The Russia-Ukraine war, it is estimated, has cost a million lives and displaced as many as ten million. It will take a while to calculate the direct and indirect economic cost. Arms industries, their investors, and political patrons are the main beneficiaries.
The Liberals are justifying the war by arguing that Ukraine’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity must be protected.
WHY?
Do the Liberals believe in “Nation”? Do they think that national borders are sacred and must be defended? If so, why don’t they protect their national borders?
Ever since World War II, Western Liberals in Europe and America have condemned the biblical (Jewish-Protestant) idea that Nations are sacred because God created them. The apostle Paul presented that Old Testament truth in Acts 17:26–27: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
Following Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), Europe was wedded to Empires. Imperialism is a Luciferian (diabolical) idea because it implies war—i.e., taking over your neighbors’ land by force. Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologies believed in Christendom—not in nation-states. Nor did Communist education teach the sacredness of national borders to Russia and Ukraine.
Europe received the Bible’s (Jewish) idea of ‘Nation’ through the Protestant Reformation. It was through the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that the Netherlands and Switzerland became Europe’s first sovereign nation-states. North America’s 13 colonies followed their example by becoming the USA—a Nation, not 13 kingdoms, not an empire.
American President Franklin Roosevelt imposed the Bible’s idea of “Nation” upon the British and French empires through the Atlantic Charter (1941). As a precondition of the USA’s participation in WWII, he demanded that Winston Churchill must agree to dismantle the British Empire. That is why the colonies were set free after WWII, and the victors created the United Nations (UN)—not United Empires.
While the Bible’s idea of “Nations” was birthing the UN, the Liberals began an intellectual onslaught on the Bible’s idea of “Nation.” Fascist “German Nationalism” was their primary reason for attacking the idea of “Nation.” Fascist Nationalism did cause two World Wars. However, the real reason for the attack on “Nation” was that the biblical illiteracy of the Liberals had blinded them to the fact that Hitler’s “German Nationalism” was Imperialism, NOT Nationalism. The fascists were misusing Protestant-sounding language to deceive Post-biblical German Christians.
The Liberals kept undermining the sacredness of “Nations” in Academia, media and through forums such as the EU. That undermining of the Nation led to Brexit—Britain’s exit from the EU.
Now, suddenly, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Liberals are talking as though they really believe that National Borders are sacred and ought to be defended.
The question President Trump is raising is: Why should US citizens pay to defend Ukraine’s border? If the Europeans have changed their minds and believe that borders are sacred and should be defended… then shouldn’t they pay for the war and shed their blood?
You may ask, “Why did the Biden Administration pay Ukraine for the war?”
Well, the real question is: if President Biden really wanted to defeat Putin, why didn’t he get a resolution passed in the UN and launch an all-out attack on Russia? Was President Biden financing the war because the Arms Industry and its political supporters wanted to keep a modest war going so that they may dispose off their inventory?
Some may raise a legitimate question: Does President Trump believe in the sacredness of national borders? No one can doubt that he believes in the sacredness of the USA’s borders. His loose talk about Canada, Gaza, Panama and Greenland raises questions about the depth of his understanding and commitment to the Bible’s idea of Nation as a sovereign geo-political entity.
If President Trump is confused, then it will be because most American seminaries, theologians, missiologists, and pastors have made themselves incapable of defining “Nation.”
The Evangelical confusion began in the Mission’s Department of Fuller Seminary. It spread through what used to be the US Center for World Missions. Evangelical leaders should have responded to the Liberal attack on German Nationalism by pointing out that it was German imperialism, not nationalism. Instead, they attempted to save the Great Commission to disciple “all nations” by arguing that the Greek words for nations, “ethne” (plural of ethnos – nation) mean “people groups.” Etymologically, they were correct. But etymology is not theology.
Someone translating the Bible in Arabic may use the word “Allah” for God. Does he mean by Allah what an average Arabic-speaking Muslim understands—the Supreme Being who has no son but has a Prophet, Mohammad? Not at all. Every translator uses a word closest to his intended meaning and then puts into that word his theological connotations.
Likewise, Matthew used the Greek word “ethne” in the Great Commission because Greece did not have the Jewish idea of Nation. Greece was a collection of warring tribes, cities and kingdoms. Alexander united them into an Empire. Matthew used a word that does mean people groups in order to introduce to Europe, the Jewish idea of Nation.
God did not promise a “people group” to Abraham. He promised to make Abraham a great nation in a specific territory that the Hebrews were to love and turn into a great nation. Ever since Moses and Joshua, Israel was never one people-group. It was thirteen people groups (tribes) that had become a great nation. (13 because Joseph had become two tribes.) Israel was a model for many people groups living together in one territory, governing themselves under one law. When it split into two kingdoms — Israel and Judah — the 13 tribes became two nations because they had two territories and governing structures.
In case President Trump does not understand the sacredness of national borders, the blame rests on American theology that has confused the USA and global Christianity.
Some mission leaders will challenge me for slaughtering one of their sacred cows, but discussing this matter is necessary if the Church is to disciple the USA, Russia and Ukraine.
The immediate question is: What should be done to end the Russia-Ukraine War?
The options are straightforward:
Ukraine can keep fighting Russia with help from European Liberals and American Democrats. President Trump has taken a stand that hurts American arms business. Democrats do not need to agree with him. They can finance the war by imposing, say, a war-tax in the states they govern. Or,
Ukrainians can elect a new leader who will commit to ending the war and make peace with Russia and Trump’s America.
The long-term question is, what should the Church do?
Christian leaders have to recognize that Russia and Ukraine are both Orthodox nations, and, as I said before, the Orthodox culture has never had a biblical theology of Nation. The Soviet Empire was born because Communist atheism also rejected the American-UN idea that nations are sacred because national borders are God’s creation. Putin and the Ukraine war are products of that Orthodox-Communist culture.
Who will re-educate Russia? Russia opened its doors to American missions after the Communist Empire collapsed in 1991. Sadly, most American missions did not bother to go because Russia and Ukraine were not in the “10/40 Window.”American missions were operating on an erroneous eschatological belief that Jesus will return by Y2K if they “finish the task” of reaching the unreached people groups by 1999.
There were a few exceptions, such as Campus Crusade. Some young American missionaries who did go to Russia taught their audiences how to be slain in the Spirit and roll on the ground! They were inspired by the Toronto Blessing! Russians did not even hear the Protestant Gospel which made America a great nation.
My point is that American evangelists and missionaries do not know what an atheist historian Tom Holland knows: that it was the Cross, not the sword, that conquered the brutal Roman Empire.
Many Christians are as mad at President Trump as some Jews were at the Messiah. They wanted him to organize a militia to fight Rome’s occupying forces. Jesus did not yield to them because he knew what Putin, Zelensky, the Liberals, their media and the Western Arms Industry do not know—it is the meek that shall inherit the earth.
American evangelists see the Cross exclusively as a legal transaction to satisfy God’s justice; therefore, they cannot make sense of Christ’s call to his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. The cross is the entry point into God’s kingdom.
The Lord Jesus was not a Pacifist. It was as a realist that he said to Peter, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” That is the message President Trump is giving to Zelensky: stop fighting or you will self-destruct. Europe has different reasons to fight. In the USA, Trump’s message hurts the US Arms Industry, and the politicians and media it finances.