When President Trump takes the stage in Davos, Switzerland, later today for his speech at this year’s World Economic Forum, it will mark the first time he’s visited the conference in person in six years. He appeared via video conference at last year’s event to call for a quick end to the war in Ukraine and to foreshadow the tariffs and other economic policies he would unleash in the months to come.

Overall, the speech set the tone for his first year in office, even if it came in contrast to the theme of “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” And most expect today’s speech to fall along similar lines.

The theme of this year’s conference is “A Spirit of Dialogue,” and expectations are mixed on how much genuine dialogue will occur. A White House official said the president is expected to focus on affordability while calling on Europe to fall in line on both Greenland and the policies he will argue “propelled the United States to lead the world in economic growth.”

But while the world waits to see what he will say, it’s the meetings behind the scenes that could end up being the most significant aspect of the event.

The meetings that matter

President Trump is taking some of his cabinet’s most important (and busiest) people with him. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and special envoy Steve Witkoff are all expected to attend the conference alongside the president. Their presence has many speculating that Trump intends to accomplish far more than simply address the world during his time in Switzerland.

Among those expected endeavors, the most important are thought to be:

• A meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where some believe they will sign new security guarantees that could pave the road for a ceasefire with Russia.
• The first meeting for the newly formed “Board of Peace,” which has grown more controversial in recent days after a draft of its charter revealed its members intend to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” That work would require a far greater scope and scale than simply facilitating the rebuilding of Gaza, and has many concerned that Trump is attempting to start a new NATO, but under his leadership.
• An advancement of conversations concerning Greenland, with the President speculating that “things are going to work out pretty well, actually. So, I think something’s going to happen that’s going to be very good for everybody.” Most doubt such a quick resolution is possible, but as I discussed in yesterday’s edition of The Focus, the ice-covered island is shaping up to be an inflection point after which America’s relationship with its European allies is likely to change in lasting and substantial ways, regardless of which path they take.
• Other international conflicts, like the evolving situation in Iran and China’s continued efforts to convince the world that it should be allowed to take Taiwan. It’s quite possible that the manner in which the Greenland situation plays itself out could have a direct effect on China’s willingness to advance on the much-coveted island near its own borders.

Against the backdrop of these geopolitical developments, the question of just what kind of world will be waiting for global leaders this time next year remains as difficult to answer as at any point in recent history. As a result, the conference itself has seen a similarly substantial shift in its focus.

The world has more pressing issues

Across recent years, the World Economic Forum has seemed primarily concerned with “high-minded panel discussions about climate change, caring for refugees, and the future of health care.” It was essentially a venue for the world’s elites to decide on the most direct path to living on the right side of history—at least as they saw it.

This year, however, that’s all changed quite a bit.

While climate change, poverty, and other social ills still have their place in the proceedings, the largest crowds and most significant interest are centered on artificial intelligence and technological advancement. Attendees aren’t really even trying to pretend that the social and cultural aspects matter to the same degree as before.

In short, the world has more pressing issues than climate change, and the conference’s content reflects that reality.

Perhaps that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though. After all, civilizations have prioritized their most immediate concerns for most of human history, and the people who didn’t were rarely given the opportunity to repeat that decision.

When used well, that necessary reordering of priorities can clarify what’s truly important in ways that a general sense of peace or security cannot. In fact, many of the most important theological principles at the core of how we understand God and the nature of salvation were codified for that very same reason, and we would each do well to apply that lesson to our own lives today.

God’s redemption of our desperation

Starting in the 300s, the church embarked upon a series of councils to clarify some of the most divisive and challenging aspects of understanding our infinite God. However, the vast majority of these councils occurred in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, especially once you get to the 400s.

While the Emperor’s proximity in Constantinople explains part of that reasoning, the barbarian tribes that routinely invaded the Western half of the Empire played a much more significant role.

As the church began to discover, it’s far easier to find the time to debate theological minutiae when there’s not a horde of traveling armies attempting to burn your villages and kill your people. Consequently, the East had the margin to debate these issues while the West was forced to rely on the teachings that they’d always considered true, and then try not to die before they could put them into practice. And heresy was often less of a problem there as a result.

In the same way, the clarity we receive while in the midst of difficult times is often part of God’s redemption of those inevitable trials. Some lessons can only be taught when our focus is forced on him out of a desperate recognition of our need for his power, presence, and peace in our lives.

Our smaller problems don’t go away, but they can be easier to put in their proper place.

So, are there any issues in your life that have risen to a far greater place of importance than they actually warrant? Is God trying to get your attention and recalibrate your priorities?

Now is the best time to ask him.

Quote of the day:

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” —Francis Chan

Our latest website resources:

• Faith and politics, yoga and Christian practice, salvation, and hope in a divided culture
• Is Greenland worth what it will cost the United States?
• Why the Buffalo Bills were right to fire Sean McDermott
• Texas A&M University removes Plato from a philosophy course
• ICE shooting, Iran on edge, Golden Globes & postseason football | Ep. 52

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Surprising virtually no one, the University of Indiana completed one of the most dominant seasons in NCAA football history with its victory last night over the University of Miami, winning the College Football Playoff National Championship game. But what you may not know is that faith was at the center of the game for many who competed on the field and on the sidelines.

• Miami’s head coach, Mario Cristobal, and his family are members of their local St. Augustine Parish.
• So is the family of Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback whose epic twelve-yard run won the game for Indiana.
• His outstanding receiver, Omar Cooper Jr., calls himself a “Follower of Christ” on his Instagram bio; many of his posts include Scripture.
• Miami’s star quarterback, Carson Beck, said recently, “I feel like God has a plan in everything he does.”
• One of his top receivers, Xavier Restrepo, is public about his faith as well.

I could go on, but you get the point. Amid news that more Protestant churches in the US closed than opened in 2024, as supernaturalism declines and secularism advances, it is gratifying to see prominent people who make their faith in Christ prominent.

However, if you’re looking for encouragement to trust Jesus with your life, you don’t need to look to sports celebrities, well-known pastors, or even apologists like me.

The evidence is everywhere—literally.

 “Both religion and science are founded on faith”

In his Discourse Against the Pagans, St. Athanasius (died AD 373) reasoned:

It is right that creation should exist as [God] has made it and as we see it happening, because this is his will, which no one would deny. For if the movement of the universe were irrational, and the world rolled on in random fashion, one would be justified in disbelieving what we say. But if the world is founded on reason, wisdom, and science, and is filled with orderly beauty, then it must owe its origin and order to none other than the Word of God.

His argument raised a point I had not considered before. I was familiar with the teleological argument that moves from the design of the world to the existence of a Great Designer. If you found a watch on the ground, you would assume that a watchmaker exists. How much more complex is the world than a watch?

I was also familiar with the anthropic principle that notes how perfectly ordered the universe is to sustain human life as we know it. But I had not thought about the existence of the “reason, wisdom, and science” by which the universe itself is “founded.”

The law of gravity, for example, predated any presumed evolutionary movements by which an atheist might seek to explain the existence of life. This force even explains and predates the formation of planets and their spinning and rotational motions.

Electrons are similarly considered “elementary particles,” meaning that they are not made of smaller parts. Science has no explanation for why they exist, but without them, the universe would not exist.

As the eminent theoretical physicist Paul Davies wrote in the New York Times, “Both religion and science are founded on faith—namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws.”

“Harmonious, joyful, flourishing life”

The order that made possible the universe encompasses your life today as well. It is logically contradictory for a God of reason and love to create an ordered universe but then fill it with disordered, undesigned life.

To the contrary, as Tim Keller wrote in The Reason for God:

Unique among the creation accounts, the Bible depicts a world that is brimming with dynamic, abundant forms of life that are perfectly interwoven, interdependent, and mutually enhancing and enriching. The Creator’s response to this is delight. He keeps repeating that it is good. When he creates human beings, he instructs them to continue to cultivate and draw out the vast resources of creation like a gardener does in a garden (his emphasis).

Keller then noted:

The Hebrew word for this perfect, harmonious interdependence among all parts of creation is called shalom. We translate it as “peace,” but the English word is basically negative, referring to the absence of trouble or hostility. The Hebrew word means much more than that. It means absolute wholeness—full, harmonious, joyful, flourishing life (his italics).

As just one example, take a moment to consider the design of your hand, composed of twenty-nine bones, twenty-nine joints, well more than one hundred ligaments, thirty-five muscles, and a vast array of arteries and nerves. Your fingers have no muscles—they are moved by tendons threaded through them and attached to muscles in your forearm. Approximately a quarter of the part of your brain that controls body movement is devoted to your hand.

The vein patterns and skin creases in your hand are as unique to you as your fingerprints. Your thumb is so remarkably designed that Isaac Newton could say, “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

If your Father can design your hand, think how he can design your life.

“I am happy that I didn’t sneeze”

In his last speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told of the time he was autographing books in New York City when a woman stabbed him in his chest. X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of his aorta, the main artery. The New York Times reported the next morning that if he had sneezed, he would have died.

In his address on April 3, 1968, he told his supporters, “I am happy that I didn’t sneeze.” If he had, he would not have delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech, received the Nobel Peace Prize, or seen the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.

Then Dr. King closed his message the day before he was assassinated with these words:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Have yours?

NOTE: For more on faith, providence, and life purpose, please see my latest website article, “Why the Buffalo Bills were right to fire Sean McDermott.”

Quote for the day:

“Grace makes the promise and providence the payment.” —John Flavel (1620–91)

Our latest website resources:

• Are you SAD? How to fight against the winter blues
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• Will Iran’s government fall as protests continue?
• ICE shooting, Iran on edge, Golden Globes & postseason football
• How do I study the Bible when it feels boring?

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The Human Rights Activists News Agency said Sunday it has verified at least 3,919 deaths during a massive wave of protests that swept Iran in recent weeks, and fears the number could be significantly higher. Other human rights groups and insiders estimate that between twelve and fifteen thousand people were killed.

Demonstrations that began in late December have reportedly subsided as “an extraordinarily violent crackdown by Iranian security forces appears to have succeeded for now in driving protesters from the streets.” Foreign Policy calls the regime’s response “the greatest massacre in modern Iranian history.”

Why would a government kill so many of its own people?

How can it do so and survive?

Fighting the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan”

The recent protests were sparked by an economic crisis that can be fixed only if Iran gets relief from international sanctions. This would require the regime to compromise on its nuclear and missile programs. Such compromise would obviously be in the best interest of the Iranian people.

However, these programs are essential to the government’s Islamist purpose: opposing the US (the “Great Satan”) and Israel (the “Little Satan”) to establish a “true” Islamic state that will hasten the coming of the Mahdi, their messiah.

In this ideological frame, Western pressure makes Iran’s case that they are fighting for the existential survival of Islam. Protests against the government are viewed as opposition to Islam. The regime is therefore willing to kill as many of its own people as necessary to survive. Like autocrats in Cuba, China, Russia, and North Korea, they claim that such sacrifices are outweighed by the ultimate benefit of their ideology for the collective good.

By contrast, our Declaration of Independence claims that governments “are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is why we are ultimately governed by laws, not people, and why we elect people to represent us in making and enforcing these laws.

However, while our system provides checks and balances on unaccountable individual power, its intended secularism cannot articulate those transcendent purposes and morality that lead to ultimate flourishing. The same governmental system that abolished slavery in 1865 also produced Roe v. Wade in 1973, leading to the deaths of more than sixty-five million babies in the US.

“Sanctity of Life Sunday” was observed in churches across the nation yesterday to remind us that the battle for life continues. And to call us each to do our part.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question”

Service is the intended theme of today’s holiday. According to the Smithsonian, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is “the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities.” As Americans pause to remember the great civil rights leader, we do well to remember the ideology that inspired him.

Dr. King stated, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” He added,

Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Where, however, does our fallen culture find such a “heart full of grace”?

In How Christianity Changed Civilization . . . And Must Do So Again, historians Mark Aquilina and James L. Papandrea outline seven “revolutions” birthed by the Christian movement that changed the world:

1. “A revolution of the individual affirmed that all people are created equal, in the image of God, and no one is expendable.”
2. “A revolution of the home affirmed it as a place of safety and love, where women and children are not to be exploited.”
3. “A revolution of the workplace affirmed that people are not property, that they must be free to choose their work, and that they must be given free time for worship, for artistic expression, and for the enjoyment of their loved ones.”
4. “A revolution of religion taught the world that God is love.”
5. “A revolution of the community taught people to love their neighbor.”
6. “A revolution of the way people thought about life and death rejected the culture of death and affirmed a culture of life and of hope, encouraging people to stand up for human rights.”
7. “A revolution of government set up the ideal that rulers should serve those whom they rule (not the other way around), and that all people should enjoy freedom of religion.”

In other words, when Jesus began saving souls and changing lives, he produced a movement of hearts “full of grace.” And this grace changes hearts and nations still today.

When an individual has “started living”

Albert Einstein noted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” But when we submit our lives daily to Jesus in the “white funeral” that dies to ourselves and ask him to remake us like himself (2 Corinthians 3:18), we experience the “amazing grace” that changed John Newton and changes all who embrace it today.

I visited Newton’s graveside in England several years ago, where I found the epitaph he wrote for himself:

John Newton, Clerk, Once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.

If Jesus is your Lord, you have been “preserved, restored, [and] pardoned” as well. If you have submitted your life to him as your Lord today, you will “preach the faith” as an inevitable and empowering consequence of his Spirit’s work in your life.

According to Dr. King,

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

Have you “started living” yet?

Quote for the day:

“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Our latest website resources:

• Are you SAD? How to fight against the winter blues
• Texas A&M University removes Plato from a philosophy course
• Will Iran’s government fall as protests continue?
• ICE shooting, Iran on edge, Golden Globes & postseason football
• How do I study the Bible when it feels boring?

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