It is never very helpful to talk in ‘ifs’.  Nevertheless, it happens to be true that if the leaders of the nations and the people they govern, were all inspired by a personal love for God and a resolute desire to please him and to be pleasing to him, then conflict would be replaced by co-operation and the sufferings now caused by man’s inhumanity to man would be no more.

The world, however, is not like that, and so far as recorded history is concerned it never has been.  Human beings are not even interested in what their Creator wants, only in what they want either for themselves or for the group to which they belong – which amounts to the same thing.  In other words, for them the ultimate authority is not the will of God but the will of human beings.  And the wills of human beings are warped and twisted by an innate moral flaw which makes them a menace to themselves and to their fellow human beings, and which is the direct cause of most of the suffering in the world today.