Pray for Ukraine?

This is too good not to share. I wish every single person living in the territory ruled by the American Empire would read this short article.

Written by Laurence Vance - used with permission. Original article can be found here.

PRAY FOR UKRAINE?

The latest empty cliché that one hears out of the mouth of Christians is “Pray for Ukraine.” But do Christians who utter this pious platitude even know what they mean when they say it?

I suppose that it is supposed to mean that we should pray for the people of Ukraine who are suffering because of the unjustified Russian invasion of their country. If only things were that simple.

Some observations are in order.

This appeal is based on the overly simplistic yet false and evil notion of Ukraine, good; Russia, bad. This trite expression in the form of a prayer request is virtue signaling at its worst. I think we are at the point now where someone saying “Pray for Ukraine” is the verbal equivalent of someone wearing a face mask.

If U.S. soldiers are heroes for following their government’s orders, then why aren’t Russian soldiers heroes for doing the same?

How come I have never heard any Christians say that we should pray for the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who were shelled for the past eight years by the Ukrainian military? If we should pray for the people of Ukraine, then what about the Uyghurs in northwest China who have been persecuted by the Chinese government for years? And what about the Chinese people? Their government keeps imposing strict lockdowns because of its ridiculous zero-Covid policy. Where were these Christians when the U.S. military was killing Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians by the millions during the Vietnam War? Where were these Christians when the U.S. military was bombing Serbia in 1999 (in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance, of course)? There has been a horrendous civil war in Ethiopia for the past two years. Why do we never hear Christians say that we should pray for Ethiopia? Would Christians be saying “Pray for Yemen” if the United States was not supporting Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen? And what about the people of Saudi Arabia suffering under the brutal rule of the Mohammed bin Salman regime? Shouldn’t we pray for them? Oh, I forgot, they are Muslims.

How many of these Christians expressed any concern about all the widows and orphans that the U.S. military made over a twenty-year period in Afghanistan? How many of these Christians offered up prayers for the people of Iraq—a country that never attacked the United States—when hundreds of thousands of them were injured, maimed, or killed during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and, before this, as a consequence of the brutal sanctions that the United States imposed on the Iraqi people?

Why should we take any of these Christians seriously when they say “Pray for Ukraine”?

So, yes, pray for Ukraine. But pray for the civilians of the world who are on the receiving end of bombs and bullets from any army. And pray especially for the civilians of the world who are on the receiving end of weapons made in the good ole USA by merchants of death like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.