Since Time magazine first began selecting a Person of the Year in 1927, it reports that “the person chosen has typically been a ruler over traditional domains of power.” Fourteen US presidents, five leaders of Russia or the Soviet Union, and three popes have been recognized, for example. And yet, as Time notes, “The person whose singular influence was revealed throughout 2023 has held none of these roles—or anything remotely similar.” Singer–songwriter Taylor Swift was chosen because “in a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, [she] found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light.”

Time magazine explains that in her music, Taylor Swift is “committed to validating the dreams, feelings, and experiences of people, especially women, who felt overlooked and regularly underestimated.” As a result, “So many have turned to [her] tales because they’ve been so disappointed by the storylines that emerge elsewhere in society.”

“The battle of the Red Sea” is intensifying

Let’s consider some of the storylines emerging today.

Swift’s selection was announced a day before the eighty-second anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It comes as Europe is facing what one authority called a “huge risk” of terrorist attacks over the Christmas period. As one example, a tourist was killed and two others were injured Saturday in a terrorist assault near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The killer had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Closer to home, a gunman killed three people and wounded a fourth yesterday on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The gunman was shot dead by police; a motive has not yet been established. This after a Texas man killed six people, including his parents, in separate attacks earlier this week.

Meanwhile, what the Telegraph calls “the battle of the Red Sea” is intensifying daily. Ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck three commercial ships Sunday, while a US warship shot down three drones in self-defense. According to US Central Command, “These attacks represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security.” Yesterday, Israel intercepted a missile over the Red Sea targeting Eilat, a southern coastal city I have visited often over the years. The US Navy also shot down a drone originating from a part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

All this while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are continuing their fight against Hamas in Gaza, seeking to remove what the Telegraph calls “a terrorist organization bent on killing civilians, taking hostages, using civilians to shield its own fighters, and doing its best to wipe Israel off the map.”

According to the writer, the IDF is “the most moral army on earth” for this reason: “The terrorists have surrounded themselves with innocent civilians inside hospitals. Knowing that, Israel risks the lives of its soldiers to infiltrate these structures, take down Hamas fighters, one by one, and destroy their terror tunnels underneath. Put bluntly, Israel risks the lives of its own soldiers to spare the lives of innocent Palestinians. Their terrorist enemy does the exact opposite. It uses innocent civilians to protect its soldiers.”

“The anarchy and slaughter of great-power warfare”

Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead was a student and friend of Henry Kissinger. In a retrospective on the statesman’s recent death, Mead writes:

Kissinger understood something that too many Americans, on the left and the right, find difficult to grasp: Power and morality aren’t opposites. Rather, power is the platform that makes moral action possible for a state. And morality isn’t a set of rules and laws that states are expected to obey. Rather, in international relations, morality involves creating an order that prevents the anarchy and slaughter of great-power warfare. Such an order gains legitimacy not by its perfect adherence to a religious or secular moral code, but by its ability to preserve values and conditions that allow civilizations, and the human beings who inhabit them, to flourish.

As a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany who later fought the Germans and helped liberate one of their concentration camps, Kissinger experienced human depravity firsthand. He understood the brutality of humans against humans we are witnessing today. In his view, the purpose of political power is to create an order that mitigates this depravity as fully as possible.

However, despite the combined efforts of leaders and nations across eight decades, conflict in the Middle East continues. As does terrorism and other violence escalating around the globe.

This is why, as the Advent week of hope reminds us, our broken world desperately needs the transformational hope found only in Christ. Like the shepherds who “made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child” (Luke 2:17), you and I are commissioned by God to give the Christmas gift of transforming hope to everyone we can.

How to measure our love for God

Our willingness to share our hope in Christ is based not only on the fallenness of our world but especially on our love for our Lord.

We can measure our love for someone by our love for those they love. If you truly love me, you will love my family. We love our Lord to the degree that we love those he loves—and he loves everyone (John 3:16). And we love those he loves to the degree that we share what is best with them, whatever the cost to ourselves.

Would you take a moment to ask Jesus if there is someone you know who especially needs to experience his hope in your compassion today?

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Israel accused the United Nations on Monday of failing to respond adequately to accounts that Hamas carried out widespread sexual violence against women when it attacked Israel on October 7. According to Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, “Sadly, the very international bodies that are supposedly the defenders of all women showed that when it comes to Israelis, indifference is acceptable.”

About one hundred and fifty activists also marched in front of the UN headquarters. One speaker said, “When the institutions that are globally mandated to protect women stay silent—not only international law loses meaning; humanity’s shared values lose meaning.” Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly voiced his anger that the international community is ignoring atrocities against Israeli women.

Their statements highlight one of the great travesties resulting from Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7: despite overwhelming evidence of Hamas’s brutal crimes against women, their brutality has been ignored, described as morally equivalent to Israel’s response in Gaza, or even defended in the West.

“Reminiscent of a dark time in history”

Some of this silence and even support for Hamas can be explained simply as antisemitism. For example, protesters targeted a Jewish-owned kosher falafel shop in Philadelphia with chants of “genocide,” moving Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) to call the demonstration “a blatant act of antisemitism” and to warn, “This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Lance Morrow describes the rising antisemitism after October 7 as “the return of pure hatred of the Jews.” However, as Morrow notes, “The new Jew-haters—especially young people on campuses—think of themselves as perfectly virtuous. What is a thousand times worse, they think of their Jew-hatred as righteous. It’s morally fashionable among them.”

The reasons have been well documented: many in this generation have been taught that Israel stole, occupied, and colonized its land from its rightful Palestinian owners. Viewed through the prism of Critical Theory, the Jews are seen as majority oppressors of the oppressed Palestinian minority.

In a recent poll, 48 percent of college-age students said they sided with Hamas in its war with Israel. One college student was adamant: “Gaza is not a two-sided war. What is happening is the resistance of the oppressed against their oppressor.”

But many who are supporting Hamas have also been vocal in fighting for gender equality. Why, then, are they ignoring or justifying the Hamas terrorists’ violence against women?

Beware the “licensing effect”

For decades, many in academia have embraced the postmodern claim that all truth claims are relative and subjective, a worldview that has produced generations of moral confusion. As a result, when faced with conflicting truth claims, many think they are free to accept only those that align with their personal beliefs.

For example, many claim that Israel is a genocidal “occupier” of Palestine and therefore believe that the crimes of its “victims” can be justifiably ignored or justified. But not just the Jews are in jeopardy: anyone whose beliefs run counter to the ideologies of the cultural elite and the universities that produce them are in similar danger. As I have warned often in recent years, this danger especially includes those of us who defend biblical truth in the face of escalating sexual immorality.

Paradoxically (and nonsensically), the champions of tolerance insist that those they judge “intolerant” must not be tolerated. This is an example of the “licensing effect” by which people who believe they are virtuous worry less about their own behavior, making them more susceptible to immorality.

As a result, those who have biblical answers to the moral issues of our time are rejected before these answers can be shared with those who need them most. If you are convinced that all doctors are dangerous to society, you won’t listen to their medical advice, no matter how sick you become. This is one of the ways Satan has “blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Ben Franklin’s advice on persuasion

During this Advent week of hope, how can we share the hope of Christ with people who do not believe they need such hope?

As we continue to reflect on the shepherds in the Christmas story, consider their motivation in leaving their flocks to worship the Christ: they were told that “a Savior” had been born “unto you” and that he would bring “peace” to those who believe in him (Luke 2:11, 14).

As Ben Franklin advised: “If you would persuade, appeal to interest, not to reason.”

Every human, even the most postmodern among us, is created for intimacy with our Creator. It is in their innate interest to place their hope for the present and the future in his transforming love and grace. However, for the reasons we have discussed today, they are unlikely to consider logical appeals for the gospel.

What they cannot ignore, however, is its results in our lives.

The more intimately we know Jesus, the more persuasively we can make him known. As Christ lives “in” us (Colossians 1:27), the Spirit makes us more like Jesus (Romans 8:29). As a result, we love those who do not love us (1 Peter 4:8). We serve those who reject us (cf. John 13:14). We pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44).

And, as the hymn suggests, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Who will know that you’re a Christian today?

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