Wage Peace: Seven Faithful Actions to End the War in Ukraine
Introduction
Dear Friends,
Over the past several weeks, I have had the privilege of listening to many of you share your deepest thoughts, concerns, and questions about Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Thank you for inviting me into your inner lives and struggles and for allowing me to reciprocate.
During this time, I have also shared with you the privilege of seeking God’s wisdom in scripture and in prayer.
Lastly, I sought perspective and counsel from subject matter experts, including, but not limited to:
a Ukrainian-American economist and policy analyst whose expertise is Russo-Ukrainian economic ties
a finance lawyer currently serving in the U.S. Federal Reserve System whose family recently escaped the Russian siege of a major Ukrainian city.
a third party consultant for a nonpartisan policy research and consulting firm who is a community and economic development expert and a devout Catholic Christian.
a Michigan Russian Orthodox priest whose family is from the former Soviet Union and has faced prejudice as a result
fellow Free Methodist pastors and mentors
Community Reflections
Following is a brief summary of the issues with which many in our Church and neighborhoods have shared we are wrestling.
Secondary Trauma
It is difficult for many to believe that this could happen “today” and even harder when, in a digital age, we can watch it happen in real time.
War is grotesque. It’s also rarely visible. Yet the senseless murder of both soldiers and innocent civilians that occurs in every war is on plain display in Ukraine. Bombings of apartment buildings, children’s hospitals, maternity wards, and civilian evacuation routes are easy to flatly condemn. Parents see our own families in the picture of a mother and backpack-laden child dying from Russian mortar fire at a crosswalk. As spectators on the other side of the planet, we know more information about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine than many Ukrainians sheltering in bunkers do, but we feel equally helpless.
Admiration
Many of us admire the bravery and selfless sacrifice of Ukrainian leaders and everyday Ukrainians from all walks of life willing to die — what seems like almost inevitably — for something greater than themselves.
This raises countless theological questions about national identity and the image of God (In the eyes of God, are the actions of Orthodox Christian Ukrainian resistance fighters truly different than Orthodox Christian Russian soldiers? Aren’t both called to unity and to enemy love as members of one church, the Body of Christ? Didn’t God chastise Cain for saying he was not his brothers’ keeper, even before banishing him for his brother’s murder?
What about the Ukrainian resistance do we admire so much? It is right, as followers of Jesus, to admire something Christlike in Ukrainians’ willingness to suffer personal sacrifice for something greater than themselves. But let us call the death of a Ukrainian resistance fighter and mother of twelve what it is – a tragedy – not a martyrdom in the name of the Ukrainian nation. Her death, and that of Russian soldiers, should both grieve us deeply. If we seek to glorify God and proclaim that “Jesus is Lord,” we cannot also say “Glory to Ukraine” while disobeying our Lord’s teachings.
Let us admire and support the Ukrainians’ plucky acts of nonviolent resistance and enemy love, instead. This is the way of Jesus.
Stereotyping
People are struggling with misplaced blame - an indiscriminate vilification of Russians and Russian culture.
This behavior betrays a very human desire for both agency and revenge (the feeling that there is something we can do to retaliate and someone against whom we can do it). It also betrays an ignorance of both Russian and Ukrainian identity, history, and culture. These are two relatively new, exceedingly complex, and closely interrelated nations with long histories. Such stereotypes accomplish what all stereotypes do - very little. On the contrary, they usually cause harm – by applying a fixed and oversimplified idea of a particular type of person or thing to a wide group of people.
These stereotypes assume ill intent on the part of Russian civilians, many of whom oppose the invasion of Ukraine but are powerless to stop it. Many Ukrainians speak Russian and vice versa. Many Ukrainians and Russians have close relatives and loved ones on the other side of the border. What about Russians fleeing Russia for Istanbul, Turkey so as not to support Putin’s war?
It is no less bigoted, or any more accurate –let alone Christlike – to vilify Russian civilians or Russian American residents for Putin's invasion, than it is to attack or vilify Asian Americans as a fictional source of COVID-19.
Paternalism and Machismo
People are struggling with the sense that not every battle is “ours” to fight.
Everyone with whom I’ve spoken wants to see an end to the violence in Ukraine and to protect Ukrainians in some form or another. Yet many of us are also struggling with what this actually might look like — what it means to be our brothers’ keeper. People are war weary and rightfully concerned that U.S. engagement in another foreign conflict will cost even more lives as additional combatants are drawn into an escalating war.
People – and particularly people of color – are frustrated that the same members congress who volunteer billions of dollars in bipartisan aid, including military aid, to a foreign country most Americans know little to nothing about, won't invest in the hurting U.S. communities whose people they represent and whose needs they see firsthand.
Racism
Some people have astutely observed that many countries worldwide are welcoming white Ukrainians with open arms that continue to deny refuge to people of color from other countries who have been begging for asylum for years.
They question why so many other wars and humanitarian crises have received so little attention by comparison to Ukraine – Saudi Arabia's atrocities against the people of Yemen; Myanmar's atrocities against the Rohinga, China's atrocities against the Uighers, a slow and prolonged genocide in Sudan.
Jesus calls us to be a barrier-busting church that represents all. And he proclaimed Jubilee in the spirit of the prophet Isaiah, specifically embodying good news to the poor. In this spirit, many early Christians used to say they “robbed from the poor” any money they kept after meeting their own family’s needs. What might they have said about the U.S. military budget? As followers of the same Lord today, What should we?
“For [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”
Next Up: Seven Faithful Actions to End the War in Ukraine
Following are seven actions each of us can take to wage peace in Ukraine, as faithful followers of Jesus Christ.