#BeingHuman. In the middle of the full-scale russian war that has unfolded on our land, I feel like an actor in a divine drama, where every day brings a new scene of human existence, filled with pain and hope, with death and life.
Human nature reveals itself to me as a symphony of strength and weakness at once, as a voluntary vulnerability that runs against the image of solid Christian leadership with its invincibility and sinlessness. This truth sometimes makes us tremble, since we are trying to grasp our own vulnerability and the divine greatness at the same time, and in the chaos of war that sense of abandonment and brokenness is felt especially sharply. Paradoxically, it is this existential crisis that opens the way to a deeper understanding of ourselves, of God, and of our place in a world that is His and is at the same time broken by sin.
The apostle Paul’s words, “for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10, NKJV), reveal the very essence of Christ, the crucified God and the risen Man, who gives life to the world and to me personally through His death. Death did not conquer life; Life conquered Death. This dialectic, which Søren Kierkegaard explored so deeply, remains a painful and living reality.
Before the full-scale war my life resembled a sea that was stormy, since russian aggression began back in 2014, and still relatively calm, and the illusion of personal and organisational self-sufficiency rocked me on its waves. Then the first russian missiles fell on Ukrainian cities on 24 February 2022, and I felt the ground going out from under my feet.
On the road from Chisinau back into Ukraine, after Roman Soloviy’s call at five in the morning, fear wrapped itself around my soul like black fog. And it was inside that darkness that I saw a glimpse of God’s light, because in the deepest moment of despair, somewhere between the border and Ternopil on my way home to Rivne, I suddenly felt an invisible hand close around my heart and heard a quiet voice: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV). In my vulnerability rather than in my strength, which is what we usually take for the mark of strong and motivating strategic Christian leadership.
The psychologist Rollo May spoke of creative anxiety as a force that drives us toward growth and self-realisation, and the war plunges me into such constant existential anxiety that the anxiety itself has become a catalyst for my spiritual growth. This has nothing whatever to do with disappointment in God. The biblical assurance that “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able” (1 Corinthians 10:13, NKJV) works as an anchor holding my soul in this stormy sea of war and loss and brokenness, rather than as a merely comforting phrase.
It matters that we understand our weakness before God as a gift rather than a curse, since it is through weakness that we come to know the power of God, the power of the other, meaning our neighbour, and of the Other, meaning Christ. This is the lens through which the words “be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10, NKJV) can be read at all.
In this context Paul Tillich’s idea of the courage to be takes on a new meaning for me, since faith becomes an existential act of trust in God inside uncertainty and chaos rather than merely a belief. This war is directed against the essence of Christianity as a leap into the heart of God, and it is the expression of a demonic and ideologically obsessed quasi-Christian religion set against the true Community of Hope, whose head is Christ.
The war, like a ruthless surgeon, opens the abscesses of my own wish to isolate myself from society and from a Christian community that does not always carry the marks of the Church. And at the same time it has become a crucible in which unity is born, grounded in the search for what unites us rather than in what divides me from others here in Ukraine and in the Community of Hope. The words “two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up his companion” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10, NKJV) sound now like a hymn of human solidarity and like a prophecy about a new Community of Hope being born in the fire of this war.
Martin Buber spoke of the “I-Thou” relationship as an actual encounter between people, a meeting of two others in love and trust and care, and despite the sometimes glaring problems I am learning to see how the image of the Body of Christ comes alive in our communities, our volunteer centres, our seminary-based hubs and the Church in Ukraine, where that relationship becomes real. Each of us is a part of that Body, where our weaknesses and our strengths are woven together in mutual help and love: “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He pleased… And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:18, 21, NKJV). Although we are still tempted, so often, toward hatred and division.
The most significant revelation of these dark times, for me, is the realisation that the true strength of the Community of Hope comes from the mysterious presence of the Holy Spirit among us rather than from ourselves: “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6, NKJV). We need to return to the early Christian idea of pneuma, the divine breath that animates and unites the community. We have forgotten about it, and we do not want to remember it while the spirit of war dominates everything.
In the context of this war, and especially after losing Andrii, I feel that cosmic battle in my own soul, between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of russian warfare, and here I am thinking of C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It goes well beyond a conflict of human interests, since for us in Ukraine it has become an apocalyptic drama in which our fate is being decided, and the words “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9, NKJV) now sound to me like a call to take God’s side in the fight to restore a just peace, rather than a reconciliation built on forgetting, which is what russian evangelicals so often demand.
The Community of Hope is a reality of every day rather than a beautiful metaphor, and it is a prototype of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven through our presence in the middle of the deadly smoke of this war. “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5, NKJV), and those words give me, and perhaps you, the strength to live and to create even at the edge of the abyss. This hope is an active principle that moves us toward action rather than a passive expectation, and it is what I realise through my true self after the destruction of my alter ego, rather than what I sit and wait for.
I feel that to a certain extent my soul has been burned and reborn. Recognising that ought to shame a strong and purposeful Christian leader, and it no longer shames me.
Humility and courage are two sides of one coin, given to us by God for the defeat of existential evil, first of all in ourselves, and this evil shows itself through “red Christianity” and through the imperialist religious ideology of the Russian World.
Unity in the Holy Spirit is a matter of life and death for everyone who has decided to be one of the Community of Hope. To be. And in order to be, we need humility and courage together, since only by uniting in the Holy Spirit rather than in the spirit of war, only by recognising our vulnerability while opening ourselves to God’s power, can we become a living icon of His love in a world bleeding from hatred and division.
And I believe, or at least I want to believe, that God is creating a new reality through such Communities of Hope, one where “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain” (Revelation 21:4, NKJV).
In this cosmic drama each of us has a role, and each of us chooses a side. And although the veil has not yet fallen, and in the personal dimension of some of us has not yet been torn, we already know the final act: the victory of love over hatred, of life over death, of God’s design over human sin. In that eschatological vision I look for the strength to live and to hope even on the darkest night, and some day, perhaps, I will learn to love and to forgive by the power of the Holy Spirit, though perhaps not today.
Viktor Frankl, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust, spoke of the human capacity to find meaning even in the worst mental and physical suffering. Living through a war can become a road toward self-destruction, or a road toward a deeper understanding of the meaning of life and of my own role in His Mission, which remains unchanged. Our Mission has not changed. It is a painful and transformative experience that forces a person to rethink his life and his values.
So my existential journey through this war goes beyond my own story, since we have to see ourselves as part of a larger narrative about humanity struggling for its dignity and freedom in the face of existential evil. In that struggle all of us become participants and voluntarily choose a side in the divine drama of salvation, where our vulnerability, and specifically our voluntary vulnerability, becomes a source of strength, and our suffering becomes a road toward transformation into the character of Jesus Christ rather than into the realisation of hatred.
Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war. Taras M. Dyatlik, Ukraine
20 August 2024
P.S. In the photo I was helping a soldier with his backpack.
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