A most amazing scenario was played out on a Vienna airport today.
USA and Russia enacted a major spy swap, the likes of which has not occurred since the end of the Cold War.
Ten Russian agents who were deported from America arrived at the airport in one plane and within minutes, a second plane arrived carrying four people who have previously been convicted of spying for western powers against Russia.
The two planes parked very close together so that nobody could see exactly what was going on between them and then, about an hour and a half later, they both took off again.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the episode was the speed with which everything has been arranged and enacted. It has all been done within a week or two of the ten people being arrested in America. In comparison, previous spy swaps have taken months or even years to arrange.
Of course spying is all about lies, deception, betrayal and similar sinister behaviour. Ultimately it is about one power attempting to gain advantage over another. It isn’t something that only happens between nations and governments; it is also practiced, for example, between competitors in business.
In the world in which we live, it is difficult to imagine how any organisation can avoid this kind of activity whilst others are involved with it. After all, governments need to protect their citizens and companies need to protect their competitive advantage. It would seem, therefore, that espionage is inevitable.
However, the bible approaches this whole area at a much more fundamental level. The apostle James writes:
Where do all the fights and quarrels among you come from? They come from your desires for pleasure, which are constantly fighting within you. You want things, but you cannot have them, so you are ready to kill; you strongly desire things, but you cannot get them, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have what you want because you do not ask God for it. And when you ask, you do not receive it, because your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures.
(James 4:1-3)
James is talking about people who want to possess that which belongs to others or to take control of other people.
There are some people who will never be satisfied until they own everything and control everyone. Whilst we are not all that extreme, we are all like that to some extent.
The real answer is for a fundamental change of heart so that we are satisfied with having just the necessities of life and then put more effort into making life better for others instead of thinking only about ourselves. Such a change of heart would dramatically transform the world in which we live so that there would be no more need of spies or even of armies.
Neither you nor I can single-handedly change the world but each of us can do something to change ourselves, which would be a very good place to start.
