What Jesus Said About our Enemies
Jesus was born into a land under enemy occupation where freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on your perspective, were operating. His ministry was rejected by the authorities who conspired to have him killed. Jesus could have resisted arrest in Gethsemane by calling down twelve legions of angels (Matthew 26:53) but instead he chose to practice what he’d preached:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”(Matthew 5: 43)
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.” (Luke 6: 27)
These words of Jesus Christ have inspired peacemakers all down the centuries although the Church as a whole has often ignored or limited them to personal relationships. Surely this call of Jesus to love, pray and do good to our enemies is very relevant in the current power struggles over Ukraine.
This map from Wikipedia shows Ukraine with the annexed Crimea at the bottom and two self-proclaimed separatist republics in Donbas to the right.
From Pandemic to War
No sooner had Boris Johnson declared the COVID pandemic over on 21st February, than three days later Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia justified their “special military operation” to fight Nazis and liberate the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas region.The invasion soon resulted in the largest war-related migration of people since the Balkan War of the 1990s. On 15th March, the Church of England website posted a statement signed by the leaders of 52 Christian denominations calling for “an immediate cessation of hostilities towards Ukraine”. However, hostilities have continued to escalate.
On 16th June the BBC‘s Steve Rosenberg conducted an interview with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.. To quote: “I don’t think there’s even room for manoeuvre any more,” Mr Lavrov told me, “because both [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson and [Liz] Truss say openly that we should defeat Russia, we should force Russia to its knees. Go on, then, do it!”. This kind of tough talking may help political careers but it could so easily plunge the world into nuclear war.The job of the Church is surely to be actively praying for peace and promoting responsible dialogue.
Villains and Victims
According to our mainstream media, the Ukrainian conflict can be blamed entirely on President Putin, a former KGB officer, who has been accused of wanting to reinstate the Soviet Union. By contrast, President Zelensky, a former comedy actor, is portrayed as being entirely innocent. Putin’s words are seldom quoted whereas Zelensky makes almost daily Zoom calls to western politicians, meets celebrities in Kiev and even launched the Glastonbury Festival via a Zoom video link. As a US citizen brought up in the UK, I’m naturally loyal to the West whilst my primary allegiance must be to Christ and the kingdom of God.
On 14th June, the Daily Telegraph carried this headline: “Pope Francis: NATO may have provoked Russian invasion (but I’m not pro-Putin). The pontiff insists there are ‘no good guys and bad guys in the conflict’”. I agree 100%.
Fake News 
Most people I meet acknowledge that there’s always a build-up of tensions before the outbreak of any hostilities and that as the old saying goes: “truth is the first casualty in war”. It strikes me that too often the public settle for a nice simple story they can passively receive through the media; as illustrated by this cartoon “We’d like the brainwashing machine please”, published by English is Fun on 18th July 2020. The mainstream media spent four years emphasising the dangers of Brexit; followed by two years of fear-inducing propaganda about COVID-19 and the past six months reporting 24/7 about Ukraine!
Jesus warned that in the last days: “…false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew 24:11) As Christian peacemakers, we are all too familiar with the deceitfulness of some political leaders, their reliance on “spin doctors” and promotion of fake news. Jesus must have anticipated our needs when he said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8: 31-32)
Deliverance from the Cold War
During the Cold War, I gained some experience of praying for peace. Once a month for several years a small group met at St Thomas Crookes in Sheffield. Most of us believed in multilateralism, some were unilateralists and one or two were pacifists but we all recognised that God alone could bring about lasting peace. Our prayers and those of thousands of other similar groups began to be visibly answered when in 1985 the two presidents, Reagan and Gorbachev, met in person for the first time.
Aftermath of the Cold War
Everyone celebrated the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and soon afterwards 80 years of communism came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact was dismantled but NATO missed a unique opportunity to have a constructive relationship with Russia. According to a Guardian report on 4thNovember 2021, in the year 2000, President Putin applied to join NATO since: “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilised world.” Sadly, Putin’s request went nowhere.
More recently in 2014 our mainstream media gave one-sided reporting about the Maidan Revolution. A Guardian article on 21st February 2014 stated: “As Moscow encouraged Yanukovych to crack down harder on the unrest and threatened to withhold crucial financial aid unless he did…” without mentioning Washington’s influence of which more later… Around that time, I was handed a leaflet whilst passing through Cologne Bonn Airport. The leaflet convinced me to look beyond the news headlines and to start listening to the other side of the argument.
From 2014 onwards our mainstream media largely ignored the civil war in the Donbas which prior to the invasion had claimed over 14,000 lives as well as displacing two million people according to the Crisis Group (https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer )
In February 2022 our news media reported a build-up of 100,000 Russian troops on the border with Ukraine but again they were silent about Ukrainian forces intensifying their attacks on the Russian speaking population in the Donbas. One exception was Israel National News which reported on 22nd February that:
“Russia’s Investigative Committee claims that mass graves of hundreds of Russian-speaking civilians had been found in the Donbas region, and the Russian government is accusing Ukraine of genocide.”
Overcoming Evil with Good
There is evidence of corruption on all sides but if we accept the common view that President Putin is our enemy, then the words of Jesus Christ quoted at the start require us to do something completely unnatural: to love him, to pray for him and to do good to him. The Gospels often call us to seemingly impossible tasks. In his book “Unapologetic” Francis Spufford puts it like this: “Christianity… offers general but lunatic principles. It thinks you should give your possessions away, refuse to defend yourself, love strangers as much as your family, behave as if there’s no tomorrow.” In this way the Holy Spirit overcomes evil with good.
Daring to Listen
If we are to love our human enemy, then we first need to know them and try to see the world from their point of view. We can get to know them by listening, which is in itself a rare and precious way of loving someone. I believe that as citizens of God’s kingdom we can dare to listen whilst still remaining loyal to our Queen and country. This is what I’ve learned so far:
1) Christian History
In 2013 and again in 2016, I had the privilege of visiting Moscow, St Petersburg and Ivanovo. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is situated in the heart of Moscow quite close to the more famous St Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. In 1931 the communists dynamited the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the site was neglected for several decades. Then in the 1980s under Gorbachev, there was a period of national repentance for crimes of the past (source: https://www.moscovery.com/cathedral-of-christ-the-saviour/). The cathedral was rebuilt and by the year 2000 this magnificent place of worship was consecrated as a symbol for the newly created Russian Federation. By doing so surely the new government was rediscovering its Christian roots? When we pray for President Putin and the Russian Federation we are praying for our Christian brothers and sisters. Russia, Ukraine and many NATO members all claim to be Christian nations, at least nominally, but is there anything more horrible than Christians of one nation killing Christians of another nation?
2) Russia Feels Threatened by NATO Expansion
President Putin has repeatedly reminded the West that in the early 1990s, Russia agreed to the reunification of Germany on the understanding that NATO would allow the former Warsaw Pact nations to remain neutral. However, NATO has broken this promise in three successive waves of expansion and Ukraine is all that’s left of the buffer zone between East and West. In a recent sinister development, the internet has been purged of articles about this, for example, the Strategic-Culture.org website once featured an article “Broken Promise: NATO expansion” by Gordon M Hahn. If NATO ever allowed Ukraine membership, then the equivalent would be for Russia to station their missiles in Mexico or Canada! What we are witnessing now has the potential to become a rerun of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis which was in-fact triggered by the USA stationing missiles in Turkey (source: https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-missile-crisis) The Church as a whole should be praying for the West “to stop poking the Russian bear”!
3) Ukraine Suffers from Political Corruption
Ukraine has vast resources which East and West would like to exploit. The USA has sought to influence Ukrainian elections for the advantage of multinational corporations, for example, Victoria Nuland who served in the State Department under both George Bush and Barack Obama, has admitted that she had spent $5 billion (not her own money, of course) on engineering the political coup in the Ukraine in 2013/14 (source: https://godskingdom.org/blog/2018/08/victoria-nulands-role-in-influencing-elections). The Maidan Revolution was triggered when President Yanukovych of Ukraine suddenly decided not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union, instead choosing closer ties to Russia. In 2014 the BBC reported on Nazi groups in Ukraine (source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27173857) and more recently President Zelensky appears to have allowed them to attack the Russian speaking population of the Donbas. Soon after the 2015 Minsk ceasefire, Aljazeera reported “Ukraine’s front-line fighters balk at peace” (source: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/2/22/ukraines-front-line-fighters-balk-at-peace) It’s a well-publicised fact that the USA, UK and NATO are currently supplying artillery which means that we too have blood on our hands. The Church as a whole has missed an opportunity during the season of Lent for reflection and repentance but let’s hope there’s still time to catch up.
Prayerful Action
The situation in Ukraine is complex and I realise that some Christians have a different take on the causes of war as well as different solutions. However, I hope we can all agree with St Paul’s statement in Ephesians (6:12) “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Even so, the Lord’s Prayer gives us a fresh perspective beyond national allegiances as we daily ask for: “Thy Kingdom to come and Thy will to be done on earth as in heaven”.
As well as praying, we can financially support Christian charities working at ground level such as Slavic Gospel Association (https://www.sga.org.uk) which was founded in 1934 and serves about 2,300 Russian and Ukrainian speaking communities.
Jesus has told us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43 and Luke 6:27) so the very least we can do is to try to see the Ukrainian conflict from President Putin’s point of view and to pray for God’s influence over his life.
Arthur Champion (Revd)
28th June 2022
The Rev’d Arthur Champion is a member of APF.
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