A block of flats in Borodyanka, north of Kiev, destroyed at the beginning of the Russian raid in a picture taken on February 23
Image: AFP
Deliveries of arms to defend against Russian aggression are legitimate, says the EKD council chairwoman. But one insight should not be forgotten: no weapon alone creates peace. A guest post.
Ecce homo! Just two words, and yet one of the greatest sentences from the biblical passion story: Behold, man! That is what the Passiontide is all about. This is the core of the Christian faith, its power center and mission. I miss that Ecce homo look; sometimes I’ve lost it myself in arguments about main battle tanks – yes or no, fighter planes – yes or no. We need him now, even more so after a year of war. At the beginning of the war, attention was paid to the suffering, wounded and killed people and the horror at the brute force was great. In the meantime, killing threatens to become part of the news routine: we hear about branches of arms and tank names, about cities and troop movements, about hundreds of dead people.
Ecce Homo! The dead and maimed people must not disappear behind the numbers. We don’t know the exact numbers because they, too, become a means of war propaganda. We stand with the people who have been attacked in Ukraine. But as Christians we also mourn the shot young man from Dagestan or Buryatia who was recruited for this war. We are not talking away the difference between perpetrators and victims. If at all possible, the perpetrators must be punished after the war and the victims must be brought to justice. That will be part of the peace to be won. The people killed can neither be reduced to heroes for a good cause nor to henchmen of a war criminal. Each of them has their own story and an unmistakable face, each remains a unique creature of God.