children of my own, I still view myself as a child in some sense. Unfinished. Parenthood feels to me like the necessary final chapter of a life well lived, one filled with a meaning much deeper than exotic vacations or luxury goods could ever provide.” 
    • A moving essay which, oddly enough, only seems to be available on Twitter.
  6. The Uncomfortable Truths About Immigration (Alexander Kustov, Substack): “Here is the uncomfortable truth: a lot of what liberal elites on both sides of the Atlantic say about immigration is deliberately misleading in ways that matter for policy and for democratic trust. It is not usually outright made-up. But rather it is a form of ‘highbrow misinformation’ built out of selective framing, strategic omissions, and ‘noble’ half-truths. And it likely makes it harder, not easier, to build durable majorities for freer immigration policies in the long run.” 
    • The author, himself an immigrant, is a political science prof at Notre Dame. The section on highbrow misinformation is especially good.
  7. An Important Letter from Bill, Kris, and Dann on Behalf of Bethel Leadership (Bethel Church): “We’re writing to you today to share about some of our mistakes and failures in the way we navigated our responsibilities to the global Body of Christ. We ask for you to cover us with grace as we seek the Lord for forgiveness in the face of some grievous mistakes. These actions were taken by us (Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton, and Dann Farrelly) along with Danny Silk. We would like to clarify that our other leaders and staff members, including Brian and Jenn, and the Bethel Music team, were not updated on the allegations or the details of the process. We take responsibility for the fact that we did not properly and fully bring discipline, closure, or clear and timely communication regarding the gravity of our concerns with Shawn Bolz.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Best Of Moltbook (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “Moltbook is ‘a social network for AI agents’, although ‘humans [are] welcome to observe’.… it’s not surprising that an AI social network would get weird fast. But even having encountered their work many times, I find Moltbook surprising. I can confirm it’s not trivially made-up — I asked my copy of Claude to participate, and it made comments pretty similar to all the others. Beyond that, your guess is as good is mine.” 
    • The network in question: Moltbook
    • Actually fascinating content in this post. Definitely recommended. Perhaps should have been up top.
  • One Solution for Too Many A’s? Harvard Considers Giving A+ Grades. (Mark Arsenault, New York Times): “Grades of A fell to 53.4 percent of grades awarded in the fall semester, from 60.2 percent in the prior academic year, Dr. Claybaugh reported.… Harvard has been on a campaign to make it harder to get an A, and a series of proposals may be put into effect later this year. A report issued in October suggested allowing grades of A+, which are not currently used at the school, as a way to recognize the best performing students, demoting the routine, ordinary A to the second rung of the grading ladder.” 
    • This feels like it was written by a satirist:
      “We’re giving out too many A’s.”
      “I guess we should give more B’s.”
      “Hear me out… what if we started giving out extra-special A’s instead?”
  • Something very unexpected is happening to Norway’s polar bears (Benji Jones, Vox): “The study, an analysis of hundreds of polar bears in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, found that declining sea ice is not causing polar bears to starve. They actually appeared healthier in the last two decades of the analysis, from 2000 to 2019. The overall population, meanwhile, is either stable or growing, according to Jon Aars, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. ‘I was surprised,’ Aars told Vox from Svalbard. ‘I would have predicted that body condition would decline. We see the opposite.’ ” 
    • The article makes it clear that other polar bear populations are doing worse. Fascinating regardless.
  • This A.I. Tool Is Going Viral. Five Ways People Are Using It. (Natallie Rocha, New York Times): “Last week, he prompted Claude Code to make a program to identify which clothes belonged to each of his three daughters so he could sort clean laundry into piles without their help. He took pictures of their clothes to teach Claude Code which T‑shirt belonged to which daughter. Now he simply holds up the clothes to his laptop camera so the program tells him whom it belongs to. ‘The whole process was done within an hour, and the girls were really excited,’ he said.”

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 539: a free book plus Schrödinger’s cat draws closer

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Might Owe My Students an Apology About Josephus (John Dickson, The Gospel Coalition): “Flavius Josephus was a Jewish aristocrat (AD 37–100) who witnessed firsthand the great Jewish war with Rome.… I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in secular settings like Macquarie University and the University of Sydney, and now at Wheaton College. But Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by T. C. Schmidt, associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a controversial passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all.” 
    • A donor has sponsored free PDF downloads of the book the above review is about. You can get your copy at https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/ (follow the link on the page to a free download, it will take you to the OUP book website where you’ll need to click the PDF link above the abstract and save it to your computer after it opens in your browser tab). This is a great deal — the book retails for $130!
    • My hope for all is that the scholarship in the book gives you even greater confidence that your hope in Christ is firmly grounded.
  2. Dying to Give (Justin Powell, Substack): “Money doesn’t carry the same power in every decade. Most families give it at the stage of life when it accomplishes the least. A dollar at 25 can change a destiny. A dollar at 55 barely moves the needle.… The families who steward wealth well think longer, plan earlier, and talk more openly. They treat resources as something to be shepherded across generations, not hidden behind emotional walls or released only after the funeral. And because of that clarity, their children make wiser decisions, earlier, with better outcomes.”
  3. a gen z guide to fixing your doom-pilled brain (Steph Stiner, Substack): “whenever i hear a young person confidently assert that humanity is cooked, my first instinct is to ask for their screen time report. because, yes, if you spend more time scrolling than you do participating in real life, it’s actually quite reasonable to conclude that we’re hanging on by a thread.” 
    • Lack of capitalization in original. The author appears to be 0% Christian, but offers some very practical wisdom.
    • I appreciate the above article so much that I looked for some of her other content and this one was also solid. a gen z guide to enjoying dating (Steph Stiner, Substack): “a wise woman once said never to go grocery shopping while you’re hungry, or you’ll end up with a cart full of junk food. or maybe i made that up? who’s to say. regardless, the principle still stands: don’t date while you’re desperate for someone else to fulfill you, or you’ll end up with nothing but high cortisol.”
  4. Morally judging famous and semi-famous people (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “I know some reasonable number of famous people, and I just do not trust the media accounts of their failings and flaws. I trust even less the barbs I read on the internet. I am not claiming to know the truth about them (most of them, at least), but I can tell when the people writing about them know even less.… If by any chance you are wondering how to make yourself smarter, learn how to appreciate almost everybody, and keep on cultivating that skill.”
  5. Wikipedia Editors Are Helping Iran Rewrite History (Ashley Rindsberg, The Free Press): “An investigation into Wikipedia editing patterns reveals a yearslong, coordinated campaign to sanitize the Islamic Republic’s human rights record. According to a 2024 Times investigation, entries have been systematically edited to downgrade Iranian atrocities.” 
    • Wikipedia is a case study in nerd naivete, and I speak as one of the previously-naive nerds. If you create something influential, people will seek to co-opt that influence. That means that whatever rules you create will be gamed. Wikipedia is still useful, but you have to know that it is rife with agenda-driven editors. Virtually everything religiously, politically, or morally charged is being edited so as to give you a biased perspective.
  6. Schrödinger’s cat just got bigger: quantum physicists create largest ever ‘superposition’ (Elizabeth Gibney, Nature): “A team based at the University of Vienna put individual clusters of around 7,000 atoms of sodium metal some 8 nanometres wide into a superposition of different locations, each spaced 133 nanometres apart. Rather than shoot through the experimental set up like a billiard ball, each chunky cluster behaved like a wave, spreading out into a superposition of spatially distinct paths and then interfering to form a pattern researchers could detect.”
  7. The lure of Rome (Emma Freire, World): “When young Protestants move to Washington, it’s usually not long before they start meeting smart, influential conservatives who believe Rome is the one true church. Like many of her peers, Smith began to ask herself: Should I swim the Tiber? Roman Catholics exiting their church are disproportionately driving declining rates of Christianity in America. And far more Catholics convert to Protestant denominations than vice versa. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked only at places like Washington and some influential university campuses. A small but vocal group of Protestants is converting to Catholicism—and in even smaller numbers to Eastern Orthodoxy. They tend to be ambitious, highly educated, and well connected.” 
    • I believe I have mentioned this before, but I intend to write a defense of low-church Protestantism for XA sometime. It may wait until I finish my doctoral studies, though.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Helped a Missionary Talk About Jesus (Jennifer Park, Christianity Today): “The Korean and Korean American Christians CT interviewed appreciate how KPop Demon Hunters’ widespread acclaim has enabled them to share the gospel more effectively.… Introducing Christ to people in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country has also felt easier thanks to increasing interest in Korean culture, Park said. Once, his church held a summer event in its courtyard where a short-term missions team from South Korea taught local youth simple K‑pop dance moves and how to cook Korean dishes.”
  • Lorem Ipsum Finally Translated, And It Is Shockingly Problematic (Stanford Flipside)
  • Pentecostal Church Doesn’t Notice Riot Is Occurring (Babylon Bee): “Church membership at Golgotha Holy Fire Victory Pentecostal was reportedly overjoyed at the influx of visitors who joined them to speak in strange tongues, shove each other, and roll all over the floor. Church leadership called it the most successful service they’d ever had.” 
    • As a Pentecostal this made me laugh. Normally with the Bee I just read the headlines. The text of this one has got some zing as well.
  • President Trump’s Chosen Artist? A Christian Speed Painter. (Zachary Small, New York Times): “The painter, Vanessa Horabuena, spent the next 10 minutes making an image inspired by the Shroud of Turin, contouring Jesus’s eyebrows and nose from a yellow cross that she initially painted at the center of her black canvas. The president returned to the stage, promised to sign the artwork himself, and the painting was quickly auctioned for $2.75 million to a couple who promised to split their donation between St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the local sheriff’s department. The artwork’s sale easily set a new benchmark for speed painting, a once-obscure competitive art form that has gained popularity over the last decade in Southern beauty pageants, Midwest corporate events, basketball halftime shows and church gatherings.” 
    • If you’ve never seen someone do this live, it’s actually quite stunning.

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 538: missionary spies and Minneapolis reflections

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. God’s Spooks: Religion, Spying, and the Cold War (Matthew Avery Sutton, Church Life Journal): “Since its inception, the CIA has used missionaries and other religious activists for intelligence and espionage work; it has used religion as an effective propaganda tool, and its agents have even posed as clergy. CIA agents and religious activists managed to keep their partnerships mostly hidden until the 1970s. But in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, numerous journalists and then Congress began scrutinizing the agency more closely. They revealed to the world that the CIA had been employing missionaries to further its agenda and that some religious activists were receiving substantial rewards for their work on the government’s behalf. In fact, the CIA and religious activists have long collaborated to achieve numerous policy goals.” 
    • Super fascinating. My denomination receives specific mention: “The Assemblies of God, which had a large and active missionary outreach, quietly instructed workers to avoid CIA collaboration. However, church leaders did not want to go on record publicly against the CIA.”
  2. Report: More than 388 million Christians worldwide face ‘high levels’ of persecution (Gina Christian, OSV News): “More than 388 million Christians — or 1 in 7 believers worldwide — face ‘high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith,’ according to a new report.… Specifically, Open Doors focuses on collecting data on Christian persecution in six key areas: restrictions or dangers on practicing faith in private, family, community, national and church life, as well as the levels of violence — mental, physical and sexual — Christians face in the 150 nations Open Doors monitors. Each area is scored, with each country then receiving an overall score out of 100 for the severity of Christian persecution, with scores of 81–100 designated as ‘extreme,’ 61–80 ‘very high’ and 41–60 ‘high.’”
  3. Not So Secular Sweden (Joel Halldorf, Comment): “In highly secular societies, zoomers tend to be more religious than their boomer parents. Nowhere, the study concluded, was that pattern clearer than in Sweden, once the poster child of secularism.… Sweden once set the global benchmark for secular rationality, and everybody expected the world to follow our path. Now the quiet stirrings of faith here in the north—more confirmations, new memberships, conversations once unthinkable—show that history has a way of humbling even the most confident narratives. Ironclad sociological theories often insist that the current moment is our inevitable future. But history seldom follows straight lines.”
  4. Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13 (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “Moreover, the use of Romans 13 as a refusal to question the morality of a use of force is, ironically enough, a violation of the passage. We might well ask, what would Paul have written if Romans 13 were addressed to the authorities rather than to those under their rule? Well, we actually know the answer, because the same Spirit who breathed out Romans 13 also breathed out John the Baptist’s instructions to tax collectors and soldiers. John told them not to extort money from anyone, implying that they would be held responsible for the misuse of their power (Luke 3:12–14). The same Spirit also favorably portrayed Paul’s interaction with the police who told him and Silas, on behalf of the magistrates, to leave quietly, to which Paul replied, ‘They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out’ (Acts 16:37).”
  5. Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip (Mark Arsenault, New York Times): “The issue at top American universities is not falling production. Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000s — the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University — are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies. But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.… [However,] a study has suggested that Chinese researchers have been boosting their citation rankings by citing one another more often than western researchers tend to cite other westerners.”
  6. How to stop the chaos of college sports (John Calipari, Washington Post): “There is no sustainable path in college athletics that doesn’t address these three things: First, student-athletes should have their opportunities for scholarships protected and get to compete against players who are their age. Second, transfer rules, which now allow players to leave one school for another as often as they’d like, need stability. This will help education remain the heart of colleges and universities. Third, protect the free market and rights of young people to fairly earn what their local markets can offer, which will require more revenue from teams.”
  7. Some reflections on ICE in Minnesota. There are many more floating around the web, and if you find one with good insights or a provocative perspective please let me know about it. 
    • I Joined Ice Watch (Olivia Reingold, The Free Press): “In the last six weeks, Minneapolis has become the site of the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history. Thousands of city residents have responded by joining various Signal groups whose main purpose is to find and disrupt ICE.… These individuals came from all walks of life. I counted at least five public school teachers, a divorce lawyer, two medical professionals, a former ballerina, and even one Minneapolis City Council member: Aurin Chowdhury⁩, a progressive who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023. One local nonprofit leader whose organization resettles refugees told me that the average participants in these Signal groups are church members, retirees, and parents.”
    • Minneapolis Isn’t a Movie (Kat Rosenfield, The Free Press): “Around the same time that Renee Good was shot, a video circulated on TikTok of another confrontation between a group of agents who appear to be U.S. Marshals and an activist with a camera. The activist is a young- to middle-aged woman, as is one of the agents—and when the first woman mentions that her 6‑year-old child is in her car, the agent looks like she’s been electrocuted. ‘You have a child in your car?’ she says, her voice pitching sharply upward, her eyes wide with horror. ‘Get your child off the scene! This is an active police scene!’ It could not be clearer, in this moment, that these women inhabit two different realities. One understands herself to be in a dangerous, high-stakes situation; the other thinks it’s all a sort of game.”
    • The Goon Squad (Nick Cattogio, The Dispatch): “Why on earth is the administration announcing its operations before they happen?… It makes no sense as a strategy for effective law enforcement—but lots of sense as a pageant of domineering law-and-order assertiveness. The Trump administration wants confrontation. Its top priority isn’t to unobtrusively detain and remove the most dangerous immigrants, as the deportation numbers prove. Its priority is to intimidate its cultural enemies with heavy-handed displays of authority and promises of official impunity for those who carry them out. That’s why ICE wears masks, a privilege even U.S. combat troops don’t enjoy, and why some agents are kitted out in camouflage despite the fact that they’re not trying to ‘blend in’ to their urban surroundings. (There’s nothing stealthy about ICE.) They’re not enforcing the law, they’re going into battle. And their anonymity signals, to you and to them, that no one will hold them accountable for what happens during that battle if you make trouble.”
    • One State, Two Very Different Views of Minneapolis (Sheila M. Eldred, Elizabeth A. Stawicki, Ann Hinga Klein and Kurt Streeter, New York Times): “Ms. Good’s death was tragic, they said. Horrific. But they also said that she had asked for trouble. ‘You obey the law officer,’ a man in a veteran’s ball cap said, ‘and question it later.’ This is the divide, in a single sentence. In Minneapolis, protesters saw an innocent woman killed by a federal agent and took to the streets. At ‘the Pickle,’ the regulars saw a woman who should have complied.”

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 537: Hippo Poop & Manic Complainers

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Nothing here about Minnesota or Iran. They’re both in the news, but I haven’t yet read anything about them that I’ve found stimulating.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Tyranny of the Complainers (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “In 2023, for example, 5059 sexual discrimination complaints came from a single individual–from a total of 8151 complaints. Thus, one individual accounted for 68.5% of all sexual discrimination complaints in that year.… These complaints have to be investigated so this single individual may be costing taxpayers millions. It’s as if a single individual were pulling a fire alarm thousands of times a year, mobilizing emergency services on demand, and never facing repercussions.”
  2. What I’ve Learned from Watching People Wait to Have Children (Sarah Poggi, The Free Press): “I’ve known all of this for as long as I’ve been a doctor. So have my colleagues. That’s why ob-gyn residents, despite working 80-hour weeks, are more likely to get pregnant during their training than any other medical specialists.” 
    • The author is a med school prof at Johns Hopkins.
  3. Why Suffering for Christ Is More Than Just a “Necessary Evil” (Matt Rhodes, Crossway): “You won’t go far in evangelistic conversations in the West today before someone asks you to explain the problem of theodicy: how it is that a good God could allow suffering in the world.… But we mustn’t forget that questions can be loaded. Ask a defendant in court, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?’ and his lawyer is sure to object, ‘Your honor, the question presupposes my client has beaten his wife.’ The question needs to be reframed, not responded to.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  4. Why Christians Ignore What the Bible Says About Immigrants (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “The Bible does not give a comprehensive public policy for migration or asylum. Christians of good faith can disagree on those things. But the Bible does give a comprehensive view on what we are to think of human beings, including migrants. The church has a mission to shape consciences around how we minister to scared and vulnerable people, regardless of whether we think they should have stayed somewhere else. And Jesus has already taken the question of ‘Who is my neighbor?’ off the table…”
  5. Some Venezuela perspectives: 
    • Was Trump’s Venezuela Attack Legal? (Jeb Rubenfeld, The Free Press): “Under current U.S. doctrine and precedent, what President Donald Trump just did in Venezuela is almost certainly legal; in fact, the U.S. did the very same thing in Panama four decades ago, and the courts upheld it after years of litigation and careful consideration. But Trump’s plan to ‘run’ Venezuela for the foreseeable future, declared at a press conference earlier today, is much murkier.” 
      • The author is a professor at Yale Law School.
    • Why the Venezuela Operation Won’t Embolden America’s Enemies (Eli Lake, The Free Press): “If anything, a precise military operation to seize a rogue tyrant in a predawn raid with no U.S. casualties will cause China and Russia to think twice about testing American power. Venezuela counted on a Russian-made air defense system that failed to stop the U.S. Air Force from dominating its airspace. That sends a chilling message to Russia and anyone who has purchased its military hardware. China had invested billions in Venezuela’s oil sector only to see the man who cut those deals arraigned this week before a U.S. federal court in Manhattan.”
    • Why I Cold-Called President Trump at 4:30 in the Morning (Tyler Pager, New York Times): “I just called him directly and he picked up. I wasn’t that surprised because the president’s phone habits are pretty well-documented — he regularly picks up calls from reporters.… This is the first time I have ever called the president on his cellphone.” 
      • That’s a wild detail in a wild news cycle. How many reporters have Trump’s number and are just waiting for the right moment to call? 
  6. So What If the Bible Doesn’t Mention Embryo Screening? (Brad East, Christianity Today): “Open up the glossary in the back of your Bible, and you won’t find ChatGPT, CRISPR, or IVF. There are no chapter-and-verse citations for lip fillers, egg freezing, or practical questions like the ‘right’ age to get married or the ‘ideal’ number of children.… Mature Christians, and especially pastors and whole churches, must therefore be able to give confident scriptural answers to new questions even when overt biblical teaching is lacking.” 
    • I hope these Friday emails are of some small service in this regard.
  7. The Case for Prohibiting Vice (Charles Fain Lehmann, National Affairs): “This framing of the vice issue — as a matter of permitting behavior that may be immoral but is more importantly ‘harmless’ — is so central to our public debate that both proponents and opponents articulate their criticisms in its language. They haggle about which is more harmful, vice or its prohibition.… the fact that both proponents and opponents of vice have resorted to appeals to harm actually greatly undermines the harm principle’s utility. Part of the purpose of the principle is to separate the truly damaging from the merely unliked. But the distinction, it turns out, is far less coherent than proponents once claimed.… [Vice] is intrinsically a problem, because human well-being — the good life — is always threatened by it.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 536: Christian nationalism and Jesus in Home Alone

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

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 if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock). Don’t give to pay for the content — 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.

And that’s the last time I’ll share about that here until next December.

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email blesses you and helps you think about God and our world more clearly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Gift link: What We Get Wrong About Christian Nationalism (Molly Worthen, New York Times): “I got a taste of this variety and disagreement when I visited King’s Park International Church in Durham, N.C. Christians there look for God to heal the sick, reveal prophetic messages and perform other signs and wonders. The stranger thing, perhaps, is that both Republicans and Democrats attend. The church’s 120 elders, deacons and employees are split ‘about half and half, Republican and Democrat,’ Reggie Roberson, the pastor, told me. The several hundred people who worship at King’s Park on an average Sunday are a mix of races, national backgrounds, ages and income levels.” 
    • Worth a read. Dr. Worthen is, of course, a well-known adult convert to Christianity. While she writes positively about charismatic Christians here, she herself is more of a Southern Baptist. She’s a professor of history at UNC.
  2. Gift link: Christianity Is a Dangerous Faith (David French, New York Times): “There is an unspoken implication that people would actually like Christians if we behaved more like Christ. But no. That’s demonstrably wrong. It’s true that people want to receive love and compassion, and that when they encounter Christians who love them and serve them, they tend to like them. Many people do not, however, appreciate it when a Christian loves and serves their enemies. They absolutely do not like it when a Christian refuses to join their political crusade.”
  3. Some international Christmas stories: 
    • This Christmas will be even harder for China’s Christians (Christian Shepherd and Huiyee Chiew, Washington Post): “While Zion has faced the most pressure, about half a dozen other unregistered churches have been subject to police raids as well. Last week, hundreds of police officers in riot gear descended on a small town in Zhejiang province and arrested two local pastors and dozens of Christians, according to videos and accounts of the incident shared with The Washington Post.… ‘The government is inherently suspicious of religious communities, especially Christian groups,’ said Karrie Koesel, an associate professor specializing in Chinese politics and religion at the University of Notre Dame. Beijing views organized religion that promotes an alternative worldview and ‘answers to a higher power’ as potentially an existential threat to its grip on power, Koesel said. Churches, mosques and other places of worship have faced intense pressure to accept strict government oversight. State-approved religious leaders must submit their sermons and publications for approval to ensure that they teach the ‘correct understanding’ of theology.”
    • Gaza’s tiny Christian community tries to capture the holiday spirit during the ceasefire (Mariam Fam, Associated Press): “Tarazi and much of the rest of Gaza’s tiny Palestinian Christian community are trying to capture some of the season’s spirit despite the destruction and uncertainty that surround them. He clings to hope and the faith that he said has seen him through the war. ‘I feel like our joy over Christ’s birth must surpass all the bitterness that we’ve been through,’ he said. He’s been sheltering for more than two years at the Holy Family Church compound in Gaza.… He prays for peace and freedom for the Palestinian people. ‘Our faith and our joy over Christ’s birth are stronger than all circumstances,’ he said.”
  4. How the Bible Helped Smash the Crown (Meir Soloveichik, The Free Press): “Our politics is consumed by culture wars linked to religion—religious freedom is a subject dominating debates in the Supreme Court. But the fact remains that shorn of biblical faith, no cogent explanation can be given for the doctrine of equality that lies at the heart of the American creed. Indeed, the other sources of antiquity to which the Founders turned for inspiration—the philosophers of Greece and the statesmen of Rome—denied human equality and held a worldview that there were those destined to rule and others born to serve.”
  5. Discovering God in Hamas tunnels, hostages led a national trend (Dina Kraft, Christian Science Monitor): “Several recent studies in Israel back up anecdotal evidence of an uptick in religious connection in response to Oct. 7 and the war that followed. In a poll by Hiddush, an organization that advocates for the separation of religion and state, 25% of respondents said those seminal events strengthened their faith in God. Fifty-five percent said they had not impacted their faith, and 7% said they had weakened it. Researchers at The Hebrew University found in a survey of students that one-third experienced an increase in spirituality, while 9% said it decreased.”
  6. The diversity overcorrection in the workplace (Megan McArdle, Washington Post): “For some mysterious reason, people consistently overestimate the minority share of the population, which made the Whiteness of newsrooms, Hollywood studios and academic departments look more unfair than it was.… even if [there had not been past discrimination], newsrooms, writer’s rooms and classrooms would have been very White because most Americans born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were White. I suspect people forgot about these cohort effects because so much of the DEI discourse came up around college admissions, where diversity can be achieved relatively speedily: admit a racially balanced class four years in a row, and voilà, you ‘look like America.’ But a large corporate employer often has a workforce spanning 40 years, not four. Rebalancing that through representative hiring would take decades. The DEI champions didn’t want to wait that long.” 
    • McArdle’s point about the difference between corporations and universities is an important one. It also explains why undergraduate populations are far more diverse than university faculty and administrations.
  7. Gift link: The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore (Adam Frank, The Atlantic): “To truly understand living systems as self-organized, autonomous agents, physicists need to abandon their ‘just the particles, ma’am’ mentality. One of physicists’ great talents—starting with the laws of simple parts (such as atoms) and working up to a complex whole—cannot fully account for cells, animals, or people.” 
    • The author is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 535: marrying young and the depths of Tolkien

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Brother I Lost (Megan McArdle, The Dispatch): “For 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.”
  2. Tough Love: I Don’t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Married (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): “In case you don’t know how most young women your daughter’s age are spending their twenties, allow me to fill you in: surfing dating apps, growing more cynical and jaded by the year, maintaining ‘situationships’ with hot guys who sleep with them whenever it suits them and vanish when it doesn’t. 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—because you cannot learn much from a non-relationship—calling it ‘self-knowledge’ while gaining nothing but UTIs and a drawerful of Plan B.… the truth is: No one’s ever mature enough for marriage. No one’s 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.” 
    • Magnificent, recommended to me by an alumnus.
  3. The Lost Generation (Jacob Savage, Compact Magazine): “Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.… Most of the men I interviewed started out as liberals. Some still are. But to feel the weight of society’s disfavor can be disorienting. We millennials were true believers in race and gender-blind meritocracy, which for all its faults—its naïveté about human nature, its optimism in the American Dream—was far superior to what replaced it. And to see that vision so spectacularly betrayed has engendered a skepticism toward the entire liberal project that won’t soon disappear.” 
    • The virality of this article (and the host of responses it has engendered) suggests that it has hit a nerve.
  4. AI romance blooms as Japanese woman weds virtual partner of her dreams (Kim Kyung-Hoon & Satoshi Sugiyama, Reuters): “A year ago, Noguchi took ChatGPT’s advice about what she said was a fraught relationship with her human fiance and resolved to break off their engagement.… Yasuyuki Sakurai, a wedding planner for more than 20 years, said he now almost exclusively handles marriages of clients with virtual characters, averaging about one a month.” 
    • Shared with me by a horrified student.
  5. What Courage Does for Us (David French, New York Times): “An emphasis on accomplishment can actually breed cowardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bullets (real or figurative) start to fly. Sure, the hero can rise to the top, but he or she can also end up dead, and you can’t be a president or a chief executive or a member of Congress from the grave.” 
    • Unlocked.
    • Related, also unlocked: The Secret Trial of the General Who Refused to Attack Tiananmen Square (Chris Buckley, New York Times): “ ‘I said to them that my superiors can appoint me, and they can also dismiss me,’ he recounted in court, seeming to indicate that he was willing to lose his job over his decision. One of the generals at the meeting, Dai Jingsheng, told investigators that he and his colleagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed General Xu’s defiance. ‘Nobody expected words like this from Xu,”‘said General Dai, according to the testimony. Under questioning, General Xu acknowledged that the military answered to China’s Communist Party leaders. But he suggested that it should also be subject to a broader authority.”
    • Also related: Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the United States (Atlas Luk, Substack): “His asylum application, which had an interview pending, his valid work permit, his New York State driver’s license… in the eyes of ICE, all of these were worthless because he had ‘entered without inspection’ by customs. With the Trump administration cracking down on illegal immigration, Broome County Jail was overcrowded. Months passed, and Guan Heng waited anxiously and dejectedly for the outcome of his case. No one knew what this young man from China had gone through in the past few years; nor did anyone know that the images he had filmed of the Xinjiang detention camps, at great personal risk, provided crucial evidence of the Chinese authorities’ actions against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. Or that if he were to be deported, he would be facing immense danger.”
  6. Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth (Michael D.C. Drout, New York Times): “Subtle variations in Tolkien’s writing style across its 62 chapters generate the impression that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a compilation of other texts. This pattern is largely invisible even to careful readers, but new methods of computer-assisted analysis throw it into sharp relief. An algorithm can compare the vocabularies of the chapters and cluster those that are similar.… Its chapters group in a complex hierarchy with three large groupings and several outliers, a pattern of clustering not typical for a modern novel. It is closer in form to multiauthor composite texts from the Middle Ages. Not only do the clusters not match the point-of-view characters; they don’t seem to be related to volume, book, setting, type of action or pacing.… This stylistic variation was, at least initially, completely unintentional, a byproduct of Tolkien’s laborious and agonizing 17-year effort to complete the book. Tolkien had aimed to make ‘The Lord of the Rings’ feel as if it had been discovered and assembled; the frame narrative of the book is that it’s a translation of a diary that was expanded into a history and augmented by later scholars. His struggles, providentially, helped him achieve that effect.” 
    • Fascinating stuff. The whole essay is deeply personal and quite moving. The author is an English professor at Wheaton. Unlocked.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

Last-Minute Gift Ideas For Middle-Aged Dudes

This is my third year of posting gift ideas for hard-to-shop for guys the week before Christmas. The 2024 and 2023 lists are still full of good ideas (they’re both embedded below), so check those out if none of these items catch your fancy.

I’m not recycling some random lists I saw online. Everything below is stuff I got myself since I posted the last list, so I am giving firsthand testimony that I as a middle-aged dude (a) own and (b) am pleased as punch with all of these items. Btw, none of these are affiliate links. This isn’t a side hustle, just an act of helpfulness.

  1. Collar Extenders are really great if you have a dress shirt that feels tight when you button the top button. They’re kinda magical. About $8.
  2. An Anker Extension Cord/Power Cube — this thing is great when you’re traveling. My hotel rooms never have enough outlets (or they’re in a weird place). I love this thing for how compact and useful it us. Has both regular outlets as well as USB ports for charging devices. Around $20.
  3. Ear Wax Removal Camera — I love this device so much. It would be handy for any task that requires seeing into a weird space (like trying to find a screw that fell into some machinery), but I use it for ear wax and it delivers. About $10.
  4. Silicone Body Scrubber — I have long been annoyed with so-called “shower-flowers” and I stumbled upon this device. Works perfectly and is way more durable than other solutions I have tried. This is the one I bought, but scrolling down to “products related to this item” I see lots of interesting alternative designs. Probably a weird standalone gift, but it could be nice as a stocking stuffer. This one is about $6.
  5. Business For The Common Good — I do a fair amount of reading in the faith & work space, and I don’t love most of what I read. It’s often superficial on either the business side or the spiritual side. This is one of the books I had to read for my doctoral program and it is solid on both fronts. I liked it more than anything else I’ve read on this topic. Around $12.
  6. A Rug With A Custom Logo — you could put your family initials or even a family or pet photo on here. I made the round one with the Chi Alpha circular logo and it sparks joy. The rug itself is not super high-quality, but the vibe it creates makes me happy. $17 and won’t arrive in time for Christmas, but file it away for an upcoming birthday or something.

I hope at least one of these helps you out with any last-minute shopping (or inspires you to buy a lil’ something for yourself). Again, the last two years’ lists are still helpful. See below. Also — Merry Christmas!

Glen’s 2024 list:

More Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

Glen’s 2023 list:

Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

TGFI, volume 534: unfulfilled hopes and why the ESV is overrated

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

This week was especially difficult to narrow down to just 7 top-level groupings.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Hoping for Rightly Ordered Desires (O. Alan Noble, Substack): “One of the most difficult truths to internalize in this life is that you are not promised all that you desire, even when your desires are rightly ordered. For example, you may desire friendship or a spouse or children or a job, and none of them are given to you. Or at least, not on the timeline you expect. Each of these are good desires, and when you desire them rightly (not excessively, not before God, not as idols, not selfishly), they are good things to desire and work towards. But God, in his perfect will, does not promise to give us all our earthly desires.”
  2. Bureaucratizing Faith (Stephen Eide, Library of Law & Liberty): “Those concerned about anti-Christian bias often frame the FBO [faith-based organizations] question as a religious liberty matter. That framing only clarifies whether religious groups can contract with government. It’s less helpful in determining whether they should. In general, an organization spiritually motivated to serve the poor may take public money to do so, as long as it doesn’t discriminate based on sect and doesn’t use taxpayer dollars to evangelize. But evangelism is precisely how FBOs reach some people failed by secular programs.” 
    • I really liked this essay. Lots of great insights.
  3. To Be Honest.. I’m Struggling with the ESV (Lorenzo Figueroa Cusick, Substack): “The ESV has been revised the following times: 2001, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2016, 2025.  And when it is revised, it always claims to be simply modest changes to better improve ‘accuracy and clarity’ (according to Crossway). We can applaud when a Bible publisher wants to make the Bible even better for its users. Where it gets weird is the fact that they don’t identify (like the NASB, for example) when they do revise it. They don’t label it the ESV2001, ESV2002, ESV2007, etc. This leads to situations where the Bible in your library or church bag is different from the one used by the church.” 
    • The ESV is a perfectly adequate translation — but some of the people who love it love it way too much. I prefer the NIV and the NET (which each have their own drawbacks, because no translation is perfect).
  4. Sorry, Liz Gilbert, Married Women Are (Increasingly) Happiest of All (Sophie Anderson and Brad Wilcox, Institute for Family Studies): “There’s only one problem with the progressive case against marriage and family for women: It’s completely wrong. Today, married women live longer, earn more, and report more meaning in their lives, compared to single women. They are also markedly happier than their single peers, according to recent research by psychologist Jean Twenge and colleagues.… liberal married moms are dramatically more likely to say they are happy with their lives, compared to their single and childless peers.” 
    • Related (at least in my mind): How monogamous are humans? A study ranks us between meerkats and beavers. (Victoria Craw, Washington Post): “Previous work on the role of monogamy in human societyhas relied on fossil records or comparison of marriage norms across cultures, Dyble said. His research studied the data from human populations and nonhuman mammal species to find rates of full siblings, meaning those born to the same mother and father.… Analysis of nearly 2 million human sibling relationships and more than 60,000 mammal relationships showed that the proportion of full siblings in the human groups ‘clusters closely’ with rates seen in socially monogamous animals and ‘consistently exceeds rates seen in non-monogamous mammals,’ Dyble wrote. He said the data showed there was a stark difference between groups that were considered socially monogamous and nonmonogamous, based on definitions from a 2013 study by Cambridge researchers.”
  5. Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “What Meta shows me is what Meta most want me to see, which is whatever their prediction models believe will get me to spend as much time on their apps as possible. The algorithms serve the company’s ends, not my ends. If Meta wanted to know what I want to see, it could ask me. The technology has long existed for users to shape their own recommendations. These companies do not offer us control over what we see because they do not want us to have it. They do not want to be bound by who we seek to be tomorrow.” 
    • A good essay with a poor title. Recommended.
  6. No, You Are Not on Indigenous Land (Noah Smith, Substack): “Once the logic of land acknowledgments and ‘decolonization’ is followed, it leads very quickly to some very dark futures.… The general principle here is that instead of a dark world of ethnic cleansing in the name of ‘decolonization,’ we should try to build a bright future where Native Americans and the United States of America exist in harmony and cooperation rather than in conflict.” 
    • Recommended even if you think you know what it will say based on the title and the excerpt. The article has some surprises.
  7. The Making of a Techno-Nationalist Elite (Tanner Greer, American Affairs): “The economic, social, and political activities of the Eastern Establishment were mutually reinforcing pillars of a larger program. Members of the Establishment used the wealth generated by new technologies to secure political influence, used that influence to sustain a national market and legal framework geared for yet more technological expansion, and then presided over a conscious effort to preserve and transmit the values of their class to future generations, ensuring that the unity and discipline they gained in shared struggle would not dissipate amid power and prosperity. Through these means, a techno-nationalist elite guided America’s development for more than seventy years. Under its stewardship, the United States became the world’s wealthiest, most industrially advanced, and most powerful nation: a true technological republic.… Behind the Eastern Establishment stood a dense web of personal ties that bound its families together. Many of these ties were consummated, quite literally, on the marriage bed. Karp and Zamiska are loathe to think in these terms. They write a great deal about the engineering elite’s waning commitment to Western civilization, but they have little to say about its waning commitment to raising the next generation of that civilization. The Eastern Establishment was self-consciously reproductive: it built schools, endowed universities, and founded literal dynasties. Part of building ‘a shared culture … that will make possible our continued survival’ is creating the children who will survive us.” 
    • Excellent. Long but recommended. Also, OUCH. The closing four paragraphs of this book review are absolutely brutal.

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 533: college disability, European dysfunction, and cloning

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Misunderstanding Porn (Matthew Loftus, Mere Orthodoxy): “There are many ways in which people misunderstand porn, but perhaps the best way to summarize the corrections necessary is to say that porn is not the same as physical sex and porn addiction is not merely a matter of sexual temptation.… Why can’t a porn addict’s habit be broken by sex with his wife? The simplest answer is to ask another question: could a Christian husband’s temptation to idolatry be broken by sex with his wife? Of course not. Neither would his anger or pride. It is like asking if a person addicted to cocaine could have their desire satisfied by eating a delicious steak.”
  2. Accommodation Nation (Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic): “Over the past decade and a half, however, the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations—often, extra time on tests—has grown at a breathtaking pace. At the University of Chicago, the number has more than tripled over the past eight years; at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15 years.… Paul Graham Fisher, a Stanford professor who served as co-chair of the university’s disability task force, told me, ‘I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?’ This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.”
  3. I Set A Trap To Catch Students Cheating With AI. The Result Was Deflating (Will Teague, Huffington Post): “I received 122 paper submissions. Of those, the Trojan horse easily identified 33 AI-generated papers. I sent these stats to all the students and gave them the opportunity to admit to using AI before they were locked into failing the class. Another 14 outed themselves. In other words, nearly 39% of the submissions were at least partially written by AI.… Let me tell you why the Trojan horse worked. It is because students do not know what they do not know.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  4. The Bible Is on Trial in Europe (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “Räsänen has been a member of parliament in Finland since 1995. She’s also a member of the nation’s Evangelical Lutheran Church—which in 2019 announced its official sponsorship of an LGBT Pride event. In response, she wrote: ‘How can the Church’s doctrinal foundation, the #Bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of pride?’ She posted this comment alongside a picture of the Bible verse Romans 1:27, which describes homosexuality as shameful: ‘Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.’ The next day, she opened her morning newspaper to find out that she was being investigated by police for hate speech.… During her time as minister of the Interior of Finland, between 2011 and 2015, she’d overseen the police. Now, they were interrogating her as an official part of an investigation—one that has dragged on ever since, finally reaching the Supreme Court of Finland last month.”
  5. 4 Ways to Avoid Sexual Sin (Sam Allberry, Crossway): “Life has a grain to it. Like paper and wood, it has its own inbuilt directionality. The universe is fashioned in such a way that it has an underlying structure. It follows a certain pattern with certain contours. In order to live well we need to live in a way that runs with this grain and not against it. This is where the book of Proverbs comes in.” 
    • Recommended by a student. 
  6. The Tragic Hysteria of Abortion (Bryan Caplan, Substack): “Yes, the vast majority of women who get abortions are glad they got them. But once they meet their babies, the vast majority of women denied abortions discover that they totally want their babies. This massive status quo bias makes it hard to simply ‘trust women.’ Which women should we trust — the ones who aborted, or the ones who couldn’t? But in the end, it is the women who were denied abortion who are more reliable. If shy people who don’t go to a party are glad they stayed home, and equally shy people who were pressured to go to a party are equally glad they went, the most natural interpretation is that the party-goers learned a valuable life lesson — and the home-stayers should have gone to the party.… Hysterically aborting your baby because you falsely believe the baby will ruin your life isn’t merely morally wrong; it is tragic. Why? Because before long, you almost surely would have loved that baby.” 
    • An interesting approach to the abortion debate, especially since the author emphasizes that he is “an atheist of the highest order.”
  7. As a Twin, I’m Offended by Cloning (Leonora Barclay, Persuasion): “Who wouldn’t want their precious companion back, especially in cute puppy form? Yet I’m cynical of the promise of pet cloning. It’s simply not true that clones are, in any meaningful sense, the same as the original. I’m an identical twin—a natural clone. Identical twins are even more similar to each other than a clone is to its DNA donor, because they often share the same upbringing and environment. Yet, as I know first-hand, that doesn’t mean our personalities are the same.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner Interviews Santa Claus (Mike Drucker, McSweeeney’s Internet Tendency): “I recently spoke with Santa Claus, who is currently coordinating his staff of immortal blue-collar elves, about the morality of children and his friendship with a creature whom many carolers consider a war criminal: Krampus.”
  • In 1982, a physics joke gone wrong sparked the invention of the emoticon (Benji Edwards, Ars Technica): “On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer science research assistant professor Scott Fahlman posted a message to the university’s bulletin board software that would later come to shape how people communicate online. His proposal: use 🙂 and 🙁 as markers to distinguish jokes from serious comments. While Fahlman describes himself as ‘the inventor… or at least one of the inventors’ of what would later be called the smiley face emoticon, the full story reveals something more interesting than a lone genius moment.”
  • I was stabbed in the back with a real knife while performing Julius Caesar (Olly Hawes, The Guardian): “Dressed in our togas, with the stage dark and moody, we began the fight as usual. Then something went wrong. There was a sharp piercing feeling. The knife was supposed to have been quietly slipped to me – instead, it had gone into my back. I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.”
  • Art Of The Deal: Man Negotiates Mechanic Down From $75 Oil Change To $2,000 Full Brakes And Rotors Replacement (Babylon Bee)

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 532: Thanksgiving plus the intersection of astrophysics and Christmas

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The 19th-Century Influencer Who Invented Thanksgiving (LuElla D’Amico, The Dispatch): “Hale wanted something different—not in opposition to the Fourth of July, but in addition to it. She believed the nation needed a day centered not on military victory, but on home, gratitude, and shared belonging. Again, this is why she doesn’t fit neatly into our ideological bins. She championed national unity, yet she believed that domestic life—largely women’s work in the 19th century—could mold a republic just as importantly as more public-facing work. If the Fourth of July taught independence, Hale believed Thanksgiving could teach interdependence: that a nation is sustained not only by the freedoms we fight for, but by the commitments we keep to one another around a shared table.” 
    • Super interesting. Even more interesting: she wrote “Mary Had A Little Lamb” — WOW. Established Thanksgiving and wrote a beloved childhood rhyme — what an absolute legend!
  2. How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails (Anand Giridharadas, New York Times): “People are right to sense that, as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good.… Generally, you can’t read other people’s emails. Powerful people have private servers, I.T. staffs, lawyers. When you get a rare glimpse into how they actually think and view the world, what they actually are after, heed Maya Angelou: Believe them.”
  3. A monument to answered prayer begins to rise in a secularizing England (Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service): “Last week, Gamble, 56, broke ground on that vision — a 168-foot-tall architectural landmark that is expected to be one of the largest Christian monuments in England, if not the world. (Christ the Redeemer, the iconic statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, is 98 feet.) It is planned to open to the public in 2028. The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, with a price tag of 45 million pounds (or $59 million), will not, however, feature any familiar Christian icons such a cross, a fish, a lamb or a representation of Jesus. Instead it will consist of a giant white Möbius strip stretching nearly the size of a football field, upon which a million small rectangular bricks will be overlaid, each with a digitally linked story of answered prayer accessible on a mobile app.” 
  4. What Thanksgiving Means to Me (Garry Kasparov, Persuasion): “The notion of a free society is abstract. Thanksgiving celebrates abundance, and abundance is tangible. You can taste it. Smell it. Hear it. The turkey and mashed potatoes on your plate, the chatter with loved ones, whom you’re free to visit—these are the fruits of a free society.”
  5. The Nones Project: Well Being (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The most apparent result from this graph is that Christians do express a demonstrably higher level of life satisfaction compared to the non-religious in the sample. On the scale from 1–7, both Catholics and Protestants scored an average of 5.2. That’s just slightly above ‘somewhat satisfied.’ Among the nones, the group that was clearly the most satisfied were the Nones in Name Only (NiNos) at 5.0. Slightly below that were the Dones at 4.85, then the SBNRs [Spiritual But Not Religious] at 4.75. The group that easily scored the lowest of all four types were the Zealous Atheists at 4.57.”
    • Emphasis removed for readability. Reading the article and looking at the data, I think the Dones do come off a little worse than Burge concludes. He doesn’t explain it in this article, but the Nones in Name Only are people who check “nothing in particular” on surveys but who nonetheless regularly do religious things — envision someone who comes consistently to church but isn’t actually sure if they consider themselves Christian.
  6. The Incarnation Sheds Light on Astrophysics (Deborah Haarsma, Christianity Today): “When Jesus was conceived in Mary, he took on atoms from her—as we all do from our mothers—and those atoms had histories stretching far beyond our solar system. Those atoms assembled into genes to give shape to his bones and blood and into organic chemicals shared with all life on earth. Each cell of Jesus’ body embodies his love for his creation—not only humans but also the animals, plants, mountains, and rivers often mentioned in Scripture. His very atoms once glowed in beautiful nebulae and powerful supernovae in the far reaches of space. Indeed, when God took on human form, he took on all of creation.”
  7. Why Euthanasia Feels Intuitive (Tim Challies, blog): “Because aging and death are the ultimate means through which we prove we have no true autonomy and through which we lose our independence, euthanasia is a means of avoiding what is difficult, humiliating, or seemingly intolerable. In this way, euthanasia is a natural or perhaps inevitable result of Western culture.… Though this is already plenty troubling, here is something that troubles me even more: Having been raised in this society, my instincts intuitively accept euthanasia. I do not want others to make my decisions for me and I do not wish to become dependent upon them. In fact, I would feel a significant degree of guilt were I to need others to care for me, to be inconvenienced on my behalf, or to have them put their own dreams on hold in order to ensure my provision. There is an abhorrent way in which it all just makes sense, in which my instincts accept it as good, or as acceptable, at least.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Mom Continues Longstanding Tradition Of Making Cranberry Sauce For No One (Babylon Bee)
  • Jesus Bot Is Always on Demand (for a Small Monthly Fee) (Jessica Grose, New York Times): “This version of Jesus looks like he stepped off the cover of a romance novel and sounds like a management consultant. He offers the same kind of canned guidance that I could get from a LinkedIn hustle bro, with a dash of Scripture and an upsell (a home screen widget with personalized verses for just $39.99 a year!) attached.” 
    • This probably should go in the section above, but I only like to have seven links up there.
  • Bedtime Prayers (Pearls Before Swine):  Nov 18, 2025
  • Soul Mate (Pearls Before Swine): Nov 21, 2025
  • Thai woman found alive in coffin after being brought in for cremation (Associated Press): “Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager, told The Associated Press on Monday that the 65-year-old woman’s brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated. He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin. ‘I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,’ he said. ‘I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.’”

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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.