I don’t know how close North Korea is to actually sending a nuclear weapon to devastate some city on my own Pacific northwest coast.

I’m pretty certain, though, that North Korea could now, at this instant, use weapons, conventional or otherwise, to snuff out the lives of millions of South Koreans and perhaps Japanese as well.

While we deal with our own problems, serious as they are (shootings, hurricanes, wildfires), South Koreans wonder if their entire population will be obliterated in the next few seconds.

The conflict with North Korea is not a movie dramatization of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Leaders hurling street bully insults at each other are as helpful as gasoline on a California wildfire.

One visitor to South Korea, an American Christian leader, asked a Korean Christian what the churches in his country were thinking about the situation.

He responded: “We’re asking, ‘What are the churches in America thinking?’”