The past three decades have produced an economy in America that is indeed the envy of the world. The Economist summarizes the financial and economic dynamic of the US economy: “In 1990 it accounted for about two-fifths of the GDP of the G7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in Western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. Lately, China too has gone backwards. Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal GDP has slipped from about three-quarters of America’s in 2021 to two-thirds today.”

Peter assures his readers that God will deal with the false teachers in judgment and rescue those who belong to Him from His wrath.

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has redrawn the balance of power in the Middle East and indeed in the world. Here is a summary of its triumphant war against savage theocratic terrorists

This week is Thanksgiving and it is appropriate in this edition of Issues in Perspective, to focus on Thanksgiving. To that end, I want to share a perspective on the Thanksgiving hymn, “We Gather Together.” Melanie Kirkpatrick of the Wall Street Journal offers an instructive history about this traditional hymn.

The 2024 election is, thankfully, behind us as a nation. We affirm the truth of Psalm 115:3: “Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases.” [ESV] The local election results, the various state election results, and, of course, the national results are a demonstration of that mysterious tension found throughout Scripture of human responsibility and divine sovereignty: At the presidential level, Donald Trump was elected president because the people voted for him; Donald Trump is also president because God chose him to be president.

It is now conventional wisdom to argue that America is more polarized as a society in 2024 than it has been in its history, save the decade of the 1850s right before the Civil War. Why? There is no simple answer to this important question, but it is quite important as Christians that we seek to understand the nature of this polarization. The columnist and recent convert to Christianity, David Brooks, offers a most helpful analysis and overview of our polarized society.

Peter constructs the foundation for spiritual growth and maturity in Christ.

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 . . .”