Very sad news coming out of Ukraine as the Ukrainian people continue a very brave defense against the Russian invasion and offensive. One of the interesting things to note right now is the fact that to the moral horror of a watching world, Russia is using munitions against civilians that are outlawed by the Geneva Convention. We're looking at so-called cluster munitions, but we're also looking at the intentional effort to use weaponry that will scare the Ukrainian people into subservience or surrender.
This form of psychological warfare is very common, as you look at the history of warfare throughout the centuries of world history, but we need to understand that as we are in the modern world, there are new weapons that bring even deadlier opportunities for striking against civilians.
Now, as you are thinking through this, I just want to take us back to some basic issues of Christian worldview thinking when it comes to war. And as we're thinking about war, the Christian church has had to struggle with this issue for a matter of centuries. There have been very few periods of peace in the world. Generally, at some point, somewhere in the world, there's armed conflict. The Christian worldview based in a realistic understanding of sin understands that human individuals will sin, but also collectives of human individuals will sin. And that includes communities at one level, tribes at another, and nations. Nations will war against nations.
So the Christian church has struggled throughout the centuries to try to think in consistent biblical and theological fidelity about the question, the horrifying question of war. When is war justified? If justified, how is war to be fought? This is known classically as Christian just war theory.
All three of those words are important. Just, meaning when is a war justly fought and justifiable in terms of the use of arms. And it also comes down to Christian. That's the most important to the modifiers here. It's not just an understanding of the justice or injustice of war. It is a distinctively Christian biblical understanding. And yes, it is a theory. That is to say, it's an intellectual framework. So, Christian just war theory has been developed rather consistently throughout the history of the Christian church. And it's interesting to note that Christian just war theory is basically affirmed by the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic Church and the historic Protestant churches.
It is deeply rooted in distinctively Christian modes of thinking. For example, there's a great division in the two questions. Number one, when is war justified? That means that the Christian understands there is a very limited set of circumstances in which recourse to arms is justified. And it generally comes down to the very first principle being this, a justified war must be a war of defense, not a war of offense. So in other words, if you declare war and invade another country, the burden of proof is on you to show that this was somehow justifiable.
And it's on that count by the way that Vladimir Putin failed spectacularly. His invasion of Ukraine is an offensive invasion and he has used as justification, ridiculous, frankly irrational charges such as the charge that Ukraine was getting ready to invade Russia. So based upon biblical principles, Christian just war theory is underlying the fact that it is without justification that a nation would invade a nation just to gain political advantage, just to gain its territory. And of course, all you have to think about are the horrifying wars of just the 20th century to understand just how difficult it is to justify invading another nation.
But that just war theory, pointing to when war is justifiable, has several different points. And one of them has to be that war has to be the last resort. All other efforts at trying to achieve some kind of peace must have failed. And again, we're looking at a situation of abject moral failure as we consider Russia's armed invasion against Ukraine.
But the second half of Christian just war theory isn't about when war is justifiable, but about the justifiable means of conducting war. Now again, this is really important. One of the most crucial principles of how a war is fought justly is that combat must be limited to combatants rather than to civilians. In other words, it's really important in moral terms that civilians be protected and that the distinction between combatants and civilians be recognized.
Now, in the course of modern warfare, and in particular with the development of modern aerial bombardment, and that came specifically as a moral challenge in World War II, this particular principle of Christian just war theory has been tested to the limit.
But in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what we're really talking about is not complicated questions at all. What we're talking about are very clear questions. And now the report comes from many international observers that the Russians are using cluster munitions and other forms of modern weaponry in order to basically beat the civilian population into subservience, and in order to lead civilians to demand a surrender on the part of the Ukrainian government.
In one sense, you could describe this as psychological warfare, but that's almost always in the history of human civilization what the targeting of civilians means. It is generally an effort to try to destroy the credibility of the opposing government. That would be, in this case, to try to subvert the government of Ukraine by leading the people simply to demand at fear for their own lives, that the nation would surrender to an attacking foe.
This is where the overwhelming evidence coming from the media indicate that the shelling against residential communities in Ukrainian cities. It is particularly seen as an egregious reach of Christian just war theory, the Geneva Convention, and other international accords by targeting civilians rather than hardened armed and military targets. And once again, we just have to underline the likely intention here is what can only be described as psychological warfare. And let's not minimize just how whole horrifying psychological warfare is. You have families, you have civilians who cannot sleep simply because they are afraid of their own apartment or complex being targeted by a missile or shelling. This situation is generally intolerable for civilian populations, at least for very long. The Ukrainians are holding out quite bravely.
II Corinthians 1:8-11 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
