Voice of Ukraine

Translated from Ukrainian

From: Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary

Text by: Pavlo Horbunov
Photo by: Dmytro Larin

When I was tasked with sharing thoughts that would help make sense of a full-scale war in Ukraine, I faced a number of challenges. First of all, a reflection of such a traumatic experience is better given on the side. We’ve experienced too much pain to claim objective assessment with minimal emotion and focus on numbers and analysis. Personally, my emotions are zaškalûût ть, so I’m not objective. Secondly, reasoning requires qualification and understanding, and I’m nowhere near an expert. I have to admit, I’ve been bugging this word lately. Dont know why (! ), but I noticed a dislike for this status. Another expert opinion? – Get out! I guess it’s time for me to go to the brain right. Then, I’m so tired of everything that I just don’t have the strength to think deeply. In the end, full-scale war is an event that is simply impossible to comprehend. I don’t mean cause and effect, but the experience of pain that cannot be reconciled with sanity, bordering on madness, inhumanity, and even the attempt to deny validity, because the brain continues to claim that this should not happen in any universe with moral landmarks. Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, and many other cities forever recorded messages on the pages of their history that I can’t read out loud or about myself. To be honest, I’m already starting to regret taking this little project. Tried to invent excuses and even found good reasons, but none of them turned out to be enough to refuse. That’s why the text will still be. In it I will share thoughts that are relevant to me personally. This will be a set of theses, not a whole agreed article. So it’s easier to express thoughts, and that’s all I can do now.

1. For some it’s a war, and for some it’s an inconvenient event that ruins all plans. That’s how it always was and will be. You look, someone in the country is at war and he is putting all his efforts into winning, and someone seems to have no war, so he is just waiting. Unfortunately, here it is validity. However, it is not worth to be very upset, because most people in Ukraine continue to fight for their freedom and do not wait for someone to do it for them. I chose to be inspired by examples of conscience and responsibility, rather than upset by examples of indifference.
2. Peace is worth the fight. Evil will never be destroyed in this history. Is it worth the fight then? Shares, revolutions, victims, evil, pain, hopes that are doomed to disappointment. So much strength and fight. So much suffering, human life, destruction. Is it worth fighting at all? Is everything hopeless? My answer is definitely worth it! Whenever evil strays from it’s positions, even for a while, it’s worth the fight, otherwise it’ll swallow everything around. This struggle not only represents a purpose, but is our identity. Good people, God’s people, strong, real, whose back is held by the spine, not the jellyfish mass, just can’t do it any other way. When they see evil, they react. All our struggles reveal who we are.

I had a traumatic experience as a kid. Now you need to focus and visualize this situation, otherwise you won’t understand me. In 1992, a wonderful animated movie “Aladdin” was released. It caused many unforgettable experiences and, of course, it ended with a happy ending. When the sequel to Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar was released in 1994 there was something else besides the questionable quality, and I was emotionally struck by it. It took a while to process what happened. Just now I was struck by lightning: I realized that there was actually no happy ending after the first part of the cartoon. If the challenges and struggles continue and on, and their in Aladdin 2 was a lot, so after the happy end comes the next struggles and challenges. It will always be like this as long as there is a sequel. For my young mind, which was not yet strengthened by the formative influence of the theological thought of the legendary Erikson and Grudem, it was an incredibly painful blow. Painful but he pushed to grow up. This experience began the formation of a fundamental Biblical statement – as long as this world exists, the fight continues, and the good always must be fought for. And yet the struggle that lies before us does not diminish the former achievements, even if very difficult.

3. Our struggle is not only spiritual, but also physical. In the novel “Perelander” by C. S. Lewis, the main character Ransom, is tasked with warning the sinfall on the planet Perelander, so that it does not happen as on Earth. God’s angels execute Ransom on Perelander, but do not explain what he has to do there. Arriving on another planet, Ransom encounters “Eve” Perelander, who Weston, an obsessed Earth scientist, tries all sorts of cunningness to persuade not to obey the Creator. Ransom, on the other hand, defies Weston’s claim, but he is doing a bad job: a pleasant lie is easier to promote than an uncomfortable truth. Ransom doesn’t know what to do, but desperately asks: “Why doesn’t a miracle happen?” “. Perekazuvati Lewis can’t, you have to read the original, so straight to the point. Overcoming a heavy battle in his mind, reminiscent of Christ’s struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, Ransom realizes that he is the miracle, and that through him God is turning things around. All he has to do is box a human shell with demons living inside. The hero says to himself: “Well, the battle with the devil can be exclusively spiritual… Only the savage will come to the mind of navkulački fight him.

“If only it were that simple.” In the end, it’s all really so simple: he just has to fight his fists with the devilish force: “He realized with horror that the physical action that was needed from him had meaning and hope.”

I am even more convinced that the Christian community often does not give due attention to the theology of creation. In the Biblical narrative, the world is not so roughly divided into spiritual and material – it is all part of the same. “our fight is not with body and blood” Apostle Paul (Ef. 6:12) Applies to methods, not spheres of influence. Physical warfare does not elude physical Christians. So, if the enemy comes into our home to kill our loved ones, we should give him a cut off with “love” and also so that different foolish thoughts do not return to his head for a long time.

4. We need a fight that has red lines that we will not go out for, otherwise we will destroy ourselves. We have a good purpose, but the methods may be different. Some methods meet our goal, and others question the whole sense of the fight. This is what I’m talking about, so we don’t drown ourselves in pride, hate and cruelty. How to do this, how to protect myself from these demons in times of pain, fear and darkness, I honestly don’t know completely. But I know that it is necessary to do, otherwise we will lose ourselves, we will lose what it means to be human, we will stop being Ukrainians. There is a cancerous tumor, so it needs to be removed. Let the scalpel continue to be a weapon of surgical intervention and not over time become a weapon of robbery and violence. P.S. Good results can’t be achieved with mats.
5. This is so true for people. For some time I was in favor of moderating information reaching the masses in the context of war. It seemed to me that you shouldn’t give people “hard” facts, because not everyone is ready for it, not everyone is emotionally mature, so tact and thoughtfulness are needed. Today I am convinced: If our leaders expect us to perform conscious and responsible actions, then they should treat us like that and share the information with conscious and responsible citizens. There is an absolute sign of equality between the parties. There will always be people with the philosophy of life “my house is on the edge” but most are ready to fight for their freedom and they deserve hai scary complex but truth. Only knowing the truth can you act right. Half-truths calm down at first and then kill.
6. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” although a “fairytale” (expressed in the language of ignorance capable of seeing benefit only in the television news or newspapers), actually contains many amazing truths about the meaning of struggle, courage, suffering, hope, let not even for oneself.
7. Gotta keep moving on regardless. The war continues and now is not the time to stop – it will be later, sometime in the future. Not the time to rest (no extremes), not the time to go deeper into the experience of your own pain (no extremities). I lost a friend. His name was Shostak Andrew. He died defending the people of Ukraine. I still can’t say goodbye to him, even though I was at his grave. This experience, I hope, will be after the war as well, but in the meantime we can only wait. What do we do with all our pain, fatigue and uncertainty? I don’t know in details, I don’t have many answers neither for myself nor for others, but I’m sure of one thing – nevertheless I have to move on. L. Krabb in “Adam’s silence” says courage isn’t always success, but always movement. For me, this definition is very relevant now.

Moving on helps me God’s support and God’s word because I fight not “like others who have no hope” (1 Sol. 4:13). My loved ones and friends help me to complete my journey, without whom I would probably have stopped. I hope you have this superpower too. I really got lucky with this one.