Thank you, Sas for your input. I will be praying

Jesus said that people would recognize us as Christians by our love for each other. Whether in the Ukraine or here in America in our current political discourse I think we as Christians have a long way to go on voicing our opinions on social media or face to face and yet doing it in a spirit of love.

Good article, Thanks

Kirk

Thank you very much for this excellent analysis and reflection. I believe we need to pray that Russian and Ukrainian Christian leaders set aside their differences and perceived different understanding of the situation in Ukraine to show how the Gospel unifies the Body of Christ in a conflict situation. This will be a tremendous witness to the rest of the world. However, I believe it will need humility and forgiveness from both sides. The Russian leaders need to respect the leadership and even regional leadership of Ukrainian Christians. I was shocked last year when one of the most important Russian evangelical leaders complained that a Ukrainian is the Lausanne Movement’s International Deputy Director for Eurasia. The Russian leader said that Russia is the regional power in Eurasia. Therefore a Russian Christian should be the Eurasian leader of an evangelical movement such as Lausanne as well. This ‘controlling’ spirit by leaders runs very deep in Russian society and Christians. We experienced that when we were missionaries in Crimea.

On the other side, few of us can imagine what the Ukrainian nation went through in the 20th century at the hands of the Soviets whom they view as in essence a form of Russian empire (even though many Soviet leaders such as Khrushchev were Ukrainian). The Holodomor (Ukrainian famine) between 1932 and 1933 is one of the most horrific events I read about. It is therefore understandable that Ukrainians (and Ukrainian Christians) are afraid of being controlled by Russians. I am not sure whether Russian Christians have ever asked Ukrainians forgiveness for what happened during Soviet times in Ukraine.

I also think that we can forget what the original protests in Kiev were about. I am hearing from my Ukrainian friends that it was not about siding with Europe against Russia. It was a revolt against corruption and autocratic leadership. This is also my impression as I followed the news about events in Ukraine. We must be careful to turn the protests now into some kind of ethnic conflict between Russians and Ukrainians. This is exactly what the Ukrainian nationalists want but my impression is that for the vast majority of Ukrainians it is about freedom of corruption and corrupt autocratic politics. As such there is a lesson also for Russian Christians who are living in one of the most corrupt states in the world.

I believe forgiveness, repentance and unity between Russian and Ukrainian Christians might be important in the present context. We saw that in 1999 when we organised a Global Day of Prayer for the Crimean Tatars to deal with the spiritual issues related to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944. Russian and Crimean Tatar leaders confessed the sins of the past to each other and forgave each other. Afterwards we saw a remarkable spiritual openness among the Crimean Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians. God also provided peace when every indication was that conflict would break out between the Crimean Tatars and Russians. God can do this again.

Just finally, here is a link to a call for prayer for Crimea in particular http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/resources/detail/13481#.UxcpOfl_vuI.

Sorry for this long comment!

Kind regards

Sas Conradie
(Past missionary to Crimea, now living in the UK)