7.5- Wars can make us into monsters if we are not careful.

 7.5-

Wars can make us into monsters if we are not careful. Russian forces detained Ms. Tipakova in the corner store she owned, took her to a penal colony; interrogators beat her hands and head and tried to suffocate her with a gas mask over the next 36 hours, sent an electric current through a metal clip affixed to her ear,  threatened to ship her to the Russian cities as a laborer unless she made a video renouncing her pro-Ukrainian stance.

“Everything was about that video,” she said in Zaporizhzhia, to which she fled after her release. “I could hold out until the electric shocks started, then I thought I can’t fight anyone if I’m stuck in here, only if I stay alive and get out of here,” she said.

Other protest organizers were detained and beaten, and the resistance movement petered out…Russian forces took into custody the 10-year-old son of a director of a Berdyansk city school who had refused to cooperate with the Russian authorities. They told her to think about her stance toward Russia, her acquaintances said. The boy’s location isn’t known.

“All the police who stayed in Berdyansk to work with the Russians have simply taken over the property of anyone who left,” said Mr. Mikitenko.

She (Ms. Galitsyna) said the only moment of real joy in the city since occupation happened on March 24, when Ukrainian forces struck the Russian landing ship Saratov that docked in the Berdyansk port.

“We watched as hundreds of soldiers were taken away from the ship, dead or injured,” said Ms. Galitsyna. “I never wanted to rejoice at someone else’s misery, but war makes you a monster,” she said.

And she is not talking about the Russian soldiers; she is talking about the effect war is having on her own heart. 

War, in its various forms, has deeply impacted our church family.  When we look around at our veterans, and those who have touched the hem of war’s robe, they know more than the rest of us the nature of combative war.    

These wars and temptations that go with them have been going on since the beginning of time.  The devil said to Adam and Eve that God had lied to them about disobedience and rebellion not killing your spirit.  He said their rebellion would make them better.  It made them worse. The devil tempted Cain to kill his own brother. 

Wars shape the identity of people. We start to see people through the lens of “us” versus “them” instead of seeming people as image bearers of God.

The Holy Spirit is the one who fills us and surrounds us as children of God.  He shapes our hearts to love for a different way to respond.