Here’s some good news: Russian state media is reporting this morning that US citizen Stephen Hubbard, held in Russia since 2022, has been released. Now to some bad news: according to the New York Times, “a mysterious Russian satellite moved threateningly close to a US commercial radar satellite that provides imagery to the Ukrainian military.”
Over the weekend, a satellite called Kosmos 2612 came within an estimated eighty-five feet of ICEYE-X36, a satellite that produces three-dimensional images of Earth’s surface under contract with Ukraine. Analysts say the Russian satellite likely intended to attack the US radar satellite in what would have been the first instance of warfare in orbit, but the Kremlin may have called off the operation at the eleventh hour. Kosmos 2612 could close in on ICEYE-X36 again, and five other Kosmos satellites also in orbit could join in nefarious actions overhead as well.
The incident illustrates new warnings that a space war could break out in the future. The destruction of our satellites could cripple military operations and critical national infrastructure, leading to information blackouts and a financial sector collapse. Analysts warn that such a conflict would return modern life to the nineteenth century.
“Sleepwalking into World War III?”
What is happening above us is happening below us as well: Foreign Policy warns that “an underwater shadow war is raging.” The article reviews Undersea War: The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World, a new book focusing on ocean floor cables that carry between 95 and 99 percent of global internet traffic. According to its author, both Russia and China are now damaging and threatening these cables.
Are these acts of war? When a reporter asked this question of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, he replied that the “damage and destruction of submarine cables” marks “a completely different transition between peace and war.”
Both stories illustrate an article by foreign affairs journalist Gideon Rachman titled, “Are we sleepwalking into World War III?” His Financial Times subtitle states, “As regional conflicts rage and revisionist powers challenge the established order, warnings of a new global conflagration are growing louder.”
I saw his article just after reading The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History by Odd Arne Westad. The Yale historian argues that the world looks alarmingly similar to geopolitical circumstances just prior to World War I, a global conflict that led to forty million casualties.
However, I don’t want to write about a possible world war in the future any more than you want to read about one. We are both suffering from what British journalist Janan Ganesh calls “pessimism fatigue,” the result of living through the threat of nuclear annihilation, followed by the successive threats of jihadist terrorism, the pandemic, and now AI and world war.
By now, you likely expect me to offer trust in God as the antidote to such fatigue. Remembering that the Lord is still on his throne and that he still rules the universe encourages us to choose faith over fear.
But there’s a catch.
“All the thrills of religion and none of the cost”
A group of sociologists recently studied what they call “secular rationalism,” the belief that science is the only way to understand the world and that morality should rest on reason rather than religious teachings. There are three ways of responding to this worldview:
- You can be a secular rationalist while still believing in God or attending religious services.
- You can be a secular rationalist while rejecting religion.
- You can be religious while rejecting secular rationalism.
Which of the three groups is most likely to also believe in magic? The first, by far.
Here’s why: Secular rationalists who hold spiritual beliefs get to define such beliefs however they wish. They stand outside the orthodoxies of a particular religion and approach spirituality as a buffet from which they can choose what they want. In essence, they believe about God whatever helps them be their own god (Genesis 3:5).
I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’s observation in Mere Christianity regarding what he called the “Life-Force,” an amorphous something behind the observable world. (Star Wars characters might call it “The Force.”) According to Lewis,
The Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
The “food” of Jesus today
Believing in God in the face of global threats is not enough. Such faith empowers us to face our fears only if it leads us to submit our lives fully to the living Lord Jesus. A shelter only helps those who stand within its protection. An umbrella in the car is no good when you’re caught outside in the rain.
Part of submitting ourselves to the Spirit each day is being obedient to what he then calls us to do. In this way, we are not only trusting our Father with our greatest challenges, but we are helping to meet them as we fulfill our kingdom assignment. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).
Jesus testified, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). He continues such obedience today in and through our lives as his “body” in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27).
We can relate to him as our “Life-Force” or as our Lord, but not both.
Which would Jesus say you have chosen today?
Quote for the day:
“There are very few men who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands and let themselves be formed by his grace.” —Ignatius of Loyola
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