What motivates the rulers of Iran? Why do they invest billions of dollars in arming themselves and their proxies (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, etc.) against Israel? Is it simply to destroy the growing acceptance of Israel by several Arab nations? Was the 7 October genocidal attack designed to thwart the seemingly imminent recognition by Saudi Arabia of Israel? Or was it something more egregious, more dastardly?

Columnist Daniel Henninger correctly observes that “There was a time when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps. No longer. Universities’ hiring and enabling of activist left-wing professors—proponents of the anti-Israel movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—has affected a generation of students. A Quinnipiac poll found 51% of Democrats younger than 35 don’t support sending military aid to Israel after Hamas’s attack.”

The ethical case against abortion rests on the proposition that life begins at conception—and that killing a baby in the womb is ethically wrong. The life of the baby in the womb is as valuable in the eyes of God as that of the mother. However, since the 1970s, abortion has been defended on the grounds of privacy and bodily autonomy: “my body, my choice.” The legal and philosophical debates that culminated in Roe v. Wade (1973) considered abortion in terms of competing rights: the woman’s right to control her body against the baby’s right not to be killed.

We live in a world where one of the few constants in life is change. I recently read media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. It captures quite effectively the unsettledness and disorientation many feel in our postmodern, post-Christian, media-saturated culture. Rushkoff’s analysis is brilliant, but he offers few solutions and little comfort in a world of religious skepticism, moral/cultural progressivism and animosity toward traditional values and religious convictions.

I have come to appreciate David French, a columnist for the New York Times and an evangelical Christian. Writing in one of the most liberal newspapers in America, his voice is surprisingly refreshing and wise. Recently, he wrote a column highlighting the difference between a libertarian and a libertine.

Former Republican senator from Missouri, John Danforth, recently wrote, “Since the end of World War II, Republicans have stood firm against Russian designs in Europe. Now, populists have injected an isolationist element into the party.” The Economist also observed that “in place of a foreign policy that saw America as a protector of freedom and democracy is a new doctrine of America First that shuns allies (barring Israel) and would give up on the Ukrainians fighting off a Russian invasion even when no American soldiers are at risk . . . Although [Ronald] Reagan remains beatified within the party, the institutions he was aligned with have changed.” The party now stands for protectionism, isolationism and nativism.

Even a cursory study of history indicates that the central goal of geopolitics is maintaining a balance of power in the world. This was true in the ancient world with a balance between Egypt and the various Mesopotamian powers. It was true in the Napoleonic era when Napoleon sought dictatorial control over Europe, only to be defeated and a new balance established at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Both World War I and World War II saw Germany destroy the fragile balance of power in Europe. Post World War II saw a perilous balance of power maintained between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today the balance of power in the world is shattered and, in 2023, only the United States can restore this much-needed balance.

The story of the Pilgrims is the story of the beginning of the holiday we know as Thanksgiving. But sometimes in America, we equate the Pilgrims with the Puritans, and assume they were identical groups. They were not. Pilgrims were also known as “Separatists,” meaning they chose to separate from the established Church of England, the Anglican Church. The Puritans remained in the Anglican Church and chose to attempt to “purify” it from within—hence the name “Puritan.” In 1608, a group of Separatists, who would become the Pilgrims, fled England and settled in Holland. They desired freedom of worship there.

Lance Morrow, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, made this poignant observation: “A decent conscience, uncontaminated by ideology, knows what it is looking at. The torments that Hamas ‘militants’ inflicted on Oct. 7—mass slaughter, rape, the beheading of babies—amounted to behavior that the high court of any uncorrupted intelligence in the world would describe as evil.” Indeed, President Biden courageously spoke of the Hamas raids as “pure, unadulterated evil.”

Psalm 1 is one of my favorite Psalms, for it makes clear that life is about choices and, in effect, there are only two paths to choose in life—the path of a walk with God or the path of rejecting, defying God. Each choice has profound, eternally significant consequences. I have returned to this Psalm many times over the years—but especially now in 2023 when things seem to be in such a mess. Even though the human race has amassed immense knowledge, now accessible via the Internet, we seem incapable of stopping the pain we inflict on ourselves and on one another. Wars, dysfunction, disorder and chaos describe our culture, our world—and even many of our families and communities. We cannot halt “the path of the wicked,” this repetitive path that leads to the “way of evil” and “deep darkness.”