Deuteronomy 6:4-9 stipulates the vital importance of parents in educating their children: There is to be a formal structure where parents teach their children facts, ethical standards and doctrinal truth. Parents are also to model these virtues, values and standards before their children. Parents are thus central in the moral and spiritual formation of their children. Ideally today, parents, the church and the school should network together to accomplish this goal of moral and spiritual formation. However, in 2024 moral and spiritual formation has been replaced by indoctrination and the pursuit of personal autonomy in much of public education.

Christian author, Ericka Andersen, has recently written of her struggles with infertility and her resolution of this struggle through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her piece offers an important perspective on IVF and how to think about this controversial procedure as a Christian: “At 33, after experiencing infertility for several years, I reluctantly turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF). A fertility specialist advised my husband and me to pursue the usual course of IVF, which involves using drugs to stimulate the growth of multiple egg follicles.

It was nearly 25 years ago that my son Jonathan and I watched the movie The Matrix. (I actually needed to watch it several times to grasp the complexities and underlying messages of the movie.) Meir Soloveichik, Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, zeroes in on the key scene of the movie: “A man named Morpheus sits across from another man named Neo and informs him that his entire notion of reality is a lie. If Neo wishes to know the truth of human existence, Morpheus says, all he has to do is choose one of two pills. ‘You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill . . . and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes’ . . . Of course, Neo chooses the red pill and learns the terrible truth that the advent of artificial intelligence allowed machines to take over the Earth. He believes it is 1999, but in fact it is 2199, and all human beings are perpetually asleep in vats, exploited by their AI masters as a source of energy. The world they think they experience is actually a virtual reality known as The Matrix.”

It has been said that Israel has always “lived in a tough neighborhood.” That was true in the Ancient world when Israel was surrounded by the Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Phoenicia; to the south ancient Egypt; and to the east Assyria, and later Babylonia. Today, Israel enjoys a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan but faces Hezbollah to the north (in Lebanon), Hamas to the west (in Gaza) and, of course, Iran to the east. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by and funded by Iran. Together, these three entities pose an existential threat to modern Israel. In this Perspective, I want to focus on Hezbollah and Hamas.

When it comes to ethical decision-making in America right now, our leaders give every evidence of having their feet firmly anchored in mid-air! The result is confusion, dysfunction and an abandonment of the clear, ethical guidelines provided for us in Scripture. Permit me a few examples of this ethical confusion.

New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg recently posted a fascinating article on the growing practice of egg freezing among women in the US. She put her report in the context of women who seek to improve themselves and who seek to slow the reproductive clock: “There is always a market for products, from skin care to weight loss, promising to ease the angst of womanhood. Efforts to slow down the reproductive clock are no different. The business of egg extraction is thriving, among the privileged group of people who can access it.”

In late June, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal debt will equal 122% of the United States’ annual economic output by 2034, far surpassing the high set in the aftermath of World War II. The deficit will swell to $1.9 trillion this fiscal year and keep growing until the overall national debt hits $50.7 trillion a decade from now. The CBO revised its forecast from four months ago, when it projected that the debt would reach $48.3 trillion in 2034, and 116 percent of economic output. The new figures add to the urgency facing policymakers in 2025. Next year, vast portions of the tax code are set to expire, potentially forcing a steep tax hike on individuals and families. Congress suspended the debt limit in 2023, but that, too, will expire next year, setting up a showdown between the two parties over federal spending.

In April of 2024, Iran launched a series of unprecedented drone and missile strikes against Israel, raising the specter of a war that could incinerate large parts of the Middle East, collapse the global economy and eventually involve the United States and other major powers. For now both Israel and Iran have avoided further escalation but no one really believes that this will last. Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speculates that “As long as Iran is ruled by an Islamist government that puts its revolutionary ideology before the national interest, the two countries will never know peace, and the Middle East will never know meaningful stability.”

Because God is the Creator, He owns everything (see Psalm 50:10-12). And, as the Sovereign Creator and Owner, He gives us all things that are a part of life, trusts us with them and expects us to manage all things well. He is the owner; we are His stewards. A biblical view of stewardship, therefore, centers on utilizing and managing all the resources God provides for His glory and the betterment of His creation; it is managing everything He brings into our lives in a manner that honors Him.

We live in troubling times. The Western world is under severe pressure, facing challenges from Russia, Iran and China. And the leader of the Western world is faltering in its leadership. The confusion, disorder and unsettledness currently dominating American politics are causing other western allies to doubt the reliability of the US in its obligations as an ally. The two current candidates for president do not yield any degree of confidence or certainty about this reliability: One candidate is an America-first isolationist and the other lacks the decisive courage to lead the Western world. Our enemies know this and relish the continued decline, as they perceive it, of the West. For them the future belongs to the axis of evil centered in Russia, Iran and China, not the West.