Have you noticed that life on this home planet of ours is living up to the second law of thermodynamics—that calculus about “entropy,” which we’ve come to define as “a gradual decline into disorder”? This single phrase succinctly, painfully describes the unraveling crisis in the Middle East, doesn’t it? (Is the Middle East ever not in crisis?) This week the President announced that once again our nation is at “war” (albeit one theoretically limited only to high altitude fire power) in or above the sprawling desert sands of the Near East. When will this one end? Nobody can say.

“Here’s a Fourth Watch story for you,” emailed one of the readers of this blog. And I agree. Early Sunday morning, June 25, 2006, Corporal Gilad Shalit, a nineteen-year-old soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, was kidnapped by Hamas militants on the Israeli side of its border with Gaza. Abducted back into Gaza, Corporal Shalit became the rallying cry of a nation caught between two clashing ideals: never negotiate with terrorists versus never abandon one of your own.

One hardly expects to find Karl Marx and Jesus in the same headline. After all, what in the world would the intellectual forerunner of political atheism (still known today as communism) possibly have in common with One regarded by billions as Lord and Savior? Wasn’t it Marx who in 1843 penned that line in German, still remembered today, “Religion is the opium of the masses”? What then could he and Jesus possibly have had in common? As it turns out, much more than anyone today would think. I’m reading my way through F. F. Bruce’s stirring commentary on the Gospel of John.

So when do the beheadings stop? The dark revulsion the world community has expressed over these diabolical, taunting, on-camera killings certainly has not dissuaded the terrorists. Today they butcher captured journalists. And when they run out of journalists, who will be next? Subjugated women, children, and men—both Muslim and Christian—have already been the human fodder for ISIS and its grizzly on-camera executions. Who will be evil’s next choice for extermination? Twice now the black-hooded executioner has taunted by name the President of this nation.

In the midst of all the bad news headlines at summer’s end, here’s a feel-good story from St. Petersburg, Florida. At 7 a.m. last Wednesday a woman drove up to the Starbuck’s window and was prepared to place her order. And then on a whim, she told the cashier, “Make that two orders—I want to pay for the driver behind me.” She had no idea who that driver was. On the spur of the moment she simply decided to pay for both beverages, hers and the stranger’s.

The story of the explosive racial divide of Ferguson, Missouri, (exposed last week by the shooting death of an unarmed African-American teenager by a white policeman) has become the headline of the world. For all of our nation’s rhetoric about the liberty and freedom of democracy and the American dream and the pursuit of happiness and equal rights for all citizens, we have become an enigma to the editorial talking heads of the international press. I.e., in their eyes, what we preach we don’t practice.

The old King James reads: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). The news of Robin Williams’ suicide stunned the world Monday evening. And the off-the-chart Richter scale of public outpouring has been a measure of the global affection the 63-year-old comedian enjoyed. Talking heads like psychologist Dr.

Two killer headlines on either side of the Atlantic! The anthrax scare occurred a few days ago when 75 Atlanta employees at the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention were accidentally exposed to the deadly anthrax bacteria. Apparently workers at another CDC lab sent an anthrax sample to the Atlanta lab but inadvertently failed to “inactivate” the killer bacteria, which the Atlanta researchers handled without proper safety gear. Fortunately none of the exposed workers has shown symptoms of anthrax. CDC authorities are reviewing their safety protocol.

I don’t know about you, but I find the internecine fighting between the children of Islam in Iraq so terribly sad. Sunnis against Shiites, Shiites against Sunnis have been the headlines these past seven days. But it’s not like Muslims have a corner on the market of intra-family killing. This aging, disintegrating planet has lived with that tragedy from “in the beginning” with Cain and Abel.