A (0:00)

Foreign It's Monday, April 6, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian WorldView. Well, at 12:08am on Easter Sunday morning, that is to say, just this past Sunday, 1208am the President of the United States announced through a post on social media that that second F15 pilot who had been missing after the plane was shot down over Iran and had been rescued by American forces. Okay? So it was a really big story and it came as really good news to this nation. And I want us to think about this in geopolitical terms and understand what we're really looking at, not just in terms of a military conflict between the United States and Iran. We're looking at a clash of worldviews. So let me just make the worldview issues a little more clear. When the United States announced that the F15E Strike Eagle had been shot down, that's an enhanced tactical version of the F15, one of the most important aircraft in the history of American defense aviation. And when it was announced that the plane had been shot down over Iran, it was announced that one of the two pilots had been rescued, but the other was missing. And this went on over the course of time between Friday US Time and Sunday morning US Time. Now, time was running out because it was also announced that Iran had advertised a reward that to anyone there within the nation who might be able to find the pilot. And look, when you talk about Iran, you talk about this kind of situation, you're talking about a hostage leverage situation. That's exactly the way Iran has operated. Just remind yourselves of 1979, when the radical forces took control, took hostage all those Americans there in the US embassy, and held them for 444 days and released them only after President Jimmy Carter left office. President Reagan was just newly inaugurated. It was really a horrifying situation. And it is well known that that is how Iran has worked. If you have followed recent news stories, but they're not big on the front page headlines. In the main, Iran has kept up a business in hostages and in ransoms and in using hostages as political leverage. It was a nightmare scenario for the White House, a nightmare scenario for military planners and for commanders here in the United States. Because if indeed Iran had captured one of those American pilots and held him as a hostage, perhaps even threatening torture or public trial or public execution, any number of these things, it would have led to a disaster, and it would have been in itself a disaster. And that is one of the worldview Issues we need to think about for a moment. When we're looking at the conflict between the United States and. And Israel, and it's a combined effort, or at least a joint effort in some sense against Iran, we are looking at a clash of worldviews. Let me just state some of the obvious. There's a free press in the United States. There is no free press in Iran. In Iran, you have a repressive, theocratic Islamist government that basically is a combination of all the political power and all the religious power and all the militant power into one massive political experiment. It's a repressive political regime. It has led, of course, to the deaths of many, many people, many people within Iran. And it is because the regime carries out routine executions. It is a reign of terror. It has involved the use of torture. You can just look at all these different things, and we're talking about a very different political system based upon a very different worldview. So just to take the comparison again, in the United States, why would this issue be different than in Iran? Well, in the first place, in the most pragmatic level, is because the people in Iran know only what they are able to piece together based upon whatever the government tells them or whatever other news filters in one way or the other. And by the way, Iran has really cracked down on this in terms of the Internet. And by the way, we're being told that Iran and Russia are collaborating along with also China, it's reported in, trying to figure out how to have an Internet that's stable within their nation, but. But can basically be isolated from the rest of the World Wide Web. So in other words, where the government alone would have a monopoly in the control of information in the United States, there is also a very deep residual Christian conviction concerning the worth and dignity of every single human life. And thus you're looking at a massive mathematical imbalance. You're talking about all the people in the United States, all the people in Iran, and you're looking at how political leverage could come down to one human being, in this case, an American colonel, who, if captured by Iranian forces, would have given Iran the opportunity to use him as a political bargaining chip. His life would basically have been worth whatever the Iranian regime decided at any point it was worth. Now, when you talk about even the residual power, the Christian worldview in terms of human dignity, just realize, no. No American president can say, hey, it's just one pilot. Why do we care? It's just the cost of war now. Every president has to deal with the reality of casualties and Military engagement. But no American president can act like even a single life doesn't matter. And for instance, if you go back in American history, presidents, commanders in chief, according to the Constitution, have often written handwritten letters to the parents or to the spouses or to the families of fallen soldiers, airmen, sailors, wearing the US Military uniform. That is how seriously every single one of these casualties is taken. And that, again, is not based just in some kind of humanistic estimation of the worth of human beings. It is by any estimation. And Christians have to understand this continuing evidence of at least the residual conscience shaped by Christianity when it comes to human dignity and, and the worth of every single human being, every single human being made in God's image, where the worldview is very different. Human life is cheap. And in terms of many nations around the world, many cultures around the world, many worldviews around the world, it is apparent that human life is very, very cheap. Now, one way to understand this is just to flip the equation. Let's say that it was an Iranian pilot being held by the United States or by Israel or by our allies. What would happen? Well, you have the rule of law and you have the Geneva Conventions, and you have civilized nations, and I use that term intentionally. You have nations committed to a civilizational moral structure that says you have to treat prisoners of war with dignity. You have to treat them as your responsibility, and you cannot abuse them, you can't torture them. Now, has the United States ever made errors here? Of course, every single nation has made errors. But the fact is that in the United States, that is a matter of public interrogation. In other words, the American people don't put up with that. The American people would expect the American military and the American law enforcement and legal system to treat even a captured Iranian pilot with respect. But then you flip the equation. It's just not the same thing. This has been true in many other military conflicts, especially over the course of the 20th and into the 21st centuries. And so the United States learned this in many other ways. The Allies learned this when it came to, for example, the way that POWs were treated in various jurisdictions where they were caught one way or the other. The worst case scenario for many Americans in uniform was to be caught by Imperial Japan during the Second World War. There were other situations in which you had prisoners of war routinely abused as well as civilians routinely abused, murdered and massacred, even. And so again, it just points to that distinction in worldview. And if you had one Iranian pilot held by the United States, Iran would not take it nearly as seriously. As Americans would even just one pilot taken under Iranian terms and by Iranian authorities, it is just a matter of great thanksgiving that this pilot was indeed recovered. It turns out that's a very interesting story. So, for example, major media are reporting that it was a Special Forces operation that involved both the Army, Delta Force and Navy's famed SEAL Team 6, and they were on the ground there. It is also clear, and military forces have confirmed, that American forces used a very staged system of deception to try to buy time for this American pilot. It's also very clear that training really matters. That training comes down, as the military will often say, to a matter of immediately assessing the situation, immediately seeking to get away from the wreckage of an aircraft, immediately seeking to evade capture, immediately seeking to allow time for the American rescue to come. And by the way, that is based upon multiple considerations. The plane is a very expensive plane by some estimations. We're talking about planes that are approaching $100 million, if not more, in terms of value. But the fact is that human life is of infinitely greater value. Just to give you an economic comparison, they cost just one of these planes. The F15E Strike Eagle cost over $30 million back in 1998. It's not 1998, but here's the Christian worldview again. It's just a thing. It's just money. It's just a plane. It hurts to lose it. But the human beings ins of infinitely greater worth. Just to think about a distinction in worldview, just compare the Japanese imperial kamikaze pilots of World War II and the situation about the rescue of this pilot just Sunday morning announced by the President of the United States. It's a clash of worldviews, to be sure, and one we ought to see even as we are so thankful this particular American officer has been rescued. Okay, some other very interesting things going on. Just as we think about shifts in the war in Iran, one of the big questions is, what is the exit strategy? And, you know, there is a lot of criticism being directed at President Trump for a lack of a clear exit strategy. And yet this is one of those situations about war that is just proved over and over and over again. Getting into it is infinitely easier than getting out of it. One of the realities, and this comes down to very famous historians and theorists of war, like von Clausewitz, the German, or you could just look at many others. And that is that strategy is one thing. The reality of battle is a very different thing. And so one of the old maxims of war is that a war plan rarely survives first contact. With the enemy. That's just the way war goes. Now, is it true that we would all wish that President Trump would be just absolutely clear about his aims and absolutely clear about a deadline and absolutely clear about an exit strategy? The fact is that, of course, honestly, we would all like that. That doesn't mean that would be best for the nation, and it doesn't mean that it would serve the cause of the nation's national interest and peace in the region. It doesn't mean that it would serve that cause by having the president say out loud what those terms might be, even at any definite time. Those terms need to be made very definite and very clear to the Iranians. But in terms of public announcement, we are looking here at a fast changing, fast developing international situation in which you have armaments all over the place. And by the way, the armaments, just to remind ourselves once again, you did have President Trump say that Americans were in control of the air. And yet, just a matter of a day later, you had at least two American aircraft shot and shot down. One of them was the F15. Another was an A10 Warthog. It was able to get back out of Iranian airspace. A couple of other planes were destroyed on the ground by America, because in the Special Forces effort to be able to rescue that pilot from the F15, a couple of planes had to be left. And they weren't about to let the Iranians capture those planes or even come to understand the engineering of those planes. And so they destroyed them on the ground. So we are looking at a very volatile situation. We're also looking at a situation in which the Americans are saying, rightly, that Iran really doesn't have an air force any longer. It really doesn't have a navy any longer. But here's the wake up call for everybody. It turns out that drones and missiles, wherever they are and however they are launched, can actually make a difference. This is that asymmetrical warfare we've often talked about. But I want to take it to the next level. I just want to remind Americans there's a big lesson here. I guarantee you everyone around the world, every political leader, every president and prime minister, every general and admiral, is paying a lot of attention to this. And it is because it turns out that conceivably a teenage extremist with a drone could bring down a military aircraft, even the most sophisticated and most expensive and heavily armed aircraft. We are looking at a new situation. And one of the big things going on in the foreign policy world, in the defense world, the armed forces world, is an awful lot of conversation almost immediately about how this world is changing and fast. One of the first ways the change showed up was after Russia invaded Ukraine. And just by any conventional terms, Russia should have been able, as it claimed and as it thought, to basically wrap that up very quickly. But the Ukrainian people have fought back with great valor. They've also fought back ingeniously using some of this very kind of armament, and in particular drones and other forms of rather simple weaponry ingeniously deployed. And by the way, sometimes low tech aircraft with high tech components that turn out to be absolutely deadly. Okay, here's another strange thing. What is the skill set for this? It turns out, now don't take this the wrong way and parents, you do with this what you will. But it turns out that some of the skills in terms of coordination and understanding, they're actually honed by some young men playing video games. In other words, it turns out that some of this actually is transferable. Now, that doesn't justify your 15 year old spending hours playing video games, not to mention your 25 year old, but it does mean that the entire technology of war is shifting. And by the way, there's a double message in that. Okay, so it turns out that all of this is very different. A very different interface, as they say, a very different technology, but it's also a very different skill set. And it's a skill set that, at least in large part, it doesn't require some of the advanced technological expertise that Western nations had presumed. It might actually be something quite a bit simpler. And sometimes in this new situation of warfare, simple can be exceedingly deadly. I mentioned another irony in all of this, and that is that Ukrainians took what they had obtained as a major drone that Ukraine wanted to use. It was an Iranian drone. And then the Ukrainians gave it to US defense officials who basically improved on the drone. And the drone is now being used again, based on an Iranian drone. It's being used by the American military in Iran. Okay, I want to talk about something else. And this is connected, but it's a related story. This has to do with statements made by the Pope and by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the military endeavors there in Iran. And there's a big story behind this. Let's just take the Pope first, the Pope. And of course, this is Pope Leo xiv, the first US Born, born Pope. The Vatican had been announcing that he was going to make in connection with Easter observances. He was going to be making some statements calling for peace. And he did, as a matter of Fact. And so in his first Easter address delivered as pope, he said such things as this, quote, we are growing accustomed to violence, indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people, indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division, indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce. He also said in his remarks in the Vatican, let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue, not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them. He was speaking, according here, to the Telegraph in London, to 50,000 Catholic faithful who had gathered there in St Peter's Square. He went on to say, quote, on this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implored the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that makes us feel powerless in the face of evil. In statements that the pope, Pope Leo xiv, had made on Palm Sunday the week before, he said that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. Okay, so let's just step back for a moment. First of all, let's just remind ourselves this is the Catholic Pope, the Roman Catholic Pontiff we're talking about, the Pope, who is the head and recognizes the spiritual head, the supreme head of the church on earth among all Catholics. And it is an office that Protestants, to say the very least, do not recognize. And by the way, a part of the practical reason that Protestants do not recognize the papacy is that popes tend to make comments like this. The opposition to the papacy is actually grounded very much in theology. It's an unbiblical office. But here's the thing. Thing. Why are these kinds of statements so absolutely predictable? And when it comes to Leo xiv, he's really following the example of Pope Francis I, his predecessor. And remember, this is Pope Leo XIV's first Easter, just yesterday. And so that means that he's been Pope less than a year. But the point is that when you're looking at all of this, we are looking at the fact that the Pope has been making statements that basically come down to be nice, be sweet, stop fighting. Now, all of this would be less a matter of international affairs and international news if the Pope was not also recognized by so many around the world and didn't make the claim to being a secular leader of a secular state as well. So the Pope is basically the crowned head, so to speak, of a state, or at least of a political unit, the Vatican state. The point is, when you have a Pope making this kind of statement. We just need to wonder, how does he come up with this and what is the context? Because insofar as he just comes out and says, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant us peace to a world ravaged by wars, okay, you can't be against that. No Christian would be against calling upon the Lord to grant peace to the world, a world ravaged by wars. But the fact is, what isn't recognized here is what, in truth, the Roman Catholic Church has recognized in terms of its official teaching. And that is that there is evil in the world, and there are times when evil has to be restrained, evil has to be confronted, and evil has to be defeated. And so that's a part of just war theory, which is also an official part of the teaching of the Catholic Church. But over the course of now, especially the last two papacies. But you can also say that a succession of popes have made statements very much like this. You're accustomed to popes stating in one way or another, in one context or another, that everyone should just stop fighting and seek peace. But, you know, there are times in which it is really clear that one side must prevail and the other not prevail. That's just very clear. And that's what's missing from this moral context. And when it comes to Iran, there is not a pope, certainly not this Pope, who has any excuse for not knowing what Iran really represents. And the clash of worldviews that is involved here and the history, of course, in terms of violence and all kinds of things coming from Iran. I was particularly interested when the Pope made the statement on Palm Sunday that the Lord does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war. Well, I guess I can understand one sense in which he would say this. The direct quote, God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. Okay, does that mean that both sides are just morally equal? Does that mean that God does not hear in a particular way the prayers that are, we'll say, parallel with righteousness and with long term peace and stability? I don't think this is a coherent argument. And I do think it's one that I think even most thoughtful Catholics around the world, and I have so many Catholic friends, so many thoughtful Catholic friends, I think most of them are looking at this and saying, well, that's just not something that the world's going to pay much attention to. And I know a lot of Catholic moral theologians who, taking Catholic moral argument very seriously, would not pull back at all from calls for peace. But who would recognize sometimes peace has to be achieved by some kind of action that can only be defined as war. But now I want to shift to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Communion, not exactly the same kind of office claimed as the Pope, but the highest cleric, the highest clergy person in the Anglican Communion and in the Church of England. Sarah Mullally is the first woman to serve in that role in more than 1500 years. So you have headlines such as, for the first time, a woman becomes Anglican leader. So this came just a matter of a couple weeks ago. And so this first Easter yesterday for the new archbishop gave her the opportunity to speak to these issues. And in her comments, she said, quote, this week, our gaze and our prayers have been turned toward the land where Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. Today, as we shout with joy that Christ is risen, let us pray and call with renewed urgency for an end to the violence and destruction in the Middle east and Gulf. May our Christian sisters and brothers know and celebrate the hope of the empty tomb, and may all people of the region receive the the peace, justice and freedom they long for. I'm just going to say that that's not a wrongly worded prayer. It's just in the context of understanding that it is not an equal moral context. And there are all kinds of criticisms that can be laid against the United States and Israel. And by the way, in a free society, both of them are free societies, people are free to make these kinds of criticisms. But it is still categorically different than what we're talking about, about in Iran. And there's plenty of history to prove this. I mean, it's not like this isn't well attested and well known. It's not like her own government doesn't believe this. All right. But I do want to go back to the last days in March when she was confirmed and installed. Enthroned is actually the word. Don't you love that? Enthroned as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. And so this has led to a lot of debate and discussion and even division in the Anglican in communion. And I'm going to say it's over a very legitimate question. And that has to do with whether or not a woman is biblically qualified to hold the pastoral office, to serve as pastor, to serve in a biblical sense in this way. And of course, in this sense, she is a pastor to pastors and even an enthroned pastor to pastors. And so many people are looking at this. It's interesting to see some very liberal Catholic women lamenting that the Catholics don't have a female priesthood, whereas the Church of England now does, along with the Episcopal Church in the United States and many others in more liberal countries. The split in the Anglican Communion is likely to come because you have some national churches, such as in Africa, where they're just not going to accept a woman in this kind of role. But it's not just that. And this is what I want to point out. It's never just this or just that. Because when you look at a pattern of distinction in theology between conservatives and liberals, it's not going to be just this. It's going to be several things together. Sometimes it's just one thread. You pull on that thread and then you see the entire problem in the tear and the fabric. So in other words, it's not going to be just as. If you could say just, and I don't mean just, a woman Archbishop of Canterbury. That's a profound problem in and of itself. I think it's a violation of Scripture. But that's a violation of Scripture that doesn't start with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I believe it starts with the Pastoral office. But beyond that, it's also tied to LGBTQ affirmations and other things that, one way or another, are all tied hermeneutically, that is, in terms of the interpretation of Scripture and the authority of Scripture to each other. So it's just another sign of the fact that all of these things are tied together. It's also interesting, and I'll just leave it at this for today, it's also interesting that there are people saying it's high time that there was a woman serving as the Archbishop of Canterbury. And for some, they're making the argument just in terms of their understanding of diversity and equity and all the rest. Some are making the argument, however, by claiming that women, that there is a distinction between the two genders and that women bring particular gifts that men lack. And, you know, for instance, someone made the comment that it's good to have an archbishop who can giggle. And I guess I'll just stop with this by saying, I guess if you think so, you think so. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmoeller.com youm can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com AlbertMohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. i'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.