The situation has gotten more serious in that many Christians have bought into the idea that Pride is an identity—that what are rightly behaviors are considered to be identities. This is an assumption that may flow naturally from a Pelagian understanding of humanity, but not an orthodox, biblical one. Turning to the deep riches of historic Protestant doctrine, Roberts shows that sinful desire is itself sinful.

Identity is everywhere. We can hardly read an article in the news or watch a show on TV without encountering it. Identity defines our relationship to the world around us, to the other members of our society, and even to our own bodies. “This rapid rise in identity-thinking has caused a somewhat tense interaction with the Christian church,” says Matthew Roberts. “From the secular perspective, it has reinforced the assumption that Christians are just an irrelevance swept aside by the inrush of these new insights, featuring (if at all) as just one identity-group, and one for whom not much sympathy is spared. From Christians, it has been greeted with a combination of alarm at the outlandish new doctrines identity politics presents (gender fluidity in particular) and an assumption that there is a lot of new thinking for us to do to make sure that people of different identities are equally offered the gospel and (to a varying extent) included in the church.”
So what are Christians to do? How are we to think about modern notions of identity? That is the subject of Roberts’ new book Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self. “The conviction that underlies this book,” he explains, “is that, rather than being a new challenge to the Christian faith, the identity issue is, in fact, a very old one. Men have always identified themselves by their idols, and so the issue of identity is fundamentally one of idolatry.”
Key to understanding the book is his use of the word “Pride.” He does not use that word to communicate the opposite of humility, but as an umbrella term for the various identities more typically conveyed in the ever-changing acronym that begins with L and ends in +.
In the book’s first part, he explains that human beings are defined by worship—by what or who we worship. Created by God in the image of God to worship God, we fell into a state of sinfulness in which we will worship anything or everything in place of God. Yet our most basic and essential identity is defined by who we were made to worship. “Being images, our true identity is found in the God whose image we are, and whom we are made to love with all our heart and soul and strength. And so those who worship false gods, giving them the love due to the true God, cannot help but define themselves by those gods instead.” Not only that, but “individuals and peoples come to reflect the character of the (fictional) gods they worship. And integral to this is that individuals and peoples come to identify themselves by the gods they worship.”
This causes endless problems since “for all fallen human beings, there is a basic identity-conflict in play. We are one thing; we believe ourselves to be something else. We have a true identity, though we deny it and seek to suppress it; and we have a false identity, centred around our idols, which we cling to fiercely even though it diminishes our humanity.”
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The first one lays the foundation of our eternal salvation in the free grace of God, as shown to us in the mission of the great Redeemer. The next affirms the double blessedness which we obtain through this salvation—the blessings of the upper and nether springs—of time and of eternity. The third shows one of the duties to which the chosen people are called; we are ordained to suffer for Christ with the promise that “if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” The last sets forth the active form of Christian service, bidding us diligently to maintain good works.

11 It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: 12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: 13 If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. 2 Timothy 2:11-13 (KJV) 
It is a blessed thing to mediate on the reality of being in Christ. The enormity of that fact should strike us hard because those who are truly in Christ are those who also know they don’t deserve to be. The miracle of our salvation is incredible and the cost our Savior paid to save us is beyond our understanding.  Spurgeon understood this and wrote about it in today’s devotion from his Morning by Morning.C. H. Spurgeon
“It is a faithful saying.”—2 Timothy 2:11.
Paul has four of these “faithful sayings.” The first occurs in 1 Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” The next is in 1 Timothy 4:6, “Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation.”
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China and Russia, once rivals, have made formal alliances with each other.  Not only that, both countries have made formal alliances with Iran, drawing the explosive Middle East into the global political alignments.  In fact, these three countries are already being called “a new Axis.” 

World Wars often come as a surprise to the people who get dragged into them.
World War I came about when the Austrian arch-duke was assassinated by a Serbian radical.  Austria, which had a mutual defense treaty with Germany, went to war with Serbia, but Serbia had a mutual defense treaty with Russia, which had a mutual defense treaty with France and England.  Factor in these country’s world-spanning colonies, with the American ocean liner the Lusitania wandering into the crossfire, and the result was a world war that no one really intended or expected, but which would kill some 15 million people.

World War II was more intentional, but while Americans were concerned about Germany’s invasion of Poland and Japan’s invasion of China, those conflicts seemed far away.  Though the U.S. government sent much material support to Great Britain and slapped economic sanctions on Japan, few Americans expected the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, or, shortly afterwards, for Germany to declare war on us.  Some 60 million died in that war, which came, literally and figuratively, “out of the blue,” while Americans were preoccupied with other things.

Having been reading about those wars lately, I’m feeling nervous about what is happening today as we Americans are preoccupied with other things.
Russia has been massing some 100,000 troops plus logistics to support them in what looks like an impending invasion of Ukraine.  In response, President Biden is sending 3,000 American soldiers to Poland and Romania, which border Ukraine.
What would be the consequence if those Americans are fired upon?  What if Russia moves on the Baltic Republics, also the home of a large Russian minority with grievances?  They are members of NATO, in which an attack on one member nation is considered an attack on them all.  If the Russians move on Estonia, all of the European members and the United States would be obliged by treaty to go to war with Russia.  Most of the NATO nations have little military capabilities these days, trusting the United States to carry the weight, so any war with Russia would be mostly on us.  (Read this for the possible consequences on Europe of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.)

The global dimension is also worrisome.  China is a far more dangerous military opponent than Russia.  China’s threats against our ally Taiwan keep intensifying.  Its much-expanded navy, its cutting-edge military technology, and its saber-rattling incursions of intimidation into the waters of other Asian countries should alarm us.  The Chinese ambassador has explicitly threatened “military conflict” with the U.S. if Taiwan continues its claims of independence.

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