Why Pray for Ukraine?

Faith & Science Conversation
107

But to be honest, this is a rare, secular finding of welcoming refugees. It’s not a Christian movement for the Ukraine, I think. The church in Russia is strongly pro the Russian movement. War is heartbreaking in any case.

On the other hand, as I am sure you know, there are many, many Christian movements in favor of not only refugees, but also of caring for the poor elsewhere–more than any other NGO (religious or not), by far. My uncle’s church supported a family of Iraqi interpreters and their little girl (Muslims), and we often ate with them at my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. As children we knew immigrants from Vietnam supported by a church.
At the very least, no one can ever say they are 100% pure or right.
I’m interested more and more in Christian pacifism.
Thanks.

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108

No it’s perfectly natural. This is evolved morality working as it should and always does. He is not in a comparable situation by multiple unticked boxes.

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It’s natural, but by Christ’s law, it’s not morally right–which I guess is also evolved :slight_smile: And so, that’s “natural,” too?

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Most believers I know show love towards all people, including refugees. Some are against immigration, mostly persons supporting populist parties. Even these persons show love towards refugees they learn to know, so it is not being against individuals. My guess is that the negative attitude stems from fear.

Immigration is a nasty problem in the sense that we should help these people but a policy of open doors would easily lead to a situation where the number of immigrants exceeds the number of citizens. Especially in a situation where the proportion of retired persons increases and puts financial stress on the public economy, a large amount of immigrants may shift the balance between taxes and the need of public economic support towards a catastrophic direction.

A common solution to this problem is to support refugees as close to their homes as possible. Most refugees would not like to leave their home and would like to return as soon as possible. If we send support to these people where they are, it might be a win-win situation. The suffering get the help they need and stay in the neighborhood of their home, instead of being unwanted immigrants far from their home.

Personally, I believe that praying for peace and praying for these people helps these people as much as sending money. I believe that our heavenly Father listens to the prayers of His children through Jesus. He can change the situations in ways we could not even imagine, both at the level of nations and individuals. This is of course a matter of faith - I believe that He listens and acts, therefore I pray.

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111

Well aye Randy. If Jesus were not God incarnate, then the arc of His morality would still be the greatest individually based contribution to the development of morality. Which is unquantifiably insignificant in Russian culture, especially church.

Morality is what we say it is, and objectively there is no cultural comparison with the Tigray and Ukrainian Wars. Apart from that Christianity is significant by its absence in both.

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It’s true, and very sad. Ukrainian refugees have been treated with overwhelming love by the Polish, but refugees from the Middle East and African are treated with brutality.

Two Refugees, Both on Poland’s Border. But Worlds Apart.

A young man fleeing war in Sudan and a young woman evacuating Ukraine crossed into Poland at the same time. They had very different experiences.

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113

If we are careful to hold ourselves a mirror, maybe such disparities and brutality can alert us to the need of refugees, the world over.

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114

In a war, there are people praying for the victory of both sides. Both sides think they are on the ‘right’ side of the conflict. What could be a united prayer is to pray for peace.

I read an interview of a Russian writer, Viktor Jerofejev. He told that the ‘realities’ (or national narratives) have diverged for centuries between the west and Russia. He said that going over the border to Russia is like jumping from one planet to another. What is seen as ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ is the opposite in these planets. He claimed that the west analyses the situation in a superficial way, does not understand the differences between these worlds. He assumed that most Russians support Putin because of this difference. They think that Putin may be a ‘bad boy’ (gopnik) but he is fighting for the light, against the forces of darkness. In the west, the viewpoint is naturally the opposite.

It is likely that many in Russia are praying for the rapid victory of Russia in this ‘special military operation’. Yet, I hope we all pray for peace.

Sad that our worldviews are often so far from each others. It is very good that God decides what He will do, not us or those having an opposite viewpoint.

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115

The West perfectly understands. And what has God decided to do in this war?

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Again, there is no comparison between the weaponization of alien refugees by Belarus and a good neighbour being forced to flee for sanctuary by the very same evil five orders of magnitude worse.

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He has not told me. As often, we just have to watch what happens.

In the case of a war, praying for peace is a very general prayer. Eventually the war will end, and it may be very difficult or impossible to demonstrate that the peace came because God caused it. This is a general problem with prayers that are not detailed enough that we could see whether the details happened as prayed.

There is also the difficulty that a war is a complex thing with many needs and consequences that may be even more influential than the war itself. If God decides to handle the situation in a way that minimizes negative future consequences, His answer and acts may be different than what we have prayed. God answers but we may not necessarily recognize the answer because the solution was better than what we asked.

Sometimes I have wondered about the need to pray. God knows the needs of His children and can give to us what we need even if we do not ask. One reason why there is a need to pray might be that we often do not recognize the work of God unless we make detailed prayers and get answers to those.

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“Watches 3 world countries across the room” lol

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This world is not a paradise. All humans live in a world where natural disasters, disease and sickness, and bad decisions cause suffering - it is the shared burden of being a human living on this globe.

We have not been promised easy life, richness or life without suffering. Often following Jesus leads to some sort of persecution, or at least choices where we do not get everything we would like to have. In that sense, there is a price to pay for following Jesus. What we get is better than what we miss.

As a parent, I have tried to follow the advice I got after becoming a father. An important task of parents is to cause disappointments to the kids and teach them to cope with the disappointments and difficulties given by life. If we parents do not do that, the world will teach the lessons in a much harder way later in the life. Sometimes I wonder whether God follows similar kind of principles as a Father. I don’t know.

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We are God’s watchers, God’s handles. It’s entirely up to, down to, us.

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Potent. (5:24)

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122

Dear God, I’m weeping with it.

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123

Me too.  

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124

Did you catch the concert for Ukraine, broadcast around the world (including Ukrainian National Radio? It was beautiful. Many performing ensembles have been performing the Ukrainian national anthem.

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125

I’ve seen some of it, if you talking about the MET (there have been a number).

126

It would seem to be the time to discuss the theological differences between the Eastern and Western Churches. The most obvious difference is that there is no separation of church and state in the Eastern Church. Both agreed that both Church and State were important, so they used the Trinity as their model. The Father was the State, and the Son was the Church. The State was over the physical and the Church over the Spiritual.

However, in the West the State of Rome as defeated while that Church of Rome gained undisputed power. In the East the State in Constantinople became the bulwark of Christian power, while the Church had many power centers.

In the West the Church at one time claimed authority over the State, but generally the arrangement is separation, but not everyone agrees. In the East the Empire was fighting for its life and maintained its power over the Church.

In the West there are no “national” churches. In the East most Orthodox Churches including now the Ukrainian and the Russian Orthodox Churches. They generally support they respective states as is their tradition.

At the start of WW2 Stalin almost blew it. His people would not fight for communism. They would fight for Russian nationalism and Stalin, who studied to become an orthodox priest, made peace with the Russian Church to rally them to this cause. This is how the USSR and the world was saved from Hitler.

Hitler’s racism was anti-Slav as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Black. He planned to enslave the Slavs. If he had treated the Ukrainians decently, he could have won their support. As it was some people did support Hitler, but more fought against both Hitler and Stalin. So there was a history of fighting Ukrainian patriots after the war.

Putin, originally a KGB officer, (they ran the GULAG for Stalin,) has taken the best of Stalin, the victory of WW2, and used Stalin’s nationalism to steal from the people, neglect the economy and fortify his power.

His invasion of Ukraine is a failure. He is weakening Russia, destroying the Ukraine, killing many Ukrainians and Russians, and probably destroying the Ukrainian wheat crop, which will starve many.