Worth Reading - 1/22

1. My friend Alan Noble wrote an article for Christianity Today talking about a sane approach to immigration:

This tension between the political left who support the refugees and the far right who see them as a threat is simply not conducive to accurate and unbiased reporting. On the contrary, both sides have reasons to silence parts of this event and broadcast others. Much to their shame, it appears that the local government in Cologne tried to ignore or downplay the sexual assaults. Meanwhile some American pundits have jumped on the event as evidence for why we can’t possibly allow more Muslims into the United States.

Take, for example, The National Review, which ran a story claiming that Muslims are “unassimilable” into western society and that the immigration is really just part of a larger plan of conquest with “rape jihad” as a major strategy to overtake the West. Countless other, smaller online publications have likewise promoted this angle, arguing that fundamentally, Muslims cannot coexist with civilized western culture. According to them, Muslims will outbreed us, use political correctness to silence critics, use terrorist attacks to kill infidels, institute Sharia law in our court system, rape our women until they submit to Sharia law, mooch off of our entitlement programs, lie about Islam or anything else in order to seduce us into accepting them, insist that they are entitled to special treatment because of their religion, infiltrate and undermine every level of our government and military, and in general cause the destruction of the western civilization as we know it.

2. Every new technology has an impact. Looking back in history, we can find evidence of apocalyptic predictions that didn't entirely come to pass. Smithsonian Magazine recently published an article talking about how the phonograph changes music and how it didn't.

It’s almost hard to reconstruct how different music was before the phonograph. Back in the mid-1800s, if you wanted to hear a song, you had only one option: live. You listened while someone played it, or else you played it yourself.

That changed in 1877 when Thomas Edison unveiled his phonograph. It wasn’t the first such device to record and play back audio, but it was the first generally reliable one: scratchy and nearly inaudible by modern standards, but it worked. Edison envisioned a welter of uses, including for business, “to make Dolls speak sing cry” or to record “the last words of dying persons.” But in 1878 he made a prediction: “The phonograph will undoubtedly be liberally devoted to music.”

3. Racism isn't gone in our society. A white mother with black children steps up to offer evidence of the racial bias of which many in the majority are likely unaware:

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that racism still existed. Some things you just can’t understand until you personally experience it – I would venture to say racism is one of those things. I would listen to my black friends and my friends who had black kids talk about their experiences. I listened and was aghast at some of the things they told me. But I never really understood until I experienced it myself. This is why we need to and we must listen to those who have lived this thing called racism, day in and day out. We need to take our cues from them, rather than from our own experiences and perceptions. Because as white men & women, our own experiences and perceptions are vastly different than our black friends and neighbors, I can assure you of this.

I learned just how real this difference is when I became the mom of black kids.

4. Have you ever thought about leaving a fake money tract as part of or instead of a tip at a restaurant? Here is a slightly whimsical explanation as to why that is a bad idea:

I ran into a post there the other day that caught my attention and promptly depressed me (but then, Happy Meals also depress me, so take that with a grain of salt). The post relayed a tweet from a server in Kansas named Garrett Wayman who thought a customer had left him a generous tip, only to find it was actually a Christian tract “cleverly” disguised as a $20 bill. I’m not sure how this got to be national news, since Christians do this all the time, because Christians are basically terrible (the Friendly Atheist and I agree on that point, I suppose)—but there you go.

Let’s take a second to be fair. There’s actually a good chance the people who left the tract wouldn’t even identify as Christians. While it’s possible they were misguided religious folks trying to save his soul, it seems at least as likely that they were just a couple of drunk jerks playing a “hilarious” practical joke. But—if you were the people who left the tract, and you’re reading this, and you’re Christians, let me be the umpteenth to tell you: you’re terrible.

Worth Reading - 1/15

Here are some articles that I found interesting this week.

1. The New York Times ran a post last week on why real books are better than e-books. It's part of an ongoing debate, but it's worth a read.

Perhaps the strongest case for a household full of print books came from a 2014 study published in the sociology journal Social Forces. Researchers measured the impact of the size of home libraries on the reading level of 15-year-old students across 42 nations, controlling for wealth, parents’ education and occupations, gender and the country’s gross national product.

After G.N.P., the quantity of books in one’s home was the most important predictor of reading performance. The greatest effect was seen in libraries of about 100 books, which resulted in approximately 1.5 extra years of grade-level reading performance. (Diminishing returns kick in at about 500 books, which is the equivalent of about 2.2 extra years of education.)

Libraries matter even more than money; in the United States, with the size of libraries being equal, students coming from the top 10 percent of wealthiest families performed at just one extra grade level over students from the poorest 10 percent.

The implications are clear: Owning books in the home is one of the best things you can do for your children academically. It helps, of course, if parents are reading to their children and reading themselves, not simply buying books by the yard as décor.

2. It's election season (it seems like it's always election season). So, much of divided America is spending time insulting the intelligence of people they disagree with. However, some of the impression given by social media that the other side is dumb is likely false.

In psychology, the idea that everyone is like us is called the “false-consensus bias.” This bias often manifests itself when we see TV ratings (“Who the hell are all these people that watch NCIS?”) or in politics (“Everyone I know is for stricter gun control! Who are these backwards rubes that disagree?!”) or polls (“Who are these people voting for Ben Carson?”).

Online it means we can be blindsided by the opinions of our friends or, more broadly, America. Over time, this morphs into a subconscious belief that we and our friends are the sane ones and that there’s a crazy “Other Side” that must be laughed at — an Other Side that just doesn’t “get it,” and is clearly not as intelligent as “us.” But this holier-than-thou social media behavior is counterproductive, it’s self-aggrandizement at the cost of actual nuanced discourse and if we want to consider online discourse productive, we need to move past this.

3. This is a post from Bruce Ashford on the trouble with political ideologies. It's a worthwhile read, even if it does increase political saturation.

Identifying political dysfunction is easy. Depending upon a person’s temperament, it may even be fun. But diagnosing the dysfunction beneath the dysfunction? That’s the rub. For those who care passionately about politics, the enemy generally resides over there, in some other political camp. Liberals blame conservatives; conservatives blame liberals. The reality, however, is more complex and, not surprisingly, much more interesting.

Underneath political dysfunction is a simple but powerful phenomenon—the sin of idolatry. The problem with politics runs deeper and spreads wider than the words or actions of any one politician, pundit, citizen, or party. Idolatry is located in the depths of the human heart and, for that reason, radiates outward into all a person says and does. It spreads like a plague. Sin is a progressively corrupting phenomenon, a serial intruder that crashes every party, including politics and public life. Its devastating impact is felt in structures, ideologies, and worldviews that can deform an entire society.

In politics and public life, sin does its worst party crashing via political ideologies. Ideologies arise from idolatry. In the Christian tradition, idols, or false gods, are created any time we take some aspect of God’s creation and elevate it to a position of primacy. A created thing is elevated to that status that only the Creator himself deserves. All sin is idolatry, and all idolatry is, at heart, a type of false worship. When we select an aspect of God’s creation—such as sex, money, power, liberty, or equality—and imbue that part of creation with all of our love, trust, and obedience…then we have become idolaters.

4. Aaron Earls at The Wardrobe Door takes a look at the way tone can hurt in a marriage as much or more than the words we say.

Married couples can find something to argue about. Two people constantly learning to live together as one results in unintentional, but completely expected clashes.

A good pre-marriage counselor will usually prepare couples for arguments over finances, household responsibilities and even parenting styles. Those topics often result in the most serious and fundamental disagreements between a husband and wife.

But a great pre-marriage counselor will go beyond those issues to an unspoken source of contention. It has nothing to do with the specific words you speak, but those words can carry this incendiary device into a seeming innocuous conversation and spark a roaring, raging fire between two people.

The not-so-silent marriage killer that never says a word is your tone. How you say things can make all the difference. We can see this in an unlikely place.

C.S. Lewis had an uncanny ability to diagnose the human condition and detail the hidden areas where sin and rebellion lurked unaware. And despite being his being married later in life, that often extended to his insight into marriage and married life.

5. Sometimes we think that just because we are doing kingdom work it's going to be easy. Here's a post by an adoptive mom struggling with the reality of life and finding hope in Christ.

For a brief moment as I sat on my bed, I wished I could go back to being that oblivious mom who didn’t know about the pain and suffering of the world. Who didn’t choose gratitude for her kids over success, who didn’t carry the burdens of so many, who cared what people thought of her. The one who filled her days with trips to Target, dreamed of having more, someone who put all her energy in creating happiness at home and didn’t give a hoot about others.

I got up to get a Kleenex and caught my reflection in the mirror. I stopped and stared at the tearstained tired woman looking back at me. I could only see brokenness.

But it’s funny how you can look like you have it all together on the outside and feel desperately empty inside or you can look like a broken, exhausted woman on the outside and have a deep peace and fullness within because you know what you do matters.

Below are links to my posts this week outside of Ethics and Culture.

1. At The Institute for Faith, Work and Economics I wrote about God's grace in providing works for us to do.

Our good works cannot save us (Ephesians 2:9) because God prepared them before we were born so we could do them (Ephesians 2:10).

As created beings, we can’t even do good things apart from the preparatory work of our Creator. Even our good works were created by God; they aren’t ours to offer him.

This frees us from thinking we can do something big enough to please God.

We may have opportunities to do big things for God, but they won’t be because we’ve imagined a perfect plan or invented a perfect process.

No, the same God that created us and calls us has also already planned out how we can best serve him. We are to diligently use our resources to walk in those good works.

2. At Intersect Project, which focuses on the integration of faith and culture, I wrote about finding support for a solid doctrine of work in Richard Baxter.

It’s easy to get trapped by the tyranny of the present, where contemporary problems seem to be unlike any others. With temporal blinders on, we assume that these new problems require new answers.

C. S. Lewis calls this attitude “chronological snobbery.” He recommends reading books from other centuries to break out of the trap of your own context.

Being concerned about the nature of work has recently come into vogue. There has been a relative explosion of books, conferences and blogs (like this one) about vocation and work. Is concern about work a new problem that requires new answers?

Not really. In fact, the nature, importance and reason for doing work have been discussed for centuries by pastors, theologians, and others — including Richard Baxter.

Worth Reading - 1/8

1. On this day in 1956, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, and Peter Flemming died in Ecuador. Their deaths helped inspire a generation or more of missionaries. 

“On January 8, 1956 — sixty years ago today — Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Flemming, and Roger Youderian were speared to death on a sandbar called “Palm Beach” in the Curaray River of Ecuador. They were trying to reach the Huaorani Indians for the first time in history with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Elisabeth Elliot memorialized the story in her book Shadow of the Almighty. That title comes from Psalm 91:1: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.””

2. An opinion piece takes on the increasingly widely used journalistic term "widely," which even in more respectable news sources seems to be used too much with too little support:

“When I was young, my friends and I would support our more improbable factual claims by following them with the words “ask anyone.” One of us would make a preposterous statement, another would say it wasn’t true, and the response would be something like: “Sure it is. Ask anyone.” In time, we would learn that the rules for corroborating assertions were more stringent and that disputable claims required either reasoned argument or reference to a reputable source.

Lately, though, I’ve wondered whether some journalists are relying too much on the “ask anyone” method of citation. Its more sophisticated form appears in a passive-voice clause that includes the word “widely”: “widely believed,” “widely suspected,” “widely thought,” “widely considered,” and so on.”

3. The role of editor has shifted significantly over time. The editor is now less an advisor and literary coach than a publicist.

“When Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was published earlier this year, readers learned that this much anticipated “second book” by Lee was actually a first draft of what would later become the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee radically revised this early version of the book on the advice of her editor, Tay Hohoff. That made us wonder: How much do editors shape the final book we read?

On hearing the news about the role Lee’s editor played in the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg was surprised at first. The story immediately made him think of legendary editor Max Perkins — who shepherded the works of such greats as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway. Berg, who wrote a biography of Perkins, says Perkins had a huge influence on the editors who came after him because of the way he worked with his authors.”

4. Whether you favor Clemson or Alabama on Monday to win the game, this story of Dabo Sweeney keeping his life together despite difficulties is worth a read:

“While it is undoubtedly the biggest game of Swinney’s coaching career, it is far from the biggest battle of his life. His difficult family life as a young man, as well as his unrelenting determination to forge a better life for not only himself but also his family, have transformed “That Boy” into the ultimate scrapper.

”He’s always been the underdog,” said former Alabama quarterback Jay Barker, one of Swinney’s teammates. “He has had to fight for everything and has never been given anything. That’s what has made him so successful. He loves being the underdog because he’s lived it his entire life.””

5. Pro athletes are often known for blowing their money young and living to regret it. However, there are a number of Redskin players who are thinking ahead and being thrifty, including the rising star Quarterback, Kirk Cousins.

“Two-time pro bowl running back Alfred Morris, who makes a base salary of $1.5 million this year, has taken to riding a bike to work and leaving it in his reserved parking space. On days when it’s too cold or otherwise inconvenient to cycle to the facility, Morris switches to a splashier ride: a 1991 Mazda 626, which he drove up from Florida as a rookie in 2012. He calls it his Bentley.

Pass rusher Ryan Kerrigan signed a five-year, $57.5 million contract earlier this year. But he still shares his apartment in suburban Virginia with a roommate.”

Worth Reading - 7/22

1. An argument that entrepreneurs are better even at building infrastructure than the government:

“If we rely solely on government to maintain and upgrade America’s infrastructure, all of those problems will only grow worse.

For starters, look at Amtrak. Coastal elites in the Northeast Corridor and Southern California help its operations there turn a profit. But elsewhere, it hemorrhages red ink. The Amtrak inspector general reports that, even with $2.25 sodas and $6.75 cheeseburgers, its food and beverage service alone loses $87 million annually. Meanwhile, the average Amtrak employee makes upward of $100,000 a year in pay and benefits. The federal taxpayer winds up subsidizing this loss leader to the tune of about $1.4 billion annually.

Meanwhile, the U.S. freight-rail system — deregulated and modernized by private investment — is booming. Why can’t we do the same with Amtrak passenger service?

For numerous reasons, most Americans prefer driving to taking Amtrak. Highways account for about 87 percent of all passenger miles traveled, while Amtrak’s share is some 0.14 percent. Clearly, Washington’s infrastructure spending does not match taxpayers’ infrastructure preferences.”

2. Thirty-eight ways many college campuses permit "Left-wing" bias:

One would likely be hard-pressed to find a more left-leaning group than college professors and admissions officers, who prioritize pulling marginalized groups out of their marginalization and adding people of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to campus conversations.

Yet in their efforts to achieve a more egalitarian conversation, left-wing academics and their students completely ignore (at best) and marginalize (at worst) students and the rare colleague who disagree with them politically.

And therein lies the ultimate irony: The very voices that decry inequality in all its manifestations either accept or turn a blind eye to the stunning dearth of conservative academics and the de facto censorship of right-wing students on overwhelmingly left-wing campuses.

3. The beauty of sexual chastity between unmarried lovers. Scott Sauls deals with an important topic beautifully:

“Martin Luther famously said that we’re all like drunk men on a horse, falling off to the left or to the right of the narrow path—the path of grace and truth—Jesus has paved for us. The fall to the right represents truth without grace, or religious moralism. The fall to the left represents grace without truth, or ethical license.

In the 1990s we might say that Western evangelicalism tended to fall to the right. For that decade and the few years that followed, the “Christian right” emphasized purifying society through strategic, largely law-based posturing in the culture wars. If enough Christians were in positions of power, the thinking went, society’s laws, norms, and values would eventually become more “Christian.”

The drift has reversed course ever since. If Christians could just forget the culture war mentality and focus on engaging culture, nurturing friendship, and being winsomely persuasive, the thinking goes, a better society would emerge.

Both approaches assume some risk. Falling to the right risks becoming alienated from culture due to a morality-based, us-against-them approach that emphasizes rules and rights over love. Falling to the left risks becoming so friendly with secular culture that we cease to be countercultural at all and instead become just like the culture.”

4. The power of morning and evening routines. From The Art of Manliness:

Worth Reading - 7/21

1. Discernment bloggers or Watchblogs claim to be performing a service for Christ by revealing the bad theology in others, but sometimes their attitudes and methods make one wonder if they actually are Christian. Here is Tim Challies on the phenomenon of the discernment blogs:

“Among the realities of this digital world is a whole class of web sites known as discernment blogs or watchblogs. These are sites ostensibly dedicated to keeping out a watchful eye for conflict and heresy. Some take a broad view, tracking a wide range of personalities and controversies; others take a much narrower view, tracking a single theological issue, ministry, or person. There have been times over the years that I have run afoul of discernment bloggers. On a few occasions I have said something, or neglected to say something, that has caused them to write an article about me. But then several weeks ago I wrote something that brought about an explosive reaction. Suddenly these bloggers were picking apart the meaning of my every word, taking stock of my deepest motives, and even writing with confidence about the state of my finances. Some of their commenters were crying out for people to hack my site and destroy it. A few were expressing themselves in profanity and threats of physical violence. It was intimidating, but also very clarifying.

I have sometimes warned about these discernment bloggers that are now all over the Internet, but somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve reserved a place for them. I’ve allowed myself to believe that they may serve a helpful purpose, that even while they go too far at times, a lot of their information is helpful. I’ve occasionally found myself visiting some of the sites, reading their articles, and justifying it all in my mind. After all, it is important that I know the truth about Christian leaders and their ministries, isn’t it?”

2. The gospel and immigration:

“If you want to disrupt a beautifully harmonious dinner party, all you have to do is bring up the radioactive issue of immigration. There might not be a more heated political topic in contemporary American life.

And yet pastors, by virtue of the changing diversity of their congregations and their role as community leaders, can’t afford to avoid the subject if we are to be faithful ministers of the gospel. Not only are we inundated with opinions from our parishioners, we’re forced to wrestle with real-world implications of immigration policy, whether our churches are located in Arizona or Alaska.

A sampling of political opinion, on all sides of the issue, reflects a failure on the part of many evangelicals to articulate a gospel-centered approach both to immigration policy and to immigrants themselves. A recent survey from the Pew Forum on Faith and Public Life suggests that just 12 percent of white evangelicals see this issue primarily through the lens of their faith. We think this presents a golden opportunity for pastors to reframe the debate from a missiological standpoint.

Pastors’ wariness to discuss the issue may stem from the politically charged nature of the national dialogue on immigration, or from the fear that by addressing the issue they will inevitably offend some in their congregation, putting attendance, tithes, and offerings at risk. We suspect that others avoid the issue, though, because—in a U.S. context where nearly a third of immigrants are present unlawfully—they see a paradox between the repeated biblical commands to welcome and love immigrants and the equally biblical commands to be subject to the governing authorities. Unsure of how to reconcile these seemingly conflicting commands, some pastors just avoid the issue altogether.”

3. Five tips for spotting and debunking fake internet news. Please think before you share:

“This week, the stock market was hoodwinked by a story, posted at Bloomberg.market, that Twitter was about to be sold. The story looked like every other story posted by Bloomberg News, and Twitter’s price began to soar.

But the story was fake, filled with misspellings and other errors, and before long Twitter’s price began to settle down.

Among other recent fake stories was this shocker, allegedly from NBC News: “Christian Pastor in Vermont Sentenced to One Year in Prison After Refusing to Marry Gay Couple.”

Only the story wasn’t from NBC. It was from NBC.com.co—a fake website, filled with ads, and hosted on an overseas website.

“We are all too gullible,” warned my friend, Ed Stetzer, this week.

Hoax stories like these are likely to become more common as hoaxers become more sophisticated, warned Dan Gillmor, a journalism professor at Arizona State who specializes in digital media.”

4. Bias is a powerful thing. Those that have watch cultural conversations about divisive topics like abortion note that typically those opposed to abortion are asked "hard questions" about their positions, but most abortion supporters get a free pass. The reality is that both sides have important questions to answer. Here is Aaron Earl's list of 11 questions he thinks abortion supporters should have to answer:

“Every time one pro-life politician has made a controversial statement, all others are asked by the media to respond. Now that Planned Parenthood is under fire for the undercover video discussing the selling of fetal organs, should the tables not be turned?

Yet, even with the 2016 presidential campaign already in full swing, I’ve yet to see pro-choice politicians be regularly hounded by reporters with questions related to their stance on abortion.

Why has Hillary Clinton not faced a barrage of questions about her stance on Planned Parenthood? It’s almost as if these reporters only consider one side of the debate controversial.”

Worth Reading - 7/6

1. A recent study indicates that overly protective parents of college students contribute to depression:

“Academically overbearing parents are doing great harm. So says Bill Deresiewicz in his groundbreaking 2014 manifesto Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. “[For students] haunted their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure,” writes Deresiewicz, “the cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential.”

Those whom Deresiewicz calls “excellent sheep” I call the “existentially impotent.” From 2006 to 2008, I served on Stanford University’s mental health task force, which examined the problem of student depression and proposed ways to teach faculty, staff, and students to better understand, notice, and respond to mental health issues. As dean, I saw a lack of intellectual and emotional freedom—this existential impotence—behind closed doors. The “excellent sheep” were in my office. Often brilliant, always accomplished, these students would sit on my couch holding their fragile, brittle parts together, resigned to the fact that these outwardly successful situations were their miserable lives.”

2. The role of books in the Harry Potter series. This is whimsical, but fascinating:

“The Harry Potter novels take place in a fully developed book culture – that is, they take place in a world where people (some people) use and interact with books. There are many more books used in the Harry Potter novels than there are other series with which they are sometimes compared. When I present this topic as a talk, I begin by asking the audience for the names of books that are mentioned in the HP novels. After getting about a dozen titles mentioned (usually very quickly) I then ask the audience for the names of books that are mentioned in The Chronicles of Narnia. The silence is stunning. How about The Lord of the Rings Trilogy? Usually someone will remember There and Back Again (which is part of Red Book of Westmarch) but that’s it. Any books in The Hunger Games? We haven’t been able to remember any.

The prominence of books in the Harry Potter novels is only partially explained by the fact that the Harry Potter novels are set in a school. Several of the most important books in these novels are not school books or textbooks. Consider The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle’s diary and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. None of these are textbooks, and yet these are so important that they could almost be said to function as characters in the novels. Notice also that the Twilight series is at least partially set in a school – in a high school – and there are not nearly as many books mentioned. Certainly there’s nothing like The Monster Book of Monsters.

It is clear that Rowling understands books. They are an ocean in which she knows how to swim (as does her sometimes spokesperson Hermione.) In her interview with Charlie Rose Rowling talked about growing up in a house full of books and thanked her mother for that.”

3. From Smithsonian Magazine on why Milo's sunrises in The Phantom Tollbooth are symphonies of color:

“Tollbooth, Juster’s first book, was published in 1961 and came about accidentally, through procrastination and boredom. He had been awarded a Ford Foundation grant to write a textbook on urban planning for school kids, but instead found himself scribbling notes and doodles about his childhood. He started creating a fantastical world based on wordplay and puns and his friend, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, agreed to illustrate it.

“Between the two of us, we just blundered through absolutely everything, and it somehow managed to work,” he says in a faint Brooklyn accent.

The book tells the story of Milo, a disengaged 10-year-old who doesn’t understand school or grownups. A phantom tollbooth appears in his room and transports him to the Lands Beyond, where he encounters strange places and people, fights demons and rescues the princess sisters of Rhyme and Reason.”

4. Brandon Smith on becoming a humble theologian:

“Working at a Bible college for three years and spending seven years (so far) as a student in biblical and theological training, it’s always said (but not repeated enough) that doing theology is a humble person’s task. Pride puffs up, leaving the theologian with nothing but Spirit-less fodder for intramural debates. Humility, on the other hand, allows for God-exaltation to happen in the life and work of the theologian.

Theology literally means words about God. God-talk. That’s no small thing! We’re attempting to describe the character, acts, and will of an infinite, perfect being with finite, imperfect language. In order to even attempt at doing theology humbly, let me encourage you to consider three things (that I constantly need to remind myself).”

Worth Reading - 7/1

1. What makes a writer? This is a thoughtful discussion on the task of writing and its difficulties even for those who do it a lot.

“Anthony T. Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University and past president of the American Historical Association, has a list of books he’s written longer than your arm. He’s a meticulous archival scholar and broad thinker, director of centers, recipient of awards, a man whose prose, gentle and gracious, appears with frequency in the rarefied periodicals that still publish for a general, educated readership.

Yet he insists that he is not a writer: “I’ve never felt I could claim to be a writer in that full sense. It just seems arrogant.””

2. How do you get your news?

“As a journalism student, I was told repeatedly that there is no such thing as objective reporting—an accurate assessment. Every person approaches events from a perspective, an existing worldview or set of assumptions that shape how they perceive and share those events. A reporter’s approach is no different.

Because this is true, Christians must practice discernment when filtering through news updates. Am I reading that something happened (an event) or what someone thinks about something that happened (a commentary)? Most of the news we receive today is a mixture of both, if not heavier on the commentary side. This kind of reporting often buries whatever truth it contains in conjecture and opinion.

Just as very human reporters craft news stories, very human editors make value judgments about which stories to feature. The decision of what goes on the front page and what leads the evening newscast is a worldview decision.”

3. The poverty of the Prosperity Gospel:

“Years ago, a colleague mentioned what he had learned from Job. I was surprised to hear that his study had yielded a markedly different conclusion than mine. In his words, “Job got everything back and more for his suffering. He was blessed with more children and more money than he ever had before. That’s what the story shows us — doing the right thing always brings blessing and prosperity.”

While the first part was true, I disagreed with his conclusion. He subtly was echoing the message of the so-called “health, wealth, and prosperity gospel” — that God’s goal for us in this life is perfect health, total happiness, and financial gain. In this life. “We simply need to name what we want,” it says, “live the right way, and then claim our victory. That is what living for God looks like.”

I contend that this approach is not living for God. Such thinking is idolatry. It is elevating God’s gifts above him, the giver. And that is a great assault on God’s value.”

4. The economic problems in Greece explained in simple terms:

“A good way to measure a country’s debt is to compare it to its GDP. The United States deficit averaged -3.03 percent of GDP from 1948 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 4.60 percent of GDP in 1948 and a record low of -12.10 percent in 2009 (low is bad). Greece averaged -7.19 percent of GDP from 1995 until 2014, reaching an all time high of -3.20 percent of GDP in 1999 and a record low of -15.70 percent of GDP in 2009. In other words, Greece spends about twice as much (as a percentage of it’s GDP) as does the U.S.

Let’s imagine two countries—Greece and the U.S.—as if they were persons: GDP would be the person’s “income”; the deficit would be “additional credit card debt”; and interest on the deficit would be like “interest on a credit card.”

The U.S. has a high income (16.7 trillion a year) and every year adds about 3 percent to the total it owes the credit card companies (the national debt). No one is too worried that the U.S. will default on its loans so the credit card companies give them a low interest rate (2.43 percent).

Greece, on the other hand, has a relatively modest income (242 billion, or 1/70 the size of U.S GDP) and adds a lot more to its debt every year (7 percent). Greece has a low credit score (i.e., the credit card companies aren’t sure Greece will pay off it’s debt) and so is charged a high interest rate (about 15 percent).”

Worth Reading - 6/29

1. This post from the Reformed African-American Network outlines both the promise and peril of taking down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina. Just to be clear, I am in favor of removing the display of that flag from the government facilities, but opposed to the cultural cleansing of all things Confederate from society. This RAAN post is particularly helpful, I think, because it outlines both the positive and the negative implications and calls for a reasoned approach to the issue.

“News feeds are filled with people going to battle over the Confederate flag. After the tragic slaying of nine African American men and women at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, SC, pictures emerged showing the killer proudly displaying the Confederate flag. The flag flies on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol building and calls to take it down surfaced soon after the incident. The campaign went viral and now the state legislature plans to take up the issue.

The fervor to take down the Confederate flag has spread beyond South Carolina. Southern Baptist leaders like Al Mohler and Russell Moore have made strong statements in support of removing the flag. Political leaders, both Republican and Democrat, have also advocated for its removal. The outcome seems pre-determined in South Carolina. The results in Mississippi, the only state that still has the Confederate flag emblem as part of its state flag, is less certain.

While there are definite benefits to taking down the Confederate flag, might we be missing some unintended consequences?”

2. Some thoughts on the power to build and destroy in Social Media:

“Over the course of the last seven days, the power of social media has been on full display. Between the open letter of Taylor Swift to Apple and the mass eradication of the Confederate flag, social media has flexed its muscles and the world is taking notice.

I’ve written a number of times on the social media hivemind and the effects of “Trial by Hashtag.” The way in which humans interact on social media is a sight to behold.

Is social media inherently productive or destructive? On the surface, it’s productive, right? You take pictures and share them on Instagram; you think witty things and share them on Twitter; you record videos and share them on Facebook.

You’re producing content, not destroying it.

But if you’ve been watching social media trends for any amount of time, like I have, you’ll notice how quickly a social media mob armed with keyboards and mice, can take down CEOs, politicians, and, most recently, flags.

Social media is a neutral tool; it’s a hammer. Hammers are used to build houses and to tear them apart.”

3. Just like any big project, the Post-Dissertation slump is a real thing. Some might even argue that the Post-Comprehensive Exam slump is a real thing, too:

““Post-dissertation stress disorder” and “post-dissertation depression” are real things. A friend introduced those terms to me when I was trying to find an explanation for my lack of productivity after finishing my Ph.D. Turns out, I wasn’t alone in experiencing a slump. As one blogger wrote of post-dissertation life: “If you are work- and project-driven, the adjustment takes time.”

People who successfully complete dissertations are a disciplined cross section of the population. We are capable of working independently, sticking to self-imposed deadlines, and focusing on the big picture. We may have thrown ourselves into the study of best writing practices, kept a strict schedule, formed writing accountability groups, and workshopped parts of our dissertation during the process. We are not people who have trouble staying on task and self-motivating.

So when the blues hit – when well-meaning refrains of “Congratulations, Doctor!” result in a cringe rather than a smile – what is going on?”

4. There has been a rash of fires at African American churches this past week. Several of them were likely arson. This should concern us greatly:

““What’s the church doing on fire?”

Jeanette Dudley, the associate pastor of God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia, got a call a little after 5 a.m. on Wednesday, she told a local TV news station. Her tiny church of about a dozen members had been burned, probably beyond repair. The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco got called in, which has been the standard procedure for church fires since the late 1960s. Investigators say they’ve ruled out possible causes like an electrical malfunction; most likely, this was arson.

The very same night, many miles away in North Carolina, another church burned: Briar Creek Road Baptist Church, which was set on fire some time around 1 a.m. Investigators have ruled it an act of arson, the AP reports; according to The Charlotte Observer, they haven’t yet determined whether it might be a hate crime.”

Worth Reading - 6/26

1. Kevin DeYoung gives 10 reasons why racism is offensive to God:

“I’ve grown up my whole life hearing that racism was wrong, that “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior” (to use one of the first definitions that popped up on my phone) is sinful. I’ve heard it from my parents, from my public school, from my church, from my college, and from my seminary. The vast majority of Americans know that racism is wrong. It’s one of the few things almost everyone agrees on. And yet, I wonder if we (I?) have spent much time considering why it’s wrong. We can easily make our “I hate racism” opinions known (and loudly), but perhaps we are just looking for moral high ground, or for pats on the back, or to win friends and influence people, or to prove we’re not like those people, or maybe we are just saying what we’ve always heard everyone say. As Christians we must think and feel deeply not just the what of the Bible but the why. If racism is so bad, why is it so bad?

Here are ten biblical reasons why racism is a sin and offensive to God.”

2. Some reflection on the curriculum debate at Notre Dame with consideration of their particular religious identity and their place in the world:

“For decades, Catholic colleges and universities have debated required classes in theology and philosophy. Some argue for a more “open” system that does not presume a primarily Catholic student body. This usually means fewer required classes in theology and philosophy. Others argue that a commitment to social justice marks a properly Vatican II university. This need not mean fewer required classes in theology, but as a practical matter space must be made for new priorities, and so often requirements are diluted. University education has lately gone in a pre-professional direction, and university leaders committed to Catholic identity now feel a great deal of market pressure to reduce core requirements so that students can quickly advance to the specializations that will get them jobs. But through all of this the consensus has held. Most have agreed that the disciplines of theology and philosophy are the foundations of Catholic education.

It’s striking, then, that the curriculum review at Notre Dame is questioning this consensus. The review goes deeper than how many courses in theology and philosophy should be required. In a shift that reflects trends in higher education more broadly, the review questions the very idea of discipline-oriented requirements that specify courses taught by particular departments. Are disciplines the building blocks of university education and thus the proper focus for a core curriculum? Or should we recognize that academic disciplines are “artificial” and reorient our thinking around curricular “goals” such as “critical thinking skills,” “effective communication,” “ethical decision-making skills”? Or the capacity to “comprehend the variations of people’s relationship with God and develop respect for the religious beliefs of others,” as one Catholic university defines a distinctively religious goal? Some leaders in the current Notre Dame administration seem to favor this reorientation. As Notre Dame German professor Mark Roche put it, the university’s leadership want faculty to get out of their disciplinary bunkers and think about “how the Catholic mission” of Notre Dame “can be enhanced not by thinking about departments alone but by focusing instead on ­overarching learning goals.””

3. A lot of what Peter Enns writes these days is pretty annoying as he has shifted from denying inerrancy to actively trying to undermine the authority of Scripture. However, this humorous post on blog comments is funny and worth a few minutes to read:

“Behold, I am he who speaks, the one who will open his mouth and sound speech will come forth, concerning this blog and those who comment on it.

I have read this blog, and although sometimes the Author seems a little full of himself and a little too cute for my tastes now and then, nevertheless the Author has shown wisdom and great insight by allowing almost anyone to comment almost anything, and by exercising light maintenance of comments by utilizing the “moderate comments” function provided by WordPress (may its name be blessed).

I have also read the comments to this blog. Listen, commenters. Hear my words and meditate upon them.

I know your works, your enthusiasm, and your persistence. I know some of you simply can’t wait to post your next comment, and I have seen how you endure patiently as you wait for the Author to remember he has “moderate comments” turned on so he can let your comment pass. Your reward will be great.”

4. Economic systems can have victims. While it is popular to demonize the free market, it is worthwhile to remember that the totalitarian nature of the communist system and the expressions it restricted cost many people a great deal. Watch this seven minute video from a victim of the rise of communism:

Worth Reading - 6/24

1. Scott Sauls explains why internet shaming and pornography are basically the same thing:

“New York Times writer Tim Kreider coined the term, “Outrage Porn,” to describe what he sees as our insatiable search for things to be offended by. Based on hundreds of comments and letters to the editor, Kreider says that many contemporary people feed off of feeling 1) right and 2) wronged. Outrage Porn resembles actual pornography. It aims for a cheap thrill at the expense of another human being, but without any personal accountability or commitment to that human being.

Outrage Porn often escalates into the public shaming of groups and persons. Labeling, caricature and exclusion occur as offended parties rally together against a common enemy.

There are many forms of online shaming. There is passive-aggressive shaming via the non-responsive ignoring of personal emails, comments and tweets. A person gets singled out via an unflattering photo shared without permission and intended to mock. Another is left out of a group selfie that says, “You are not one of us.”

Active-aggressive shaming is more direct. The angry blog, the critical tweet, the vicious comment on Facebook, or whatever the method – people try to hurt people. Sometimes the shaming escalates into a mob, a faux-community that latches on to the negative verdict and piles on. Under the pretense of righteous indignation, the mob licks its chops as it goes about demonizing, diminishing and destroying its target.”

2. John Piper on receiving grace and peace from God:

“The apostle Paul starts all of his letters with the prayer that “grace and peace” will come to the reader. But he never uses a verb. He never says, “Grace and peace be to you,” or, “Grace and peace come to you.” He assumes the verb.

Peter makes it explicit. He begins both his letters, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” Paul would be very happy with this verb. It’s what he means when he says thirteen times, “Grace to you and peace.” The verb behind “be multiplied” is used twelve times in the New Testament and always means “increase” — move from lesser to greater.

There are at least seven important implications in these words for our lives.”

3. Ever wonder how the history of words is researched and proved for the Oxford English Dictionary? Here is a podcast on tracing to origins of the word "mullet":

4. Bethany Jenkins discusses the reality for many, when career plans don't pan out:

“Almost 10 years ago, Johnathan Agrelius felt clearly that God was calling him to become a real estate developer and transform underutilized or abandoned buildings in the downtown area of his hometown. “I had a lot to learn,” he recalls, “but other people in my community—architects, city planners, historic preservationists, bankers, and investors—all got on board with my vision, and we started to work toward it together. I thought I had found my career, and I was excited.”

For the past 10 years, though, Agrelius has faced setbacks and frustrations. His career path has been anything but simple and straight. In fact, he still isn’t a real estate developer.

How do we live in the tension of having a sense of God’s calling and not seeing it come to fruition? What happens when our career plans aren’t panning out? ”

Worth Reading - 6/23

1. The most effective way to teach inerrancy is to teach the Bible faithfully:

“It is here, in the preaching of the Word, that we show what we really believe. It is here that we show our theology in action. We open the Bible, say what it says, believe what it proclaims, and do what it commands. We open it up, allow God to speak, and then live out what he has spoken. There is nothing fancy about it. But there is something extraordinary and downright supernatural.

As people sit under this kind of preaching week after week, year after year, and book after book, they see inerrancy, they experience inerrancy, they believe inerrancy, and they consider anything less unthinkable. The most important lessons on inerrancy are not the ones in the systematic theology text but in the pulpit.”

2. Some suggestions from someone who reads a lot on how to read more books:

“This past year I have attempted to become more intentional with my reading. In previous years I have read a lot but I would not say that I read well. My reading lacked a detailed attack plan. As a result, sometimes reading happened and other times it did not. What’s more, I felt as though my reading was more chosen for me rather than me choosing it. I read what I thought I needed to read for my job. Over the last few years I have been slowly making adjustments and feel like I am in the best place that I’ve been since I first became a Christian. I am reading more and enjoying it much more. With summer here, and summer reading listing abounding, here are some personal discoveries that were helpful to me.”

3. Samuel Gregg takes on the enormous problem of the public debt:

“‘There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises.’ Current Congressman and future President of the United States James Madison spoke these words in a 1790 speech to Congress during contentious debates about whether the US government should assume the states’ considerable debts.

Madison was seeking to remind Americans that balanced budgets are a basic element of sound public finance. Sadly, this is advice that most contemporary Western governments appear unable to embrace, judging from their public debt levels. There are perfectly legitimate debates about the economic benefits and perils associated with different public debt levels. Nonetheless, the very high public debt carried by many developed nations today and their apparent inability to stabilize—let alone reduce—such debts also reflect particular political challenges that contemporary Western democracies are failing to master.”

4. The Smithsonian Magazine created an informative video about the origins of the Rollercoaster. Unfortunately, this platform will not allow me to embed the video here, but click on the link and you can watch.

Worth Reading - 6/18

Today is the day the Vatican is supposed to release the newest encyclical from Pope Francis. In honor of that, and because Environmental Ethics is a major interest of mine, I have compiled some helpful links to help frame the issue.

First, here is a link to the encyclical itself: Laudito Si

1. Here is a post I wrote for the ERLC proposing a staid and patient response to the forthcoming encyclical:

“Initial reports about the encyclical are likely to report affirmation of specific policies promoted by some environmentalists. For example, if the Pope affirms popular climate models, some media outlets may spin that as support for a tax on carbon emissions or population control measures. However, affirmation of a certain climate model does not present a blank check to activists to enlist every Roman Catholic for every policy proposed in the name of the environment.

The content of this forthcoming encyclical will probably not be earth-shatteringly new. The Pope is likely to call members of the Roman Catholic Church to be better stewards of the created order. He is also likely to affirm that abuse of God’s creation is a sin. He will probably remind his Church that many times the poor have the least ability to survive and recover from natural disasters, and thus mitigating natural disasters is a part of caring for the poor. These are basic, biblical ideas that the Catholic Church has previously affirmed and should resonate with both Protestants and Catholics.”

2. Yesterday, the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics posted a blog I wrote about developing a whole-life stewardship, including the encyclical:

“There is value in the created order. Humans are part of that created order, but a special part. God gave a special responsibility to humans to be fruitful and to have dominion over the earth as his image bearers (Genesis 1:26-28).

The nature of this dominion is more clearly revealed in Genesis 2:15, where God puts Adam into the Garden of Eden with instructions to cultivate and keep the garden.

Through all of this, humanity remains both connected to the entire web of creation and distinct from it. Only humans have both the ability and the responsibility to influence the created order in a way that changes it. This is part of dominion.

We see in Genesis an unpopulated garden. But in Revelation, which is the final destination God intends for the world, we see a garden city (Revelation 21:9–22:4). God’s plan from the beginning was for there to be development, growth, and change.

The environment, therefore, was not intended to remain an unpopulated wilderness.

Human existence on earth is not an accident.

We are not an alien species.

We actually have a God-given place in the created order to steward it, tend it, and bring it to its full potential. This is the cultural mandate.”

3. Acton Institute has put together a large set of resources anticipating and framing the backdrop to the encyclical. There are a whole lot of good resources on this page.

4. Here are resources from Ethics and Culture on the environment and my attempt to build a Christian perspective on the environment.

Worth Reading - 6/15

1. An Interview with the Gaffigans. Jim Gaffigan and his wife, Jeannie, are both talented comedians. Jim's new show is entertaining and clean, which reflects the general tenor of his commedy:

“As the conference call with Jim, Jeannie, and other religious news outlets went on, what came through very strongly was the everyday importance of the Gaffigans’ faith. As an example, after working with some major networks, they grew tired of dealing with the suffocating bureaucracy. The networks asked whether they could make the priest a non-denominational minister who could date, or whether they could reduce the number of Gaffigan kids from five to two. So the Gaffigans took their show to TV Land, on cable, where they can maintain creative control and keep their experience of Catholicism in the show.

The strong portrayal of the Gaffigans’ Catholicism extends to the priesthood. Jim and Jeannie talked about the fact that growing up there was no stigma attached to the priesthood. But after the public nature of the sex abuse scandal, Jim said, “There’s no other occupation other than maybe a McDonald’s employee where if you walk around in your uniform people know exactly what you do. Now the priesthood has become such a lightning rod. But the priests we know are eccentric, intelligent, generous people.” Jeannie added, “The priests that have been influential in our lives and have become our friends are brilliant and generous people, and that’s our experience of priests. We don’t have any other experience of priests. . . . We are tired of the priest jokes.” Jim added that they didn’t want the priest to be “comedy fodder” but a priest who could be “a teacher to Jim . . . .and the opposite of American consumerism and superficiality.””

2. An essay on manhood, written from a non-Christian perspective, but with some very illuminating take-aways:

“Tallulah, in the Mississippi Delta, is picturesque but not prosperous. Many of the jobs it used to have are gone. Two prisons and a county jail provide work for a few guards but the men behind bars, obviously, do not have jobs. Nor do many of the young men who hang around on street corners, shooting dice and shooting the breeze. In Madison Parish, the local county, only 47% of men of prime working age (25-54) are working.

The men in Tallulah are typically not well educated: the local high school’s results are poor even by Louisiana’s standards. That would have mattered less, in the old days. A man without much book-learning could find steady work at the mill or in the fields. But the lumber mill has closed, and on nearby farms “jobs that used to take 100 men now take ten,” observes Jason McGuffie, a pastor. A strong pair of hands is no longer enough.”

3. An opinion article from Smithsonian Magazine on the importance of mentoring:

“There are nearly 73 STEM workers for every public school in America. Imagine the impact if every student could say they personally knew at least one scientist by the time he or she graduates from high school. If you are one of these professionals—whether you’re a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer, or a conservation biologist—seize the opportunity to help students in your community dream bigger. They need specific examples of real people working at real jobs, solving real problems, and having fun.

One high school student told us recently that her internship with us was the first time she had met an adult who loved their work. That’s a transformative realization—the idea that a job, a science one at that, could be a vocation. Smithsonian researchers are not alone. A 2014 survey conducted by the journal Nature found that 65 percent of American researchers were “very satisfied” with their jobs. It’s one thing to tell kids they should pursue science, it’s another to show them that it’s rewarding.”

4. David Mathis argues that happiness honors the King:

“Limitless finances and force can build an impressive kingdom, but they cannot make the people happy, not for long. The highest praise for a king is the happiness of his subjects.

We know it’s true from everyday life. The happiness of a wife is the glory of her husband. The flourishing of a child is an honor to his parents. The collective joy of a local church is a tribute to her elders (Hebrews 13:17).

The height of a leader’s glory is the happiness of those in his care.”

Worth Reading - 6/12

1. The move to silence unpopular political opinions has gone so far that a techie recently got disinvited to speak about a platform he created at a tech conference because he blogs politically unacceptable ideas under a pseudonym. While the conference has every right to choose whomever they wish to speak, the petulant desire for ideological homogeneity in culture is getting out of control when an expert on a subject is declared to be an unacceptable speaker on that topic because some people don't like political views unassociated with the  topic of his presentation:

“The decision to toss Yarvin is foolish but not because it’s censorship. By making the issue about Yarvin being a “distraction,” Miller has created a perverse incentive. By that logic, anyone could get tossed from the conference if enough people object for any reason at all. Miller admits as much when he says he hasn’t even read Yarvin’s political writing. (I can’t blame him.) Ergo, make enough noise, and you can get your target kicked out of Strange Loop. This is the mentality of “no platforming,” as it’s known in the U.K., a tactic that was once used to exclude (sensibly, in my opinion) National Front members from public life but has now become so widespread that even the hard-left New Statesman is objecting to the practice. If the problem is, as Miller wrote to Yarvin, that people’s “reactions are overshadowing the talk and acting as a distraction,” then all objectors need to do is create a distraction to get a presenter thrown out.”

2. A letter to young essayists. A plea for thoughtful, creative engagement with the world:

“I have often wondered why people who give you so sprightly a conversational account of their thinking balk at putting prose on paper. It seems to be that there is a kind of reverse gatekeeper, a St. Peter of the Writing Threshold, who makes sure that nothing gets out that isn’t righteously stiff and properly dead. The best advice is to write it as you think it and postpone the censorship until the first revision. It is easier said than done because it requires self-confidence, the confidence that your uncurried and uncombed inward speech is interesting. Believe it: Since you trust your internal interlocutor more than anyone else, what you say to yourself is going to be interesting—as interesting as human beings and the human condition always will be. But it also means starting way before the deadline, very rightly so called. Last-minute writing is forced, false and lifeless. To be sure, due dates should loom, but as a gentle remote pressure. Senior essays, as you know, are due on a midnight of late winter. The dean has the Joshua-power to make the moon stand still in the valley of Ajalon, and so some seniors “get their essay in” (funny locution) two hours late and yet on time, but that’s not the way.

But I want to say more about this so frequent disconnect between internally spoken and externally written speech. Conversation has to paper-speech a little bit the relation of noise to music. The former is usually diffuse and jagged, now potential infinite, now abruptly ended, now a sound continuum, now a discrete ejaculation, while the latter is supposed to be controlled, composed, articulated, completable as well as deliberately finished. Above all, speech is blessedly evanescent (“Forget I ever said it” is sometimes efficacious), whereas something down in writing and out in public is pretty undeletable. But then writing can be censored before it is released, while the moment for biting back the spoken word, the moment, in that wonderful Homeric phrase, before it has “escaped the barrier of your teeth,” is easily missed, and then it’s too late.”

3. From the New Yorker, "All Humanities Dissertations Considered as a Single Tweet":

“What looked like a moment of failure, confusion, or ugliness in this well-known work is better seen as directions for reading the whole.

A problem you thought you could solve defines your field; you can’t imagine the field without the problem.

The only people able to understand this work properly cannot communicate that understanding to you.

Those two apparently incompatible versions of a thing are better regarded as parts of the same, larger thing.”

4. David Bebbington on the task of being a historian:

Worth Reading - 6/10

1. If there is anything that we should remember when perusing the internet, it is that the context is so often removed. There is often a backstory that we are completely unaware of, so when we rush to comment, we are often playing the role of the fool. Here is one example, where a picture went viral on social media of a proposal at a wedding. Critics slammed the couple for "upstaging" the bride on her big day. In reality, there's a lot more to her story. It wasn't the now-affianced couple that was the problem, it is the social media shamers: 

““The sharing of the photo is a psychological reflection of the person taking the picture, not the photographed,” the psychotherapist and cultural theorist Aaron Balick wrote of online shaming earlier this year. On one hand shame is a natural human practice: We do it to enforce cultural norms and to identify ourselves as part of some superior “in group.” But there’s something new, Balick argues — something “frightening” — about the addition of social media.

“[We’ve begun] seeing other people and other things as a representation of ourselves rather than as full subjects unto themselves,” he writes. And as smartphones and social networks become more prevalent, they’ll keep allowing us “to take and distribute photographs of others and share them with friends and strangers without pausing to think that that other person has feelings, and more importantly, without even bothering to ask them for consent.””

2. At the same time, just so you don't quit social media altogether, Joe Carter has published a post at The Gospel Coalition arguing social media might be helping to reduce the number of abortions:

“The Associated Press obtained the most recent abortion numbers from the health departments of all 45 states that compile such data on a comprehensive basis. (States not compiling such data are California, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Wyoming.) Although the U.S. population has increased by 9 million, the survey found a nationwide decrease in abortions of about 12 percent since 2010.

The biggest decrease in abortion, percentage-wise, was in Hawaii, where abortions fell from 3,064 in 2010 to 2,147 in 2014. In two states, Michigan and Louisiana, abortions actually increased by significant amounts, due largely to an influx of women from more neighboring states with more restrictive laws.

Since 2011, state have enacted a total of 267 abortion restrictions. Yet in five of the six states with the biggest declines — Hawaii (30 percent), New Mexico (24 percent), Nevada (22 percent), Rhode Island (22 percent), Connecticut (21 percent) — have passed no recent laws to restrict abortion clinics or providers.”

3. Next Thursday the Pope will release a much anticipated statement on the environment. Here is Rev. Sirico discussing the potential content of the forthcoming encyclical:

Worth Reading - 6/9

1. God wrote a book. This is a moving and important video released by John Piper and Desiring God:

2. Celebrating the legacy of Hudson Taylor, 150 years after his death:

“It’s been 150 years since Taylor prayed for 24 “willing, skillful laborers” to join him in reaching the inland provinces of China, marking the start of the China Inland Mission (CIM). Known for dressing in traditional Chinese clothing “that by all means we may save some,” Taylor devoted 51 years to evangelizing China, and CIM sent 800 missionaries into the country before the Communist takeover forced them out.

Rather than returning home, CIM workers moved their headquarters to Singapore and refocused their energies to other nearby countries—Mongolia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Today Taylor’s legacy is felt in all corners of Asia. In Taiwan, some of the older generation who immigrated from mainland China credit Taylor and CIM—its name later changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship International (OMF)—for leading them to Christ. Taylor’s descendants (James Hudson Taylor II and III) started two of the major seminaries on the island, training many of the pastors leading Taiwan churches today. Local ministries follow practices modeled by OMF, such as faith missions, or trusting God for financial provision rather than soliciting donations. So without Taylor, it’s possible many of those students wouldn’t be attending the mission conference at all.

Yet things have shifted greatly in the last century and a half: While Taylor helped the West see China as an untapped mission field, the church in Asia has emerged as its own powerful mission-sending organization.”

3. This is an article from the Onion on the prevalence of Youthful Tendency Disorder, which is afflicting millions of children in our nation:

““As horrible as the diagnosis was, it was a relief to finally know,” said Beverly. “At least we knew we weren’t bad parents. We simply had a child who was born with a medical disorder.”

Youthful Tendency Disorder (YTD), a poorly understood neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 20 million U.S. children, is characterized by a variety of senseless, unproductive physical and mental exercises, often lasting hours at a time. In the thrall of YTD, sufferers run, jump, climb, twirl, shout, dance, do cartwheels, and enter unreal, unexplainable states of “make-believe.”

”The Youthful child has a kind of love/hate relationship with reality,” said Johns Hopkins University YTD expert Dr. Avi Gwertzman. “Unfit to join the adult world, they struggle to learn its mores and rules in a process that can take the entirety of their childhood. In the meantime, their emotional and perceptive problems cause them to act out in unpredictable and extremely juvenile ways. It’s as though they can only take so much reality; they have to ‘check out,’ to go Youthful for a while.””

Worth Reading - 6/5

1. One man deals with his complex feelings at the death of the step-mother that abused him during his childhood:

“I thought I might dance a little jig or even feel a sense of release and elation at news I longed dreamed about and ached for as a kid. This is a woman who drove me to such despair that I attempted to set her on fire in her (drunken) sleep when I was no more than 10 years old. But there is no jig. There is just a heaviness of heart and the nagging itch of my suffering and her evil never admitted in this life. The problem is I want to feel joy at her passing. I want to rejoice in the belief that she will face the Judge of all the earth for her crimes against me. I want to revel in the thought that she is having her own spiritual Nuremburg moment right now. That Father Time has caught up with her and her sins are about to be found out and brought into that terrible, perfect light. That the angels in glory will see just what a monster she truly was.

But I don’t feel the joy that I want to. I just feel sad. Sad for a woman who wasted her life in bitter anger and expressed it through the mental and physical torture of children. Sad for the trail of devastation she left behind. Sad for the family members she hurt and betrayed. Sad that, despite these things, people will mourn her passing. There will be tears at her funeral. There will be stories of her good side or of things well done and said. Things I never experienced. Things I can scarcely believe are true.”

2. Recent data from LifeWay Research suggests that leaving Baptist in your church's name does not turn away potential visitors, contrary to popular:

“Last year, the National Association of Evangelicals asked its members if they included denominational affiliation in the name of their church. Well over half—63 percent—said they did not.

It’s a tricky line to walk. Naming your denomination may come across as more “rigid” or “old-fashioned,” but leaving the name out can appear sneaky or unstable, according to a 2013 Grey Matter Research study.

Either way, a church’s name isn’t going to drastically change the way the public perceives it, according to a new study from the Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

Among LifeWay’s findings: About half of Americans view denominational names favorably, while the other half feel either negatively or indifferently.
“It would depend on who you’re trying to reach,” said Scott McConnell, vice-president of LifeWay Research. “But some denominational groups have as much ‘brand equity’ as non-denominational churches, which have been growing the fastest.””

3. Some nations are making it illegal for stores to dispose of unsold food. Here is an article from the Atlantic discussing the merits of such a policy.

“In 2010, U.S. supermarkets and grocery stores threw out 43 billion pounds, or $46.7 billion worth, of food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But if Arash Derambarsh had his way, that number would be zero. His goals are ambitious, but then again the municipal councilor from Courbevoie, France did manage to get a law passed in France last week that would accomplish just that.

The law bans supermarkets in France from discarding or destroying unsold food. According to Salon’s Lindsay Abrams, the law mandates that all unsold but edible food should be donated to charities for immediate distribution to the poor. Food that is unsafe to eat is to be donated to farms for agricultural purposes. Supermarkets that exceed a certain square footage are required to sign contacts with charities by July 2016; penalties for failing to do so include fines of up to roughly $81,600 or two years in prison. The legislation is one of the world’s first attempts to address the twin problems of food waste and hunger in this manner.”

Worth Reading - 6/4

1. A post on Vox (yeah, I know) by a liberal college professor about his fear of being fired over irrational complaints from . . . liberal students. There's plenty of bias in the article, but a good reality check, too:

“The press for actionability, or even for comprehensive analyses that go beyond personal testimony, is hereby considered redundant, since all we need to do to fix the world’s problems is adjust the feelings attached to them and open up the floor for various identity groups to have their say. All the old, enlightened means of discussion and analysis —from due process to scientific method — are dismissed as being blind to emotional concerns and therefore unfairly skewed toward the interest of straight white males. All that matters is that people are allowed to speak, that their narratives are accepted without question, and that the bad feelings go away.

So it’s not just that students refuse to countenance uncomfortable ideas — they refuse to engage them, period. Engagement is considered unnecessary, as the immediate, emotional reactions of students contain all the analysis and judgment that sensitive issues demand. As Judith Shulevitz wrote in the New York Times, these refusals can shut down discussion in genuinely contentious areas, such as when Oxford canceled an abortion debate. More often, they affect surprisingly minor matters, as when Hamsphire College disinvited an Afrobeat band because their lineup had too many white people in it.”

2. A good post by Marty Duren on why being insulting or resisting the desired name of Caitlyn Jenner really doesn't help the gospel:

“I have not a scintilla of personal identification with a man or woman who so strongly feels they are actually members of the opposite sex that they will undergo a surgical process to become the opposite sex. I don’t know the kind of emptiness a person who believes himself or herself to be the opposite sex must feel.

Is is physical? Emotional? Psychological? Spiritual? A combination, all of the above, or something not mentioned?

I do not know all the answers.

What I do know is insulting transgendered people by mocking them does not gain us a hearing for the gospel. Mockery is not a characteristic of Jesus.”

3. Why don't we share the gospel more? Often because we talk about what we love most:

“My grandmother died absolutely convinced that God would accept her because she was a good person. She had no faith in Christ. And here’s what I regret. In the week before my grandmother died, I did not speak to her about Jesus. I tried to love her well, but didn’t say anything to her about Jesus. When my other grandmother had died, I’d taken her hand and prayed with her. But not that grandmother. I just let her go.

Why didn’t I tell her about Jesus? I’ve come to realise that I was afraid of what she’d say, and I was afraid of what my family would say, because I knew they’d think it was inappropriate and unhelpful. I was afraid.

I loved my grandmother, and she loved me, but the hard truth is that I loved myself more than her. I wanted my family to think well of me more than I wanted her to think of Christ as her Savior. That’s why I didn’t speak to her. I loved myself more than I loved her — and more than I loved my Lord.”

4. On the necessity of dead work:

“There is no honest vocation that cannot be made to some extent a fine art. That is, in every honest vocation, each day, growth is possible, if the work is loyally done; and that, we have seen, is the meaning of art. Indeed, the one supreme fine art is the art of living, and the particular vocation gets its meaning as a phase of that highest art.

In most vocations, it is true, there is so much dull routine work that we can discover little growth in the action of the single day. To go to the shop and sell a spool of thread and a paper of pins, to make the physician’s daily round, prescribing for those who are ill and the larger number who think they are, to work over the lawyer’s brief for some petty quarrel, to write sermons for congregations that will not listen and that demand the sermon shorter every week—it all seems such a blind mill-wheel grind that one sees little progress in the day……

It is, nevertheless, just such work, done cheerfully and loyally, to a high purpose, through the succession of days, that builds into the human spirit the noblest elements of culture. What then do we mean by “culture”— some esoteric knowledge or remote adornment of life? Surely not. Its foundation elements are: loyalty to the task in hand, the trained will that does not yield to obstacles, cheerful courage in meeting the exigencies that come, serenity maintained amid the petty distractions of life, holding the vision of the ideal across the sand wastes and through the valley of the shadows: these are the basic elements of culture, and they are built into the spirit of a man or a woman by the loyal doing of dead work through the succession of days….”

Worth Reading - 6/3

1. Why it's a shame that doing something legal can be illegal:

“It isn’t illegal to withdraw money from the bank, nor to compensate someone in recognition of past harms, nor to be the victim of a blackmail scheme. So why should it be a crime to hide those actions from the U.S. government? The alarming aspect of this case is the fact that an American is ultimately being prosecuted for the crime of evading federal government surveillance.

That has implications for all of us.

By way of background, financial institutions are required to report all transactions of $10,000 or more to the federal government. This is meant to make it harder to commit racketeering, tax fraud, drug crimes, and other serious offenses. Hastert began paying off the person he allegedly wronged years before by withdrawing large amounts of cash. But once he realized that this was generating activity reports, he allegedly started making more withdrawals, each one less than $10,000, to avoid drawing attention to the fact that he was paying someone for his silence.

Again, the payments weren’t illegal. But as it turns out, structuring financial transactions “to evade currency transaction reporting requirements” is a violation of federal law.”

2. A Title IX inquisition. When a liberal feminist is tried by a kangaroo court for arguing for sanity and responsibility:

“I wrote back to the Title IX coordinator asking for clarification: When would I learn the specifics of these complaints, which, I pointed out, appeared to violate my academic freedom? And what about my rights — was I entitled to a lawyer? I received a polite response with a link to another website. No, I could not have an attorney present during the investigation, unless I’d been charged with sexual violence. I was, however, allowed to have a “support person” from the university community there, though that person couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t be informed about the substance of the complaints until I met with the investigators.

Apparently the idea was that they’d tell me the charges, and then, while I was collecting my wits, interrogate me about them. The term “kangaroo court” came to mind. I wrote to ask for the charges in writing. The coordinator wrote back thanking me for my thoughtful questions.

What I very much wanted to know, though there was apparently no way of finding it out, was whether this was the first instance of Title IX charges filed over a publication. Was this a test case? From my vantage point, it seemed to pit a federally mandated program against my constitutional rights, though I admit my understanding of those rights was vague.”

3. Carl Trueman critiques the unwritten assumptions expressed in a recent article at the Washington Post. His critique of the subtle misrepresentations and sleight of hand represented by the author are telling:

“An article in the Washington Post last week (“How to break free from monogamy without destroying marriage”) described the dynamics of an open marriage and the various “apps” now available for facilitating extramarital relations. The amorality might have been shocking twenty years ago but today such well-traveled territory likely provokes little more than a yawn. Yet the article is still instructive for what the author’s analysis (or lack thereof) tells us about contemporary culture. Indeed, it is a classic example of what happens when your side in the debate is utterly dominant: You become lazy and put forward obvious stupidity as if it were compelling argumentation.”

4. Here is the article to which Trueman was responding, which asserts monogamy is a recent invention that can be casually done away with:

““If you look at marriage, it developed as a survival strategy and a means of raising kids,” Wade said. “But relationships are no longer a necessary component of life. People have careers and other interests — they can survive without them.”

That’s not wrong, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. In the caveman days, humans teamed up in non-exclusive pairs to protect their children. Later, as people learned to plant crops and settle in one place, marriage became a way for men to guarantee kids, and for women — who couldn’t push heavy plows or carry loads of crops to market — to eat and keep a roof over their heads.

There’s a long history of married men sleeping around, Fisher said. And the romantic notion that relationships are anything but transactions is relatively recent — as is the social expectation that both people partner for life, to the exclusion of everyone else.”

Worth Reading - 6/1

1. On the social injustice of predatory lending:

“The reasons that someone who is poor might need fast cash and not be able to get it are often not the result of personal sin or outsized wants. Unexpected troubles of all kinds beset everyone, but the effects are more detrimental for the poor than the rich or even the middle class. The reality that need and resources are not always co-located is made manifest especially for the poor, even with strong networks of relationships. Friends and family may be immensely willing to help, but what if they don’t have the financial capital to do so? Banks don’t tend to extend small loans. Options to get financial help quickly are limited when you’re poor.

The payday lender trade association, Financial Service Centers of America (FiSCA), explains how they exist to solve this problem by describing payday loans as “small, short-term cash advances, which are a popular source of credit for Americans.”

Popular is an understatement. The Center for Responsible Lending notes that for every Starbucks in the United States, there are more than two payday lending storefronts.

FiSCA states that their members offer products to “bridge the need for small dollar, short-term credit when other options are limited, too expensive or unavailable.” And FiSCA describes their customers as those “who often are living paycheck to paycheck.”

One might argue that the free market exists to offer ready alternatives for moments like this. But that’s less than half of what should be said. Christian philosophers and economists have long argued that free markets are to be just markets. Within just markets, businesses rightly uphold their responsibilities as they seek to satisfy legitimate human needs and contribute to human flourishing as they profit. When rightly ordered, businesses operating in free markets impose limits on their own practices and operations such that their relationship to the rest of society’s institutions and to human beings reflects the end of satisfaction, rather than the more familiar word maximization regarding the making of profit. Rightly ordered businesses choose practices that reject profiting from the exploitation of human beings.

Despite their altruistic talking points, predatory payday lenders fail to meet these criteria.”

2. What missionaries aren't telling us because they feel like they can't:

“Missions is brewed in a pot of extremely high expectations. Missionaries undergo a brutal screening process by their organization. Church missions committees pepper them with interview questions on strategy and effectiveness. If you want to be chosen, that’s what you’ve got to prove.

Then, once missionaries are approved, signed, sealed, commissioned, and their picture spread all over foyer walls and refrigerators across the country, they are thrust out into the world to show off their strategy and effectiveness. After all, they’ve got scores of donors behind them who want to see the return on their investment.

I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what it feels like.

So when the strategy doesn’t work (since it usually doesn’t the first time around), and there is very little effectiveness to be seen, what then? What do they tell people? When a missionary spends three months planning an event, and only three people show up, should he be upfront about it? When the church doesn’t get planted, or when the planted church falls apart, or when the exciting new believer has been stealing from you....what then?”

3. Some timeless cautions from an old Christian book on work and vocation:

“I have so much and give thanks so little. God has blessed me tremendously in all areas of life, and I return thanks to him so sparsely and so half-heartedly. This is my conclusion as I continue reading through John Flavel’s classic work The Mystery of Providence. In chapter 4 Flavel instructs the reader to acknowledge the hand of God in and behind our daily work. Along the way he offers every Christian 4 cautions related to vocation:”

4. We want to be family friendly, but Joe Carter explains why many "family friendly" provisions for employers end up not being so friendly to families:

“Three of the most basic principles of economics are that people are price-sensitive, risk-averse, and that they respond to incentives.

If you raise the price of a good or service people will, in general, tend to buy less (price-sensitive). If you give a person a choice between a certain outcome (“I’ll pay you $50 for nothing”) or a higher payoff on an uncertain outcome (“I’ll pay you $100 or nothing based on a coin-flip”), they’ll generally take the less risky option (risk-averse). And if you give people a way to get a lower price without any risk, they’ll generally prefer that option (response to incentives).

Each of these principles seems intuitive, even obvious. Yet for some reason when you combine them to create a public policy people are shocked to find it can have “unintended consequences.”