““Daniel received more insights into God’s dealings in history and the spiritual meaning of the contemporary affairs of his day than any of us are likely to “enjoy.” But even if we never have visions like Daniel’s (which is a relief as far as I’m concerned!) we can emulate both his life of persistent prayer and his bold faith in affirming the superiority of the reign of God over all human authorities.”

I am constantly thinking about the state of the world, about international relations, about geopolitics, about justice, about culture, about the history of ideas, about theology and philosophy, and so on. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if my major daily concerns were what colour shoes to wear, what party to go to, what selfie to post on Instagram, or what new outfit to buy.

I am afraid I will never know what that sort of life is like. So I am stuck worrying about some of the bigger things in life. Sure, as a believer I am to cast all my cares on Him, since He cares for me. But still, we are called to think God’s thoughts after him, and that includes caring about the things that he cares about, and so on.

So every night as I pray for my ever-growing list of people, I also pray a lot about world events, politics, and culture. I think about these things, I ask questions about these things, and I can often grieve over these things. No wonder some folks much prefer to be mainly concerned about what flavouring they will have on their next frappuccino.

Human suffering and injustice make up a lot of my thoughts and prayers. And I wonder how so much evil can take place, and why God might allow it. For example, I was born when the Cold War was raging, and for the first 36 years of my life much of the world lived under the spectre of godless communism.

After becoming a Christian at age 18, I rejected my own naïve and foolish love affair of Marxism and became much more conservative in outlook. Thus I often worried and prayed about those poor souls living in the hellish Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Like so many others, concern turned to joy when the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1989. But for 72 long years people suffered under Soviet communism. Entire generations of Russians knew little or nothing else. And I pray today for those suffering in North Korea and Communist China and in most Muslim-majority nations. And I ask God, ‘Why?’ and ‘How long?’

Tying these thoughts together are some things I was reading the other day. There are piles of my books laying around all over the place, and often when I peruse a few at the same time I will find interesting connections and associations. One older volume that I was going through is The Theme is Freedom by M. Stanton Evans (Regnery, 1994).

It looks at the fragile state of liberty in America and the West. He begins by noting what had occurred just a few years earlier:

We who survive into the final years of the twentieth century have witnessed an astounding moment in the biography of the human race: The collapse of communism’s despotic rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It would be hard to overstate the significance of this immense development, for the affected nations or the world in general.

With the demise of the evil empire, myriad states and subject peoples that suffered the yoke of Soviet bondage have been given a chance to breathe the air of freedom. In the brief period 1989-91, some 400 million captives staged a colossal jailbreak, along the way demolishing a tyrannical system once considered immune to challenge. This surely ranks among the greatest changes in human status, and global fortune, that have ever been recorded…

The lessons that may be learned from this transition are many, and profound. To date, however, there is little to indicate that we have learned them, or are about to. (p. 3)

Some might think his main concern here is political or social, but much of the book makes the case that without religion there is no real ground for liberty. And by religion he primarily means Christianity. Just one quote:

Christopher Dawson, the principal student of such matters, expresses the connection this way: “Without Christianity, there would no doubt have been some kind of civilization in the West, but it would have been quite a different civilization from that which we know: for it was only as Christendom—the society of Christian peoples—that the tribes and peoples and nations of the West acquired a common consciousness and a sense of cultural and spiritual unity.” (p. 28)

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