Weekly Word

In twenty-four years of writing Weekly Word, this week’s edition is for me the saddest.

The events of the past days and weeks are forcing us to face new realities. The America with which all post-war generations have grown up – symbolised by the Statue of Liberty welcoming the world’s ‘tired, poor, homeless, huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ – departed with the last administration. 

The America that since World War Two provided the leadership of the free world, that defended the four freedoms (of worship and speech, from fear and want), that (mostly) promoted democracy, that set up institutions to hold rogue nations accountable and to ensure global financial stability, that led the military alliance for protecting smaller nations against predatory autocracies, has now sided with those very autocracies. 

The America that recently voted with Russia, Belarus, North Korea and 15 other autocratic countries in the United Nations has turned her back on her historical identity.

How did this betrayal of western allegiances and values happen? 

Friend and foe alike have been perplexed by the undisguised admiration of the new Oval Office incumbent for the Russian dictator. Rumours of his recruitment by the KGB in 1987 would explain much, if true. 

However, American-Polish historian and author Anne Applebaum offered a credible explanation of the new administration’s direction last year in her latest book, Autocrats Inc.. No one should be surprised, she wrote. This was both predictable and predicted. 

‘Might is right’

Subtitled, The dictators who want to run the world, her book argues that despite different historical roots, goals and ideologies, modern autocrats are bound together by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power.

Instead of ideas, she writes, “the strongmen who lead Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan and perhaps three dozen others, share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them… ‘Autocracy, Inc.’ also collaborates to keep its members in power.” 

American allies, she warned last year, especially in Europe, needed to face up to this new reality and make some dramatic changes.

Her analysis aligns with the ideas Russian influencer Alexander Dugin has been peddling for years: that the unipolar world of Pax Americana has to give way to a multipolar world in which the imperial powers of Great America, Great Russia, Great China and Great India carve up the globe into various realms of hegemony. Putin has always wanted to return to the Concert of Europe formula of the post-Napoleonic era in which the big powers decided the fate of the small nations. ‘Might is right’. Putin has relentlessly pushed his theory of Russkiy Mir, the re-establishment of the Russian empire roughly corresponding to the former Soviet Union. For which Ukraine is an annoying obstacle.

The American president’s aim to ‘make America great again’ includes openly imperialist ambitions for expansion into Canada, Greenland, Panama, even Gaza. So why should not Russia claim Ukraine, and China Taiwan? Washington is sending very clear and dangerous signals.

Heavy heart

My heart is heavy as I write this, for yet another reason. (How I wish I was wrong!)

The election of this administration was enabled by millions of well-meaning but, in my view, misled evangelical voters who believed election promises about restoring Christian values in society and re-establishing conservative standards concerning marriage, abortion and gender issues. Personally I share some of these concerns. But the suffering, chaos and turbulence wrought for millions worldwide in a few short weeks of reckless destruction so far by this administration hardly reflects the prophetic admonition to uphold the virtues of justice, mercy and humility (Micah 6:8).

Yet a further layer of this tragedy is that many of my fellow believers have been swept up in a movement distorting the teaching of Loren Cunningham, YWAM’s founder, whom I knew for 57 years. The so-called Seven Mountains Movement distorts Loren’s teaching on lifespheres into a power-grabbing, take-back-control strategy, as I’ve written about elsewhere. Tomorrow evening (Sunday) you can listen to my Schuman Talk with Matthew Taylor about this movement of Christian nationalism that he fears is eroding American democracy. 

A word of hope 

Yet whatever the future brings, in America, Europe, Ukraine or elsewhere, God is still sovereign. This may be the end of an era, as it was for Augustine when Rome fell; or for the wartime generation enduring the terror of German nationalism. But this is not yet the end. 

We can draw strength from the response of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to threats from an angry Nebuchadnezzar (shades of last week’s Oval Office set-up). “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace,” they responded, “the God we serve is able to deliver us from it. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” We all know the sequel, as depicted on the centuries-old Amsterdam gable stone shown above. 

May the Ukrainian people who feel bewildered and betrayed by their strongest erstwhile ally experience the presence and protection of God in this Lenten season when we contemplate the betrayed Christ’s suffering… before God turned disaster into victory, death into resurrection. 

Till next week,