A Prayer for All of Us
Providence
9.28.26
An American airman shot down over Iran—the weapons systems officer in the backseat of an F-15E, callsign “Dude 44 Bravo”—recently shared what went through his mind as he ejected from his crippled aircraft. “When I looked up and saw no parachute, that was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” he said during a “60 Minutes” interview. “So, I paused right then and I prayed, ‘Lord, your will be done. But if I’m getting through this, I need help.’”
In a sense, Dude 44 Bravo’s awful predicament and simple prayer serve as a metaphor and a roadmap for all of us.
Sledgehammer
The global landscape is, to borrow a word, terrifying.
Russia is bludgeoning Ukraine, sabotaging NATO infrastructure, lobbing attack-drones into Poland and the Baltics, sharing weapons and intelligence with Iran and North Korea, providing targeting data to support Houthi attacks against U.S. vessels, and putting its “whole economy…on a war footing,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte reports.
China is brandishing the world’s largest navy, mushrooming its nuclear arsenal, dress-rehearsing a Taiwan invasion, conducting a cyber-siege of the free world and sharing satellite imagery with Iran to attack U.S. forces.
Iran has delivered weapons to Russia, targeted and killed U.S. troops, launched cyberattacks against U.S. water utilities, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, strangled the global economy, and unleashed missiles and drones against a dozen countries. (Related, U.S. operations in and around Iran have burned through large chunks of America’s air-defense and stand-off weaponry.)
North Korea has sent ammunition and troops to fuel Putin’s war on Ukraine, shipped rockets to Hamas, and conducted countless missile tests threatening its neighbors.
These regimes are taking a sledgehammer to what’s been called the “rules-based democratic order” or “liberal international order.” These terms may seem esoteric, but they are just descriptions of how America and its allies tried to make the world work after World War II: They developed rules and norms of behavior; encouraged democratic governance; promoted liberal political and economic institutions; and expected governments to promote order within and across their borders.
Contrary to those who dismiss the liberal international order as some gauzy outgrowth of 1990s-era globalism, America’s leaders have long considered it essential to America’s security throughout the postwar era.
General George Marshall explained that “we fought to prevent Germany and Japan from imposing their kind of order on the world”—and that under the “cooperative idea of global order,” the free world would defend “a set of rules for global conduct.”
President Harry Truman adopted a policy that committed America “to bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.” Toward that end, he forged NATO, rescued South Korea and West Berlin, signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promoted tariff-lowering initiatives, and fielded a large peacetime military to buttress the postwar order.
President Ronald Reagan reinforced U.S. deterrent military strength, renewed America’s support for allies, wielded American might to enforce international law in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, used the bully pulpit and economic big stick to promote human rights, unveiled a free-trade zone spanning North America, and pledged to defend “a peaceful, prosperous and humane international order.”
President Bill Clinton explained, “The more that democracy and political and economic liberalization take hold in the world, the safer our nation is likely to be and the more our people are likely to prosper.” President George W. Bush argued that “A solid and productive transatlantic relationship is essential for international order” because “Europe and America share a common attachment to the fundamental values of freedom and democracy.” President Barack Obama lauded “an international order in which the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld…commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded… [and] disagreements are resolved peacefully.”
These leaders recognized that the liberal international order sustains American power—and must be sustained by American power. The Trump administration has taken a different course. Consider the administration’s trade war on allies; undermining of NATO, NATO members and NATO’s security guarantee; persistent strain of moral relativism vis-à-vis aggressor nations and their victims; inability to discern friend from foe; shrugging indifference to human rights; insistence that Americans “focus on ourselves”; injection of unpredictability and chaos into the world, rather than steadiness and assurance.
Gaps
The technology front, too, is edging toward terrifying. Industry leaders and policymakers struggle to grasp the ramifications of AI’s manipulation of data, CRISPR’s manipulation of genes, deep-fake manipulation of images; of pilotless planes that remove humans and risk from the calculus of war; of hypersonic weapons that scream toward their targets at a mile per second and cyberattacks that move at light-speed.
Our leaders need wisdom to navigate this brave new world—so do the rest of us. Yet there’s an expanding gap between knowledge and wisdom in our society, with the amount of knowledge exploding and our reserves of wisdom dwindling away. Faith, history and pillar civic institutions are wellsprings of wisdom. But a growing number of Americans aren’t drawing from those wellsprings.
Since the nation’s founding, Americans have believed religion serves as a foundation for free government and a repository for wisdom. We don’t have to worship on the same days or in the same ways to recognize this truth. Yet less than 50% of us are members of a house of worship—down from 64% in 2003, which was down from 76% in 1948.
Just half the American public knows when the Civil War was fought. Six in 10 cannot name the nations we fought in World War II. Only 55% of Millennials—now America’s largest generation—think “communism was and still is a problem.”
Just 26% of Americans can name our three branches government. Only 40% can list any of the First Amendment freedoms. Just 37% can name their member of Congress.
Instead of drinking from these wellsprings of wisdom, Americans are embracing selfie-narcissism. YouTube, Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and the like largely focus on the self: self-promotion, self-image, self-interest, self-congratulation. There’s no time or place for introspection, learning from or listening to others, or understanding the lessons of the past. The resulting “wisdom gap” leaves us ripe for manipulation, at risk of being swayed by the loudest or newest or flashiest thing, unmindful of danger, unaware our parachute has failed, unprepared for a painful impact.
Scarred
What can we do?
First, like Dude 44 Bravo, we can and should pray. “The real business of your life as a saved soul,” Oswald Chambers wrote, “is intercessory prayer.” Most of us think of this as interceding for individuals who are lost. But it can also mean interceding for our leaders, our country, our world. The good news amidst the bad is that God cares about this world He created and deigns to help us. As Benjamin Franklin observed, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men.”
Without a chute, the impact broke Dude 44 Bravo’s back, shattered an arm, busted a shoulder and wrenched an ankle. Yet his prayer was answered: Dude 44 Bravo was rescued from the desert and certain death by an army of special-operations personnel and an armada of aircraft. As an old hymn puts it, “Great things happen when God mixes with man!”
That brings us to a second action item. Martin Luther is credited with saying, “Pray like it all depends on God, then when you are done, go work like it all depends on you.” After praying, Dude 44 Bravo did his part by surviving the fall, evading capture and positioning himself to help his rescuers help him. In a similar way, we need to survive the fall by gathering around commonsense policies that will strengthen our standing and our defenses. More than eight in 10 of us believe America has a moral obligation to stand up for human rights and democracy; 79% of us support higher defense spending; 73% of us recognize that NATO is essential to America’s security and prosperity. We need to make sure those who represent us truly represent our worldview.
Closer to home, we need to listen to each other. The Lord gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. And we need to talk with the next generation about our country and our world—why America is great because America is good, how we’ve made it through other times of testing, what must be done to make it through this time. “All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” Reagan observed. “So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins.”
There’s no parachute to break our fall, no cavalry coming to our rescue. If we’re getting through this, we need God’s help; we need His grace and mercy; we need wisdom; we need each other. Even then, if we get through these dangerous days, we may be—like Dude 44 Bravo—left scarred and limping.