BEING HUMAN

#BeingHuman. The expectation held by many evangelicals outside Ukraine, that we will produce romantic stories of Ukrainians forgiving russians, is incredibly painful in the middle of an aggression that has not stopped.

By romantic stories of forgiveness I mean the idealised and oversimplified expectations, often frankly unrealistic, that some evangelicals outside Ukraine, in the West and in russia alike, hold about how we as Ukrainian Christians ought to respond to this war.

In those stories Ukrainians are expected to forgive their russian aggressors swiftly and wholeheartedly, setting aside their own pain and grief and anger, in the name of traditional Christian values such as love for and unity with those who support this war publicly or by their silence, and for the sake of the comfort and the feelings of russian church ministers and pastors, with no attention paid to the broader context or to the systemic injustice behind it.

Such expectations are disconnected from the reality here, and they reveal a naivety about the depth of the tragedy we are living through. Worse, they place the burden of reconciliation mainly or entirely on the victims, suggesting, whether openly or by implication, that the responsibility to forgive and move on belongs to Ukrainians rather than the responsibility to repent and make amends belonging to russians.

They also misread the nature of Christian forgiveness. Forgiveness is indeed a central tenet of the faith, and it remains something other than a simple one-sided transaction, since true forgiveness, as Christ modelled it, demands truth and accountability and a genuine change of heart from those who caused the harm, alongside love and grace.

In the biblical narrative, God’s forgiveness always comes coupled with a call to repentance and to turning away from sin. It is a transformative process requiring the participation of the offended and the offender both, rather than a cheap grace that ignores the consequences of wrongdoing and absolves the perpetrator, and it cannot be separated from the pursuit of justice and the restoration of right relationships.

For those of us fighting for our survival, these expectations feel unrealistic and deeply hurtful at once, coming across as a form of spiritual bypassing, a way of avoiding the difficult work of facing the truth of what is happening and the long-term weight of it. In that context, the pressure to produce such stories arrives as an additional burden, as a demand that we place the comfort and the righteous satisfaction of outside observers above our own healing.

That pressure also risks distorting the Gospel itself, since it presents forgiveness as a superficial act to be performed on demand rather than a deep spiritual process requiring time, healing and the work of the Holy Spirit. And it leaves the impression that Christian love is passive and permissive before evil, rather than active and engaged against injustice.

So the expectation of romantic stories of forgiveness misses the depth of the Christian understanding of it, which is rooted in the hard work of truth-telling and repentance and the pursuit of justice. What such expectations amount to is spiritual escapism that avoids the complicated, long-term work of building genuine peace after horrific violence.

Meanwhile we face growing losses every day, with the people we love fatally wounded, killed, tortured and raped by russian forces, and Ukrainian cities bombed and homes and civil infrastructure destroyed. And through these two and a half years, a great many russian pastors and theological educators have demanded that our forgiveness be demonstrated by our silence about the war, by our ceasing to say that russians are killing and raping and looting us and saying instead that sin is doing it. In other words: Taras, do not say that Cain murdered Abel, say that Abel was killed by sin; do not say that Judas betrayed Jesus, say that Jesus was betrayed by sin.

Why are so many evangelicals obsessed with calling Ukrainians to forgive, while unable to call on the russian state to stop the war and withdraw, or on russian evangelicals to break their deafening silence? We mourn our dead and tend our wounded and try to rebuild our shattered lives. And we hope.

We hope for understanding from our brothers and sisters around the world rather than pressure to forgive. We hope for prayers for strength and protection and justice. We hope for voices that will speak publicly against russian aggression and demand accountability for the crimes being committed, including by those evangelicals who joined russian forces to protect traditional Christian values by murdering Ukrainians.

We hope for recognition that this war is unjust, and for the space and freedom to process our own experience, to grieve our losses and to find our own path toward healing and, if it proves possible, toward forgiveness, without pressure from self-righteous people. This journey cannot be rushed or forced, and it deserves respect and at least some compassion.

We hope for an understanding that forgiveness is a deeply personal and complex process that cannot be imposed from outside, and for respect for our right to walk it in our own way and in our own time. We hope for the awareness that pushing us to forgive prematurely, or to forgive in some particular manner, harms us further and traumatises us again. We hope for safe spaces in which we can ask difficult questions about God and the Church and Christianity without judgment, and wrestle with the theological and existential challenges this war has brought on us. We hope for patience, since healing is long and arduous and forgiveness, if it comes at all, may take years and even decades. And we hope for faith in God’s ability to bring beauty out of ashes.

In the end, the road to real reconciliation has to start with truth and a clear recognition of the terrible harm done, together with a commitment to justice and accountability. That is what I hope for daily from my former fellow ministers and friends and theological educators in russia, and from some in Western Christendom. Only then can the hard work of rebuilding trust and finding a way forward begin, and the key word there is begin, toward writing stories of true forgiveness.

Our Mission has not changed. Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war. Taras Dyatlik, Ukraine
877 days of the ongoing russian full-scale war