When the Word became flesh, it did not bring a system of abstract spiritual values, but the living presence of God in human history. The incarnation of Christ is a radical act of personalization of God’s mission, where the divine and human are inseparable and indivisible, as the church fathers wrote about it.
Unfortunately, a growing part of the Christian community, speaking on behalf of the God-man Christ, has paradoxically embarked on the path of dehumanization – through abstract “Christian values” it divides what God has united in Christ. Isn’t the modern obsession with depersonalized Christian values a kind of Christological neo-heresy of our time, where the defense of an abstract “divine order” displaces the concrete human face, especially the face of the victim?
When the “world” observes the negotiations to “establish peace” in Ukraine, it sees not just a geopolitical chessboard, but a mirror reflecting the moral state of those who proclaim themselves “defenders of Christian values,” both in the East and in the West of the round or “flat” Earth. This mirror reveals a striking discrepancy between the “spiritual” rhetoric of peace that so many evangelicals outside Ukraine have become fond of and the actions that assert the right of the strong and powerful.
The prophet Ezekiel denounced the shepherds:
“Woe to the shepherds of Israel who shepherd themselves! Are not shepherds supposed to feed the flock?” (Ezekiel 34:2).
Today, we are witnessing something similar: those who are supposed to defend justice and truth are ready to trade the fate of the victim of Russian aggression for their own benefit. The idea of “protecting” Ukraine in exchange for its resources is not Christian care for one’s neighbor, but a cynical deal based on the principle of “help but profit.”
This should be read in the context of the dominant rhetoric about defending Christian values. Is protecting victims of Russian violence and aggression no longer part of traditional Christian values?
The selectivity of the moral vision of evangelical defenders of so-called traditional Christian values is particularly telling. Almost all “defenders of values” notice corruption in Ukraine, but only a few notice systemic corruption in Russia. They criticize the “restriction of religious freedom” in Ukraine, but are silent about the systematic persecution of religious minorities in Russia and the anti-missionary law. They criticize the “imperfections” of Ukrainian democracy while turning a blind eye to the authoritarian regime in Russia. The list goes on…
The prophet Amos warned:
“They sell the just for silver, and the poor for boots” (Amos 2:6).
Isn’t the same thing happening today, when geopolitical interests and economic gain of the defenders of traditional Christian values “on both sides” are being placed above justice and human dignity?
The “new world order” being reconstructed before our eyes will be beneficial to “certain” religious and imperial nationalists. But will it be in line with the spirit of Christ, who “defends the rights of all who are oppressed” (Psalm 103:6)? From laws protecting widows and orphans to prophetic denunciations of those in power who “oppress the poor” (Isaiah 3:15), the Scriptures are a constant reminder of God’s special concern for the fate of the marginalized.
“For the time has come for judgment to begin in the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17) – these words have a special meaning for me today. Perhaps the current situation is a moment of truth for the international evangelical community: a time to distinguish between true faith and its imitation, between serving God and serving mammon (Matthew 6:24), between true and just peace and the “peace” of the violent and powerful.
These words sound more relevant today than ever. Peace built on the right of the strong is not peace in the biblical sense; it is not peace that reflects the true values of Christ, which are proclaimed to be defended by both the Kremlin and the White House. True peace is inextricably linked to justice, to respect for the dignity of every person and every nation.
The Christian community (it is difficult for me to call it the Church now) has gradually replaced the living mission of God, which is revealed in the history of salvation from the creation of the world to its eschatological redemption, with the abstract concept of “Christian values.” This has led to a tragic theological and missiological distortion: instead of being co-participants in God’s plan for the restoration of creation and the reconciliation of humanity (2 Corinthians 5:18-19), more and more Christians with a religious-imperial worldview are becoming “guardians” of a system of depersonalized values that is often used to justify violence and injustice. “Values” without the living heart of God’s mission have become an ideological destructive tool that can be manipulated for the political and economic interests of the powerful.
At the center of God’s mission is Christ, the incarnate God, who “humbled Himself by taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7) and sided with the victims of violence and injustice. Instead, depersonalized “Christian values” often center on an abstract and mythologized moral and cultural order of an imaginary “golden age” that can paradoxically coexist with violence and oppression. This radical conflict of centers reflects the fundamental contradiction between the living God, who “resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5), and human attempts to use religion and Christian values to assert the power of the strong over the weak. I watch with horror as more and more evangelicals support the right of power, abandoning the mission and theology of the cross of Christ.
The attitude toward victims of aggression is a kind of litmus test that reveals the true state of the Christian community. When the Christian community remains silent in the face of unjust aggression or even justifies it for the sake of “higher values,” it betrays its mission to be the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13) and a witness to God’s justice. Just as the prophet Isaiah denounced those who “call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20), so today the attitude towards victims of violence reveals whether the Christian community is truly the Church and follows Christ, who “did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), or only uses his name to protect his own interests and privileges.
Undoubtedly, Ukraine faces numerous internal challenges, from corruption to institutional shortcomings, from social inequality to political contradictions, which are only exacerbated by Russian aggression and its devastating consequences. However, using these problems as an excuse for imperial ambitions or moral indifference to the suffering of the victims of aggression is a vivid example of the kind of Pharisaism that Christ denounced with the words “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe on mint and caraway and cumin, but have forsaken the most important things in the law: judgment, mercy, and faith” (Matthew 23:23).
A critical moment is approaching for the Christian community to radically rethink its position and abandon the empty rhetoric of defending depersonalized “traditional Christian values” and return to the living mission of the living God. As the Lord asked Jeremiah: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” (Jeremiah 1:11), so today He asks His people: what do we see behind the facade of religious rhetoric? Are we able to discern how an obsession with abstract, dehumanized “values” has obscured the very essence of God’s mission of restoring justice, healing wounds, and reconciliation that does not ignore the suffering of victims but rather begins with the recognition of their pain?
The world of politics will continue to operate according to its logic of power and compromise – this is indeed what the entire book of Revelation says. But the question is deeper: will the Christian, evangelical community be able to go beyond this logic and become a true church of God’s mission? Will we, like the prophet Amos once did, be able to see behind religious rituals and loud words about “peace” the reality of oppression and injustice (Amos 5:21-24)?
The paradox of our time is not that the world acts like the world, but that the evangelical community is often unable or deliberately unwilling to recognize the difference between the mechanical, murderous defense of depersonalized values and the living participation in God’s mission, which is always personal, always aimed at restoring human dignity and justice. “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Revelation 2:7) is a call not just to physical hearing, but to a deep spiritual and missionary discernment of where God is truly at work in our divided, sin-traumatized world.
Christ the God-Man has shown us that God enters history not through abstract principles and values, but through concrete human relationships, through incarnate presence, through compassion with victims…
When the Christian community substitutes this incarnate mission of God for the defense of depersonalized values, it does not just betray its mission, it breaks the very mystery of the incarnation, where the divine and human are inseparably united….
Are we able to see that today’s crisis of “Christian values” is not just an ethical or political problem, but a Christological crisis? A crisis where the abstract displaces the concrete, where the “defense of values” becomes an excuse for dehumanization and murder, where the system absorbs the individual and turns into genocide of the weak – all that the mystery of the Incarnation opposed…
Perhaps now, in the face of the victims of war and violence, it is time for a radical return to the truth of the incarnation-where God meets us not in a system of values but in a specific human face?
