The curious, confounding and provocative Helsinki news conference involving President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin begs the question, what exactly does Putin want? As one commentator argued, Helsinki “was a summit [Putin] has dreamed of for 18 years.” His Russian advisers used terms such as “fabulous,” “super,” beyond “our fondest hopes” to describe the recent Helsinki meeting. Putin quickly embraced Trump’s invitation to a second meeting in the United States this fall. Putin is finally getting what he wants—and Donald Trump is delivering it to him.

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court has caused consternation among pro-choice elements in our culture and near euphoria among pro-life elements. Some pro-life folks actually believe that the nomination of Brent Kavanagh to the Court will bring an end to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Court decision establishing abortion as a Constitutionally protected right. Furthermore, the “zero-tolerance” policy of the Trump administration when it comes to children of illegal immigrants has raised serious questions about what it means to be pro-family.

The Gaza Strip, nestled between Israel and Egypt, is a mess. Recent events have demonstrated the intractable nature of this small strip of land. The Palestinians who live there are in poverty, with high unemployment and constant shortages of food, power and almost everything else. A snaking metal fence that divides the Gaza Strip from Israel has become the focal point of a conflict that stretches back to 1948. In May over 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli Defense Forces and hundreds more were wounded. Hamas, which rules Gaza, has been organizing a “March of Return” to reclaim the land lost in 1948.

In a recent interview on “Fox and Friends,” President Trump argued that he won the 2016 presidential election “easily” but would advocate for the abolition of the Electoral College in favor of the direct election of the president, because, “to me, it’s much easier to win the popular vote.” Setting aside the fact that he lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes, is it wise for President Trump to argue for the abolition of the Electoral College?

Alfie Evans, 23 months old, had a rare degenerative brain condition and died the end of April, five days after he was taken off life support. He was born on 9 May 2016, and was admitted to the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, England when he was 7 months old, after suffering seizures. His doctors were unable to diagnose a specific ailment, and his worsening condition resulted in Alfie living in a semi-vegetative state for more than a year.

On 14 May 1948, the Jewish people ended 1,878 years of exile from their land. The nation state of Israel was established when the founders accepted the UN Resolution partitioning the land of Palestine into a Jewish state and into a Palestinian state. The Jews accepted that partition and declared themselves the independent state of Israel. The Palestinians rejected the partition and declared war on the new state. Israel won that war and over the last 70 years the world has witnessed the renaissance of Jewish civilization, the creation of a liberal democracy in the troubled Middle East, and the desert of the Eastern Mediterranean bloom once again.

The seven-year civil war in Syria is now an international conflict with proxies of the major powers fighting in a confused mix of alliances with often contradictory goals. It is a re-ordering of the Middle East. . . What is occurring in Syria today is a multidimensional conflict that is a fully regional one with all of the Syrian parties acting as a proxy for someone else. It is a volatile and dangerous mess with no clear end in sight. Let?s examine most of the constituent parts of this mess and how it is in effect re-ordering the Middle East.

Of all the issues facing American civilization today, none is more controversial and volatile than that of immigration. It is a legal issue, a social issue, a political issue, and it is a spiritual issue. In this Perspective, I hope to focus on the legal and the spiritual issues informing the immigration debate. Even as I set the boundaries, I am not naive. What I say will upset some Christians, but I am going to do my best to raise the important legal and biblical themes that deal with this issue.

Over the last year or so, Americans have been on a spending binge. The stock market has reached record levels. (Although, as I am writing, it is falling precipitously, having lost 1300 points in three days.) And the US Congress, at the insistence of President Trump, passed a massive tax cut. America?s GDP is stable, unemployment is low and wages are slowly increasing. But all of this is a façade. One of the significant risks, with all this spending, the tax cuts and rising wages, is inflation, which is one of the reasons the stock market is falling. What I hope to address in this Perspective are the underlying systemic challenges facing America. They are serious and potentially very destabilizing. Let?s review some of these systemic issues:

Arguably, the most intractable Middle Eastern challenge is finding a way to settle the Israeli-Palestinian debate over land. Since Israel?s victorious 1967 War, it has controlled the West Bank and Old Jerusalem, and, since the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, both the Palestinian Authority and the state of Israel have accepted the premise of and have been working towards what is called a ?two-state? solution, where Israel would retain its sovereignty over much of the land it has held since 1967 but negotiate to create a Palestinian state out of the West Bank and Gaza strip. As 2017 ended and as 2018 has begun, there is speculation that the two-state solution is dead. Why?