It's Friday, May 16, 2025.

I'm Albert Mowler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

I'll admit this, even as a teenager, I was incredibly interested in spycraft and an espionage.

I was very interested in the history of World War II.

I was very interested in what was unfolding in the Cold War.

I was very interested in what I would later come to understand of the moral dilemmas of espionage and spycraft.

And of course, going back to the time that I was a young man,

a teenager, an awful lot of it was basically misrepresentation in terms of the big screen on the

movies. That wasn't completely disconnected from reality, but it was it was largely disconnected

from reality. I wanted

to understand the reality. I started reading far more serious literature and trying to understand

the morality of espionage, the way it worked. And this was at a time when you had the KGB versus

the CIA, you had the USSR versus the USA in a very clear battle of espionage and

Spycraft with human lives on the line and the destiny of nations on the line. And by the way,

it is the same today. Even as SpyCraft has been at least somewhat reinvented in the digital age.

On the other hand, most spy agencies will still confirm that one of the

most basic issues and espionage in terms of the great power conflict, it still comes down to

individual spies, individual agents, and the three-dimensional relationships of human beings to each other. And of course, this

leads to an incredible avalanche of Christian worldview considerations, including the use of the

truth versus the use of what is false. Bodyguard of lies is one of the descriptions that Winston Churchill

used when it came to espionage and spycraft.

And so you all of a sudden understand this is an inversion of morality in one sense.

...