BEING HUMAN

#BeingHuman. #BrutalHonesty. I am on the night train from Odesa back home. Today, 7 months ago, the heart of Andriy stopped beating after he was mortally wounded by the Russians… Andriy studied in Odesa for 7 years at the medical university…

I write on behalf of the families of the fallen, of those missing and suffering in Russian captivity, of the injured and disabled, of those divided by displacement… I write from Bleeding Ukraine…

Several members of our Dyatlik and extended family have already sacrificed their blood and lives for freedom… Many of our friends and colleagues are wounded and disabled from war traumas… Many are missing and suffering in Russian captivity… And even more have fallen – not merely as “casualties in the conflict” (to reject this language of neutralization) – they were deliberately killed by pro-Russian and Russian forces…

…My brother Andriy and several close relatives were not mere “casualties” – they were deliberately killed by pro-Russian and Russian forces, one in 2014, and the rest in Russia’s full-scale unprovoked war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022. All this while Russia expands its “Russian World” and claims to protect “traditional Christian values”…

When Ukrainian Christians expressed deep concern and frustration over recent U.S. presidential rhetoric questioning support for our survival… “some” evangelical leaders (not from the SL, Mesa or Langham circles) were quick to remind us of their financial contributions… as if monetary aid should silence our fears of ethnocide, our existential fears…

This response revealed for me a deep misunderstanding… while we are deeply grateful for financial support, it cannot be used as leverage to dismiss our legitimate concerns about our survival… When the very existence of our nation and our family, of our faith community, hangs in the balance, no amount of financial aid can compensate for the betrayal of abandonment…

When those respected evangelical leaders say “we funded your freedom,” I must respond (please, do not take it personally)… “While you measure support in dollars, we measure ours in lives, blood, deaths, missing, in captivity and funerals… Now, tragically, we even face accusations of starting the war we did not choose…”

We – as the Dyatlik and so many more families, as theological leaders and church ministers of Ukraine – have paid the ultimate price with the blood and lives of countless thousands for our right to exist and to keep our faith, to worship freely in our language and country. We are not “Zelenskyy’s country” – we are Ukraine. We are the Church in Ukraine, standing firm in faith through generations of Soviet persecution and genocide. Like my mother and father, and my grandparents who survived those times, while hundreds of thousands did not survive from 1917 through 1986…

Even now, as I write it on the night train, five members of our family stand at the frontlines of existence itself… risking their lives not merely for Ukraine’s freedom, but for a liberty that reaches beyond all borders… A truth that lies naked before the world… yet remains unseen by those who choose darkness…

We cannot equate funds with blood… missionary support with their martyrdom… When others speak of financial aid, we speak of mothers who have lost sons, of children left fatherless, of families torn apart not by circumstance but by deliberate evil of the rising Russian World… Their sacrifice cannot be measured in currency, but in the eternal “weight of glory” they now bear… No amount of money can restore the stolen time of ten million refugees and displaced persons, of divided families… No funds will ever return those murdered, raped, missing, or held captive by Russian forces…

This is not about ingratitude – please hear me clearly. We deeply appreciate every form of your support – financial, prayerful, emotional. I am not generalizing or diminishing your compassion at all… Rather, I want to speak against those voices, even from some respected evangelical leaders, who dare to equate monetary value with the price of our blood and the weight of our losses… Our gratitude remains profound, but our pain cannot be measured in dollars…

This is not a rebuke of financial support – please hear me clearly. It is a cry for deeper understanding. It is about the blood of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters who died defending our right to believe, to pray, to exist and to worship as Christians in our own tongue, in our own homeland… The price we pay with blood and lives transcends all material measures…

True partnership begins when we step beyond the cold mathematics of “donor-recipient” relationships… This isn’t about diminishing financial support – it’s about understanding that defending faith and liberty in Ukraine demands the ultimate price… When our brothers and sisters stand at the gates of death defending our liberty and right to worship in our language, they aren’t mere recipients of financial aid… they are the witnesses to eternal truths… In this existential struggle, we are not benefactors and beneficiaries… but fellow warriors in a battle where some fight with resources… others with prayer… and some with their very blood and lives and health and separation…

Again… please, remember… we remain deeply grateful for every prayer, every dollar, every gesture of support from our Western brothers and sisters… We are grateful and we value and we ask you to continue to walk with us through this Valley of Death… Yet as we stand together in this crucible moment, we must remember that our shared Missio Dei – God’s eternal mission first promised to Abraham to bless all nations, but fulfilled in Christ’s Great Commission – has not changed…

This war, while bleeding Ukraine, ultimately tests something far greater: it challenges the very foundations of how we understand God’s Kingdom advancing through the suffering of the other and the Other (Whom we call the Crucified God)… Russia’s aggression isn’t merely about territorial conquest of Ukraine – it carries the worldwide political dominion of the “Russian World” ideology – a direct assault on true Christian religious liberty and democracy, on the right of ethnic peoples to worship in spirit and truth in their own language, on the biblical vision of nations walking in the light of God’s truth…

How the Western evangelical church responds to this moment will reveal its maturity in understanding God’s global mission. For just as the early church grew stronger through persecution, just as the blood of martyrs became the seed of the church, this present darkness of the rising “Russian World” has already strengthened – and will continue to strengthen – the Church in Ukraine in the Mission of God, even amidst the atrocities of war…

And in this moment of testing, God offers us an opportunity to demonstrate that we are truly one Body in Christ – not only through financial support but through shared suffering for the glory of the Crucified God…

For when Ukrainian Christians bear witness amidst artillery barrages and funerals, when pastors serve their congregations under shelling and in occupied territories, when chaplains minister on the frontlines, when Christian families open their homes to the displaced, when believers care for the wounded and comfort the bereaved – they embody Christ’s presence in the darkness…

May this witness challenge and transform the Western and global “peacetime” evangelical understanding of God’s mission in a world where evil still shows itself in bombs and bullets, in torture chambers and mass graves in so-called contexts of the “armed conflicts”…

Peace be with you, and may your children never know war. Yet if they must face it, may they find the global Body of Christ standing with them, not merely as distant supporters, but as true co-sufferers in the mission of our Crucified and Risen Lord…
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Taras D, Ukraine
February 21, 2025