The Friday Update-January 12, 2024

Jan 11, 2024

Happy Friday,

I pray that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may approve the things that are excellent.

The Apostle Paul
Philippians 1:9f

Notice the sequence. Paul does not pray that our knowledge will abound so that our love will grow but that our love will grow so that our knowledge will abound. Jesus’ call to follow him is as much about learning to hunger and thirst for the right thing as it is about dogma and right thinking.  

No: In advance of Monday’s focus on MLK, let me alert you to ways his biblical legacy is being dismissed. A while back, the NEA ran an ad saying, “Dr. Martin Luther King taught us to be guided by faith in America’s people and their social conscious. He taught us that the highest principles of justice are not found outside but are found in ourselves.” I’ll spare you the reasons this claim is a philosophical non-starter and simply say, “No.” That is not what King said. That is Orwellian doublespeak. In Letters from a Birmingham Jail, King wrote, “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” There is no “Look inside yourself nonsense.” King said, look at the Word of God. BTW, as I’ve done in years past, let me encourage you to read MLK’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail.

Quotes Worth Requoting: 1) “Religion that is captive to public life is of little public use.” Richard John Neuhaus; 2) “The game of life is hard, and a lot of us are playing hurt.” Anne Lamott  

Without Comment: 1) According to this Syracuse Univ. study, 52% of U.S. journalists identify as Independents, 36% as Democrats, and 3% as Republicans; 2) According to this report, there are 1.2M+ Americans in prison, making “inmate” the 9th most common “residence” on the census form; 3) According to this WAPO piece, there are 14.2M Jews in the world today, still shy of the 16.6M alive before the Holocaust reduced the number by 1/3; 4) Ernest Hemmingway used less than 60 exclamation points in his published works!!!; 5)  CISO — the Chief Information Security Officer — has joined the CEO, COO, CFO, CCO, CIO, CLO, CHRO, CAO, CTO, and EIEIO in the C-Suite of corporate America; 5) Nearly half the babies born in the U.S. are now born to single mothers. (When I was born in 1960, only 5% of births were births to unmarried women. The number rose to 11% by 1970, and by 1990 it had jumped to 28%. Since 2008, it has remained above 40%.); 6) Per this report, 90% of addictions start before the age of 25; and 7) Per this report, 25% of U.S. 40-year-olds have never been married—up from just 6% in 1980.  

FWIW: According to this Brookings Institute report, squirrels cause hundreds of power outages — and have briefly shut down the NASDAQ twice, which is something hackers have been unable to do so far. (We trust your new CISO has a plan to deal with the squirrel threat you are facing.)

WOTW: Honorable mention goes to the suite of plagiarism-adjacent terms currently popping up everywhere: unintended appropriation, duplicative language, appropriate attribution, etc. Given Columbia University linguist John McWhorter’s prediction that we’ll spend the rest of ’24 discussing — and redefining — two words, I am selecting them for WOTW.

Speaking Of…: I was glad to see this NYT piece in which it was finally noted that many who describe themselves as evangelicals attend church one time a year or less. (One time or less?) Attending church once a year doesn’t even qualify you as a Creaster or CEO (Christmas and Easter Only). Those whose statement of faith is “God, guns, and guts made America great. Let’s keep all three,” should not be confused with those who affirm the Apostle’s Creed and are seeking to humbly follow Christ, love their neighbors, and love their enemies.

Ugh: I don’t need to look for reasons to feel inept; they find me. For instance, this one-minute video forces me to realize there are two-year-olds with more musical chops than I’ll ever possess.

AI-Related: 1) Those who think AI will make plagiarism a thing of the past are half right. It will make it easy for those who are intentionally copying others’ work to mask their use of duplicative language. However, Claudine Gay will not be the last to be exposed. The next ten years will be full of revelations that A copied from B — and some of these revelations will be shocking and devastating; 2) BTW, I recently heard that AI made important advances in the development of a new antibiotic. Great. My experiences are more modest. After six months of playing with it, I’ve come to think of ChatGPT as an inexpensive intern with a high IQ, low EQ, and no common sense.

The Wit and Wisdom of C.S. Lewis: Starting Tuesday, January 30, I am teaching a Lakelight Institute class on C.S. Lewis. You can learn more about Lewis — and the class — in this 45-minute podcast, in which I explain why everyone should study Lewis. You can register for the course here.

The Two Words: No, I didn’t leave you hanging. The two words McWhorter says will be much discussed — and ultimately redefined in 2024 — are genocide and antisemitism.

Closing Prayer: We confess that in our lives we do not always choose the way of peace. We spread gossip which fans the flames of hatred. We are ready to make any sacrifice when the world demands, but few when God invites. We worship the false god of security. We hold out one hand in friendship, but keep a weapon in the other behind our back. We have divided your body of people into those we trust and those we do not. Huge problems challenge us in the world, but our greed, fear and selfishness prevent us from uniting to solve them. Lord, we need your help and forgiveness, your reconciling power. Amen. (Taken from the United Society Partners in the Gospel)

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