Welcome to another Weekend edition of A La Carte. I attempt to focus these weekend editions on thinkpieces and longer-form articles. I’m sure you’ll find something here that interests you.
I’m grateful to PrayMore for sponsoring the blog this week. They are inviting your church to start a 30-day prayer challenge.
Today’s Kindle deals include quite a strong collection of newer books with some classics alongside them.
Sports Gambling
Sports gambling was much discussed this week, primarily due to a long article at The Atlantic that took an extremely negative view of it.
- Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler is the article that kicked it off. McKay Coppins, a Mormon who is religiously opposed to gambling, nevertheless accepted the assignment to accept $10,000 from The Atlantic and figure out how to bet it on sports. It didn’t take long for him to hate who he was becoming. Here’s a key quote: “Not every consensus of the past is worth clinging to, of course. But as a society, we are making an enormously risky bet: that we can reap the rewards of a runaway gambling industry without paying any price; that the litany of social ills long associated with this vice—addiction and impoverishment, isolation and abuse, cheating and chasing and corrosive idleness—can, this time, be kept in check; that, unlike every civilization that came before us, we can beat the house.” (This gift link should unlock the article.)
- Young Men Don’t Surrender to Madness of Gambling. Writing from a distinctly Christian perspective, Peter Witkowski pleads with young men: “Do not allow the gambling platforms targeting March Madness to drive you into the madness of sports gambling and prediction markets.”
The Challenges of New Technology
One of the themes this week was our continued grappling with new technologies. Here are a few articles that are especially interesting.
- Are Boomers the Real iPad Babies? covers the phenomenon of the widespread and growing adoption of digital devices by the older generations. The article points out that it is not just young people who are glued to screens these days. “They’re not iPad babies or screenagers or anyone whose birth year starts with ‘2.’ They’re AARP members who love an early-bird special and a roomy sedan.” (This gift link should give you past the WaPo’s paywall.)
- The Parasocial Generation by Eddie LaRow discusses “Parasocial relationships—one-way, screen-mediated, ersatz intimacies” that are “shaping Gen Z in ways we are only beginning to understand. From the rise of finstas (secondary Instagram accounts where users post more personal, unfiltered content) to ceaseless online commentary lamenting the paucity of real-life relationships, it’s clear that Gen Z craves authenticity and connection.” (You’ll need one of your allotment of free articles from First Things to read it.)
- Against the Machine: an Appositional Review is Nicholas McDonald’s long engagement with Paul Kingsnorth’s influential book Against the Machine. He offers a series of appositional statements, each of which offers lots of food for thought as we consider what this tech-heavy world is doing to us. It is a long read, but a rewarding one.
- AI-Generated Writing Is Everywhere, and It’s Still Easy to Spot—for Now at the Wall Street Journal expresses, correctly, that AI writing is everywhere and that it is generally easy to spot. Yet “given the rapid rate of improvement, casual readers will find LLM text largely indistinguishable from human prose within two to three years, perhaps sooner. Professional editors and trained critics will have a longer window, probably four to six years before the tells become vanishingly subtle.”
New Music
I found a couple of new songs I thought you might enjoy, though I suppose it’s more accurate to say that they are new renditions of existing songs.
- Christ Our Hope in Life and Death by Jordan Kauflin. This is a live lyric video that is drawn from Kauflin’s new album which is worth listening to in full.
- There is a Fountain by The Village Chapel is a bluegrass rendition of the hymn—the kind of rendition you can do when your church is in Nashville and members of the Getty’s road band are on your music team.
The Abuja Affirmation
A couple of articles dealt with The Abuja Affirmation, an encouraging development within global Anglicanism.
- The Abuja Affirmation: A Global Definition of Anglican Identity by Adam Carrington explains what happened when conservative Anglican leaders met in Abuja. He rejoices that a growing clarity emerged on “an Anglicanism proudly Protestant as it is firmly rooted in Scripture; an Anglicanism confessional in its beliefs, distinct in its theology, unified by its Scripture-based confession of Jesus as Lord and reinforced by its contemporary and Reformational Formularies. That is an Anglicanism worth working for, an Anglicanism worth fighting for. This is the Anglicanism of Jerusalem, Abuja, and of the future.”
- Anglicanism Offshoot Sets its Course is WORLD’s coverage of the meetings. “In 2008, the Global Anglican Communion met for the first time and drafted the Jerusalem Declaration, which includes 14 tenets affirming Biblical inerrancy and honoring God’s design for marriage and sexuality, among other doctrines. Last week, the group confirmed that all intending members must sign the document.” (You will need one of your allotment of free monthly articles to read it.)
Misc
Here are just a couple more that don’t share a particular theme:
- Bird Names and Ornithologistas is one birdwatcher’s lament about the ideology-driven renaming of birds in “an effort to address past wrongs and engage far more people in the enjoyment, protection, and study of birds.” Speaking of birdwatchers, I have enjoyed Kevin Burrell’s Considering Sparrows, which releases next week. It combines ornithology and theology into what John Stott endearingly termed “ornitheology.” Highly recommended!
- How the Early Church Baptized by Wyatt Graham is a thorough look at how early Christians practiced baptism.
- Are There Two Creation Accounts? To be honest, I’ve never really even understood why people say Genesis has two creation accounts. Nevertheless, I’ve heard it enough times that I thought I’d share this harmonization of Genesis 1 and 2.
- One Woman’s Journey Through Gender Confusion, Reassignment Surgery, and Detransitioning is a review I shared yesterday of a book that I found well worth reading.
Flashback: On Being the Main Character in Your Own Sermon
I expect you have prayed that God would glorify himself through your words, but have also wished that those listening would glorify you, at least a little bit. This is a familiar, and I dare say universal, temptation for those who teach, lead, and minister.
God is more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved.
—J.C. Ryle
