In the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Isaiah warned his people, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20) He was speaking God’s truth to a people who saw a moral crisis taking place in their times. Religious and political leaders were making moral pronouncements that made a mockery of God’s universal set of ethics based upon the legal equality of every human being, because all have been created in God’s image. Isaiah rightly denounced these immoral leaders as hypocrites who distorted God’s social ethics to further their own self-centered interests.
In this post, I want to consider evil actions that Russian “president” Vladimir Putin has committed and identify some of those U.S. leaders who are now enabling him. Putin is a war criminal. His evil actions were obvious when he was a KGB operative decades ago and his actions have gone from bad to worse. In early 2014 he sent his troops to invade the Crimean Peninsula which belonged to Ukraine. Russian troops occupied the Crimean Parliament and called for a referendum for Crimea’s “independence” which they rigged to win. The international community spoke with one voice to condemn this invasion and theft. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the referendum and annexation, and officially recognized the “the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders”. In addition, the members of the G8 kicked Putin and Russia out of this organization of world leaders.
Three years ago, Putin’s troops launched a massive invasion of other areas of Ukraine, without provocation. Putin again committed various war crimes. He launched missile strikes on civilian populations, especially targeting schools and hospitals. His troops kidnapped Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia for “re-education”. It was for these crimes that the International Criminal Court (ICC) condemned Putin and issued a warrant for his arrest. In the United States, Republicans and Democrats spoke with one voice. They denounced Putin and they praised Ukrainian president Zelensky for his military response. Over these last three years, the U.S. Congress has sent 119 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine for its fight against the war criminal Putin. As recently as the conference in Helsinki this year, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham praised Zelensky for his heroic stand against Putin.
Putin has not had a moral conversion, but ten days ago, good became evil and evil became good. Europe brought a Resolution to the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Russia for its invasion. Like similar resolutions in the past, the world joined together to condemn Russian and its War Criminal “President”. What was different this time was that our United States Ambassador to the UN, obeying Trump’s command, voted against the resolution. We joined the “Axis of Evil” nations in defending Putin. I was not surprised by Trump’s action. Just two weeks ago, Trump lied to the US people, falsely affirming that the war had been started by Ukraine. Nevertheless, it was painful to see most Republican leaders (with a few exceptions like senators Murkowski and Lankford) do a complete about face. Perhaps out of fear of Trump’s retaliation, they supported Trump’s UN vote in defense of Putin. Speaker of the House Johnson identified the Axis of Evil countries (Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.) but tried to avoid the obvious truth that we had joined this Axis in our UN vote. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s body language in the White House fiasco meeting on Friday tells the whole story. He hated hearing Trump’s defense of Putin and attack on Zelensky, but he had sold out his conscience to his boss.
Calling evil actions good is in itself “evil”. In this case, it is due to Republicans’ “loyalty” to Donald Trump. But giving absolute loyalty to Trump or to any other fallen human being is not good. It is idolatry. Let us heed Isaiah’s warning before it is too late.
Lindy Scott 