The most dangerous thing in the world is an excuse.
Peter Ingemi
If you are a person who pays attention the recent stories of some Ukrainian units having historically Nazi badges is no revelation. The great Mark Felton did a video on it a while back and it was known that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi as liberators from the Soviets who had starved and killed them for decades.
Don Surber did an excellent piece on the subject on his substack account ( that you should subscribe to) talking about the subject. I’m not going to dive into the whole piece, although it is certainly worth your time, but for the purposes of this piece just two paragraphs and the final sentence in the second is what we’ll quote
The newspaper said, “Factions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, though, some of the groups fought against the Nazis.”
Some. So not all the Ukrainians wanted the Nazis out. The choice between Nazi occupiers and Soviet occupiers was a tough call because Stalin had starved 6 million Ukrainians a few years earlier in the Holodomor. The older I get, the more I realize how often there are no good guys.
emphasis mine
The moment I read those paragraphs I instantly thought of the admonition of Christ at the sermon on the mount:
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as (also) your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
Luke 6:35-38
And this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Well, then, are we better off? Not entirely, for we have already brought the charge against Jews and Greeks alike that they are all under the domination of sin, as it is written: “There is no one just, not one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have gone astray; all alike are worthless; there is not one who does good, (there is not) even one.
Their throats are open graves; they deceive with their tongues; the venom of asps is on their lips; their mouths are full of bitter cursing. Their feet are quick to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they know not. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3: 9-18
Why, because of grievance.
Russia believes, (even if others don’t) that they have legit grievances against Ukraine and even legit fears (Hey if you were invaded by Napoleon & Hitler you might have some fears too).
Ukraine believes that they have legit grievances against Russia both current (the invasion) and historical (millions starved by the USSR in the 30’s etc) ones as well. The actual invasion is of course the easiest grievance to understand but it’s also the reason why Ukraine isn’t all that anxious to go to the table to negotiate.
But the reality is that this is not unique. China has grievances against Japan and the west, The west have grievances against China, all kinds of people have all kinds of grievances against everyone else and if you are willing to go back far enough in history you can find grievance. John Cleese might have been joking about how England should demand reparations for being invaded but that really illustrates the point that Surber is making if you look at history very often there are no good guys and that’s why Christ message to forgive and love your enemies is so important because by doing so you don’t hold onto grievance.
Holding onto grievance, on a personal, or family, or clan, or race, or state, or national level always leads to something horrible in the end, because you don’t allow an evil, either real or perceived, to die. And even worse if you hold tightly onto it it goes on for generations even when the people involved are long dead.
Taken to it’s final extent you end up with people taking grievance for something that didn’t happen to them wanting revenge against people who didn’t do it to them.
And believe me the grifter and the demagogues are just waiting to take advantage of that kind of hatred and grievance for the sake of their own power and wealth.
When you instead release grievance, when you love your neighbor as yourself you are being like God and like Christ who famously on the cross declared:
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.“
Luke 23:34
To forgive and to let go is holy but even if you don’t do so for the sake of rightness, do so because of the price for not forgiving as the Lord’s Prayer the Our Father says:
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
emphasis mine
Forgiveness is the right thing, it’s also the smart thing.
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