Will conflict escalate between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan?

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are on the brink of direct conflict for the first time since 2019. This after India launched deadly strikes yesterday on Pakistan and Islamabad claimed to have downed several Indian warplanes. Here’s the background on a story that threatens to escalate with consequences far beyond itself.

In 1947, Britain divided India, its former colony, into two countries. The larger part retained its name and was made up mostly of Hindus. The region to its northwest became Pakistan, an area slightly larger than Texas, with a Muslim majority. However, the fate of Kashmir, a scenic valley in the Himalayas on the eastern border of Pakistan and northern border of India, was left undecided. Both claim the territory.

In January 1949, their first war over Kashmir ended after the United Nations brokered a cease-fire in which India occupied two-thirds of the area and Pakistan the other third. War broke out again in 1965. An insurgency that began in 1987 further flamed tensions; conflict erupted again in 1999 and 2019.

On April 22, militants shot and killed twenty-six people, mostly Indian tourists, near Pahalgam, Kashmir. Seventeen others were wounded. Almost immediately, Indian officials accused Pakistan of involvement and vowed swift punishment for the perpetrators. Pakistan denied any involvement and promised to cooperate with international inquiries into the terrorist attack.

However, India struck nine sites yesterday in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of Kashmir, claiming that evidence pointed toward “the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists” in the April attack. Pakistan called the strikes “an unprovoked and blatant act of war” and said they would “not go unanswered.” India then said that “if Pakistan responds, India will respond.”

Such retaliations could lead to what security scholars call “inadvertent escalation,” a frightening possibility between nuclear powers engaged in “one of the longest-standing and most dangerous rivalries in modern history.”

Man attacked by “fake” crocodile

Wars are most typically fought over competing claims to the same territory or versions of the same story. Some in the South still call the Civil War the “war of northern aggression” or “war for states’ rights.” Israel and Hamas claim the same region as their homeland. China and Taiwan may go to war one day over the rightful ownership of the tiny island.

Such conflicts illustrate the fact that being convinced something is true does not make it so.

A tourist at a zoo in the Philippines thought a crocodile was fake, climbed into the enclosure for a photo, and was attacked by it and had to be rescued. His opinion made his reality no less dangerous.

This fact is, of course, much more exacerbated when our opinions are wrong with regard to eternity. In our post-Christian culture, many are convinced that this world is all there is. Actress Phyllis Diller, for example, claimed, “We were not created by a deity. We created the deity in our image.” Some philosophers argue that immortality would be worse than ceasing to exist when we die, a reasoning that has no bearing whatsoever on whether immortality is real or not.

You and I know better. We know that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We believe Jesus’ statement about himself that “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5:24). Conversely, we also know that for those who refuse salvation in Christ, “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he [will be] thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).

This is why David Platt is right:

“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”

But there’s a catch.

When a pond is blanketed by fog

In Acts 7, Saul of Tarsus heard one of the most compelling defenses of the Christian faith in all of Scripture. However, he then redoubled his efforts to persecute Christians before meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). When he experienced Jesus for himself, that made all the difference.

In my experience, the times we are most willing to share our faith and serve our Lord with sacrificial boldness are the times we are experiencing him most personally.

When “doubting Thomas” met the risen Christ, he proclaimed him “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) and, according to early tradition, preached the gospel as far away as India, where he was martyred for his Lord. When early Christians experienced Christ in worship (Acts 4:23–30), “the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (v. 31).

This is one reason Satan tempts us to sin, knowing that this blocks our relationship with Jesus, turning him from our living Lord into an abstract theology or distant deity. It’s hard to pay a price to share our faith if our faith is in a concept rather than a living and transforming Lord.

I was recently sitting near a pond blanketed in a dense fog and noted: To see the water, I would have to be in the water. Similarly, the Lord told us, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13, my emphasis).

Visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Experiential faith is a missing component in much of evangelical Christianity. We focus—as we should—on correct biblical doctrine and the urgency of salvation by grace through faith. But we sometimes overlook the intuitive dimensions of an intimate relationship with God through his Spirit.

By contrast, every time I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, I was overwhelmed with the aesthetics of the experience. I saw my faith portrayed in the iconography that surrounded me. I sensed it in the incense and heard it in the chanting. None of this was familiar to me or a tradition I wished to replicate in my Baptist church, but it spoke to me on a visceral level.

Whatever our denominational context, the risen Christ wants us to experience him personally each and every day. This is the heart of our faith. The capacity to know God himself is what distinguishes us from every other religion about him.

This is why we are to “pray without ceasing” and “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:17–18)—prayer and worship position us to experience Jesus himself. And the living Lord Jesus changes everything.

So, I’ll ask you: When last did you experience the risen Christ in a transforming way?

When last did you pay a significant price to share your faith and obey your Lord?

My guess is that the answer to the two questions is the same.

Why not today?

Quote for the day:

“The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with his rescue, our sin with his salvation, our guilt with his grace, our badness with his goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer.” —Tullian Tchividjian

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