A reflection on geopolitics, morality, and our best future
On this day four years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine.
What became the largest ground war in Europe since World War II has reshaped global security, energy markets, and geopolitical alliances. Russian forces now occupy roughly one-fifth of Ukraine, with the front lines largely unchanged for months.
Attacks on Ukrainian energy, water, and railway infrastructure are continuing. The number of troops from both countries who have been killed, wounded, or missing is nearing two million. The war is forcing Russia to cannibalize its non-military economy to feed its war machine, with dire consequences for its future. By the end of last year, its army was losing more men than it could recruit.
Russia’s illegal and immoral attack on Ukraine continues to devastate Ukrainians as well. Millions have been uprooted from their homes, creating the largest and fastest displacement crisis in Europe since World War II. More than twelve million people have required humanitarian assistance.
Nor is this conflict likely to be limited to Ukraine.
After the war eventually ends, according to Finland’s 2025 military intelligence review, Moscow is expected to more than double the number of troops it stations along NATO’s northern frontiers. Last November, Germany’s defense minister said Russia would be ready to attack by 2029 and quoted “certain military historians” who said the continent had already lived through its “last peaceful summer.”
In December, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced that Russia could attack a NATO country in the next five years and warned that member states “should be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”
I’m certain that you believe Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine and his ongoing threats to the future of Europe to be morally wrong.
My question is, Why?
Would you save your dog or a stranger?
I’m not asking if you agree or disagree with Putin’s supposed justifications for his actions. Or whether you can marshal geopolitical arguments for or against his regime. I’m asking why you believe there are such categories as right and wrong.
Your answer is crucial, not just to wars and politics but to the way you live your life today.
Public intellectual and author Dennis Prager’s latest book, If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil, is being published today. I will read it as soon as possible, but I am grateful for the excerpt he shared with the Free Press. In it, he notes that humans can live by their feelings or their values, but not both.
He illustrates: If you would rather rescue your drowning dog than a drowning stranger, you are operating on feelings. If you prioritize the man you don’t know over the dog you love, you are operating on biblical values that identify humans as made in the image of God.
Unfortunately, as Prager writes, “The great moral tragedy of our time is that feelings have replaced values.” From abortion and euthanasia to the “sexual revolution” and all it has fostered, Americans are doing what feels right to them with no consideration for objective truths or moral standards.
In fact, many do not believe that such standards exist. They are absolutely certain that there are no absolute truths, despite the oxymoronic illogic of such a belief.
Then a horrific moral tragedy such as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine comes along, itself a consequence of such subjective immorality. And we are forced to grapple with the fact that if all morality is a matter of preference, we have no way to disagree with even the most monstrous evils in our world.
How to be moral people in a moral world
Of course, you and I know better.
We believe that our God is holy (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8) and that he has given us a book by which we can live according to the moral standards he requires (2 Timothy 3:16–17). We therefore have solid rational ground for branding Vladimir Putin’s atrocities as atrocities and his immorality as immoral. We can do the same with other “culture war” issues of our time.
Until, that is, we are forced to choose between feelings and values for ourselves.
I cannot think of the last time I faced a temptation in which I genuinely did not know right from wrong. In the moment, the conflict between what I want to do and what I know to do is the heart of the issue (cf. Romans 7:15–24). The same is true of omissions as well as commissions: “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17).
There is no legal way out of this moral quagmire. All the laws in the world cannot force us to change our feelings about what we want; only the methods by which we seek to obtain it.
This is why, if we want to be moral people in a moral world, we need the transformation only Jesus can bring.
When Jesus is making us like himself
One day, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lᴏʀᴅ as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6, 9). Until then, wars and conflicts, crimes and immorality will only cease to the degree that the Messiah, who will one day change the world, first changes us.
The path to our best future lies through our hearts.
This is why “preaching the word,” which was the core purpose of Jesus, must be ours as well (Mark 2:2). It is why sharing Christ with our neighbor is the most significant way we can love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39).
And it is why we need to know our Savior so intimately that we become the change we need to see.
You and I can know that Jesus is making us like himself when we no longer want to do the wrong things we used to do, and we want to do the right things we used to avoid.
By this measure, how close to him are you today?
Quote for the day:
“You change your life by changing your heart.” —Max Lucado
Our latest website resources:
Denison Forum
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 