war

Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev accused the West of trying to dismantle Russia and warned that Moscow might have to put the United States in its "place."

In recent years, Ukraine has become “an international surrogacy hub.” In the last few weeks, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, surrogate mothers across Ukraine have been forced to choose between doing what’s right for themselves and their families, and following the contractual demands of paying “parents” thousands of miles away. Many of these women have refused to move since that would separate them from loved ones in harm’s way. Others fled after the clinics in charge of their pregnancies were forced to shut down.

As more people flee Ukraine because of the Russian invasion, the exodus of people is being called the “fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,” the U.N.’s high commissioner for refugees said.

As I document in my latest book, The Coming Tsunami, our culture brands Christians as outdated, intolerant, oppressive, and dangerous on a level unprecedented in our nation’s history. As a result, it is imperative that you and I become the change we wish to see. We cannot give what we do not possess or lead others where we will not go. As I noted yesterday, our example as Spirit-empowered Christ-followers can attract our secular culture to the One who is transforming us by his love and grace. But if we are “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), why would the world want what we have?

One evening, Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee in a boat. A “great windstorm arose,” so that the boat was filling with water. Then Jesus “rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!'” And the Bible says, “The wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:37-39). Your storm may be the escalating crisis in Ukraine or something closer to home. But know this: Jesus is in your boat. He is experiencing everything you’re experiencing. Because you’re in his hand, nothing can come to you without coming first through him (John 10:28-29). The key is to trust our storm to our Savior, every time.

During the Second World War, England declared seven national days of prayer. As war ravages Ukraine, why hasn't the United States declared a national day of Prayer? Is it because our secularized culture no longer believes that faith is relevant or prayer is powerful? Tragically yes. But our unbelief does not change God’s omnipotence.

We despise the unjust death of children, but when children die in war we feel complicit in that injustice, either through our participation in harmful policies or silence about the consequences.

Because of the awful realities of life after the Fall, Christian thinkers throughout the ages – from Augustine, to Aquinas, to Luther, to others today – have sought to contextualize acts of war within a Christian moral framework, so that believers could actively oppose grave injustice without becoming part of the injustice themselves. Some believers, who hold that this is impossible, have embraced various degrees of pacifism. However, the majority of the church settled on a set of criteria that, if met, justify acts of war.

“Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics,” the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran asserted in a New York Times article.