Why have children? Why choose to become a parent? For much of human history, these two questions would probably have received significant pushback. Children were an obvious concomitant of marriage and, in many cases, of survival. But, today “only 26% of Americans say that having children is important for living a fulfilling life, whereas 71% consider ‘having a job or career they enjoy’ to be essential, and 61% say the same for ‘having close friends.’”

Peter closes his letter with an exhortation to elders, the importance of character and an emphasis on God’s grace.

David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times observes that “War is on the rise everywhere. When the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London published its authoritative Armed Conflict Survey in early December, it counted 183 conflicts globally in 2023—higher than had been recorded in 30 years. The most remarkable episode of this harrowing new era of global violence is an astounding spate of military takeovers in what has come to be known as the coup belt, stretching uninterrupted across Africa’s Sahel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea: six countries enduring 11 coup attempts, eight of them successful, since just 2020 . . .”

Peter offers several important truths about how believers should approach suffering in this broken world.

In early September, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star turned podcaster, hosted the podcaster “historian” Darryl Cooper on Carlson’s show “Tucker on X” on the social media platform. Carlson, who has hosted the show since Fox severed ties with him in 2023, introduced Mr. Cooper as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” It is rather appalling that such a major media figure would stoop so low and honor a man with such a perverted view of history. Both Carlson and Cooper are peddling deceit and lies and calling it “history.”

In light of Christ’s suffering, we are to die to the old life and live a transformed life in “these last days.”

British historian, Fay Bound Alberti, co-founder of the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, writes that, “By the 21st century, loneliness has become ubiquitous. Commentators call it ‘an epidemic’, a condition akin to ‘leprosy’, and a ‘silent plague’ of civilization. In 2018, the United Kingdom went so far as to appoint a Minister for Loneliness. Yet loneliness is not a universal condition; nor is it a purely visceral, internal experience. It is less a single emotion and more a complex cluster of feelings, composed of anger, grief, fear, anxiety, sadness and shame. It also has social and political dimensions, shifting through time according to ideas about the self, God and the natural world.”

Jesus provides the pattern of suffering for the sake of righteousness.

In 1968 presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, declared: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” As a Christian, it is difficult for me to disagree with that statement.

Peter issues a call to righteous living in the midst of acute suffering and persecution.