Remember Kony 2012?

Ten years ago, a documentary got a lot of people worked up, fudging the facts, blurring some lines, and oversimplifying a situation. Money was involved, too, and some people claim it was the beginning of “slacktivism,” where you could use a wallet and a keyboard for justice, using awareness to move the needle.

A well-made documentary by a powerful filmmaker is a powerful tool. Not necessarily for truth. Just a tool. Documentaries on today’s streaming platforms do a good job whipping up a cultural wildfire; they get everyone worked up, and then it fades. They take one person or incident, pull it from the context of the larger setting it belongs in, and convince people that a murderer was made, to obsess about a tiger king, to go deeper down the hole of Hollywood’s alleged flesh-eating pedophilia problem, and to never fly Boeing again.

You can take a truth, or some truths, wrap it in dramatic music, image montages, and well-cut interviews, and we’re sold. That’s how powerful documentaries can be. Leni Riefenstahl was no accident.

I like documentaries (and books about history), but I have to purposefully and constantly remind myself that this is one part of the larger story, because I’m a gullible sucker. What action or belief does the filmmaker hope his audience will take? What’s his worldview, even if he doesn’t realize it himself? How am I being manipulated?

“Know history!” is a good slogan, but that’s really hard to do from a decent contextual standpoint, which is why I find what’s happening online, in regards to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, troubling.

“Pray for Ukraine is the new woke religion!” I saw posted in a comments section.

I suppose the devil is laughing his head off right now, and not just because war means death and he loves that. No, he’s pulled a masterful one over on all of us, dividing us down into the smallest multiples.

First we are divided politically. Then we are put into a state of fear and divided all the way down to the family level because of a virus. Now he’s dividing even those ad hoc groups formed out of the pandemic and election tomfoolery by forcing people to choose sides yet again.

One reason I don’t get involved in politics, despite the pressure to, is that I don’t want to join a group that will inevitably, at some point, demand loyalty to their stance when it conflicts with what Jesus would have me do. Over time, group loyalty will supersede Jesus, because the preservation and justification of the group is what matters. No group simply disbands because they aren’t needed; they find a way to be needed. Joining groups gives them cart blanche to dictate my actions, and I can’t be beholden to anyone but Jesus.

You can have political beliefs, and vote accordingly, but ultimately the enemy is spiritual, not flesh, and the most important belief and team to be on is those who are true believers in Christ in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, who believe in and follow God’s Word.

There is no side for a Christian to be on, other than the side of Christ. It’s the only solid ground.

Back to the documentary issue.

Online, we currently have the frantic sharing and debate of two documentaries, “Ukraine on Fire” and “Winter on Fire.” The first, with help from Oliver Stone’s interviews of Putin et. al, shows the ugliness of corruption, neo-Nazism, and CIA/NATO involvement in Ukraine, while the latter depicts a citizen fight for freedom during roughly the same event.

So which documentary is correct?

Probably both.

History is full of simultaneous at-odds stories taking place, converging in moments of note. Yet the documentaries, like other talking points, are being used by both sides to insist that you take sides.

“That’s Ukrainian propaganda!”

“That’s Russian propaganda!”

“Russia is the good guy here!”

“No, we have to pray for Ukraine, that they defeat Russia!”

Or even worse, arguments about who suffered the most.

“What about the Holodomor?”

“People in Russia starved, too!”

“What about the Killing Fields of Ukraine?”

“What about Stalingrad? The people of Russia know what it’s like to feel the horrors of war!”

Human suffering churns on, and no one wins. Today’s evil people are tomorrow’s victims, and vice versa. Noble victory is always a traveling trophy.

Ronald Reagan’s infamous “Evil Empire” speech about the Soviet Union was powerful, but it also contained a fair bit of discussion about the evils of abortion in the U.S. And five years later, Reagan said he no longer saw the Soviet Union as such, while years later, during the Obama era, Putin suggested the U.S. could be considered an evil empire due to the codified crumbling morality of the time, and perhaps the U.S. possibly turning Ukraine into their own puppet state*.

Ukraine is one of those regions, placed between Europe and Asia, a rich bread-basket of a land, that has been a place of a lot of bloodshed. It’s like a highway for invading and retreating armies, similar to what Israel was back when the ancient armies of Egypt, Rome, Syria, and Persia trampled through on their way to somewhere else, pillaging and destroying each time. Antiochus Epiphanes practically saw Israel as the disposable supply station for his armies, and its people as disposable, too.

We’re trying to find the good guys in a world where every nation (U.S. definitely included) has ever-increasing corruption at the top levels, where every nation has experienced forms of injustice, wielded both a good and an evil hand against others, used money for evil and personal gain, has crushed it’s own citizens’ cries for freedom in some form, has spawned horrible weapons and agents of war, has diddled in the affairs of other nations, and has its own problematic segments of the population.

Maybe it’s the fault of all the superhero movies where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, and it all makes sense to us even as they absolutely destroy every city where that fight goes down.

Yet online, and in many discussions of those two documentaries, the running theme seems to be that Putin is the good guy, crushing Nazis and assorted corruption connected to Biden, when maybe a better argument would be comparing our response if Russia set up military or bioweapons shops in Mexico or Cuba.

So Nazism. Are they referring to it as nationalism, or as what we think of Nazis from WW2? If it’s the frightening fist-raised Nazism that’s against Jews and for “purification” of the people, many European countries have a problem.

Heck, we have a little problem here in the U.S.

Here, these folks pop up in online groups posting nasty caricatures of Jewish people, wrapping it in Bible passages, pointing out that such-and-such a leader is just another Jew with connections to the Rothschilds. We see conservative political candidates and leaders who seem to be on the same page we are until the day they blurt out that so-and-so is just another high-powered Jew. We see it on conservative social media platforms like Gab, where grossly Christianized anti-Semitism took my breath away because of it’s vileness.

These same conservative types, cheering on Putin for getting rid of the corrupt Nazis in Ukraine, are apparently unironic in their own nationalism and anti-Semitism. And of course, you see the strange cryptic cult conservatives I wrote about earlier, posting content that suggests everything happening in Ukraine is fake, with fake guns, fake injuries, fake uniforms with Prada combat boots—everything is fake, I guess.

The reports from missionaries in Ukraine, frantically trying to get out and describing what they are seeing, is that fake news? The Christian organizations with facilities in Ukraine or those in surrounding nations now taking in refugees, describing what’s going on, is that fake news? My friend who lives in Germany, updating me on the flood of refugees, her fear of Russia controlling nuclear power plants, and how her little son talks about fighting Putin, is that fake news?

The winner here is death, division, and destruction, or at least that’s how it seems. Yet God is working out his plan and using the times to bring more people to Christ.

Consider:

The rise of anti-Semitism around the world. Jews are flocking to Israel in ever-increasing numbers, just as the Bible told us would happen towards the end.

The rise of division in nations, political parties, churches, and even families. Jesus is shaking out his church and getting those who would turn to him to do so, while those who would look to political figures or religious traditions or the media for direction (or anti-direction) are falling away. He will NOT let his true church substitute a political leader, political theory, or lie of any sort, for himself. The crowd we surround ourselves in person and online with will get increasingly smaller as bit by bit another deception comes along and people follow the lie instead of Jesus. Today’s conservative ally is tomorrow’s distraction on the way to eternity.

The rise of conservatives online who are cheering for Putin and Russia. The Bible tells us that Russia, and a few other nations, will one day invade Israel and the only response by the world will be…nothing. No one will help the Jewish people, and so God himself will crush the invaders. We now have a situation where conservatives who have already started down the the anti-Semitic path through a fixation on information about globalism are being programmed to cheer for Russia as a vote against a new world order. For those who conflate being conservative with being Christian yet lack a true faith, they are being sifted right now, as that day approaches, without even knowing it. They will have no problem with Russia moving on Israel.

The rise of people downplaying or mocking people talking about what the Bible has to say about the last days. The battle between the East, and their horror at the West’s awful version of a new world order is, as one author put it, happening today in Ukraine, but will happen someday soon in Israel. Consider that Israel has vast amounts of gas, and Europe needs it badly to reduce reliance on Russian energy. Talks about the pipeline from Israel to Europe, and buying gas from them at a much cheaper price than Russia, are already underway. Russia needs the income from gas and oil, and current sanctions are hurting Russia’s economy. The Bible tells us God will put a hook in the jaw of the leader of Russia and he will turn towards Israel, along with other nearby nations, with a vengeance. Syria’s border with Israel is considered by Russia to basically be their border, as Syria is practically a puppet state of Russia*. The scenario is falling into place, and while articles are popping up online make jokes about Christians who talk about Bible prophecy, will you laugh when it happens? Will you see it for what it is, when it happens? What if you took a chance and read Zechariah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation as true, not allegory, just for once?

I don’t know when it will happen. I don’t know who will be here when it does. But in the meantime, I have to do more than write and read esoteric think pieces on who’s to blame because we have the luxury of not being bombed. I won’t cheer for a nation that invades another nation and kills civilians, not even my own nation no matter how many “WMDs” the government claims they’re after, or how they’ll spread “democracy” to nations that don’t hold onto it when we leave.

I will pray we stay out of war.

I will pray for Ukraine, not because I think the people and the government are pure as the driven snow and that there aren’t warring factions within the nation itself, but because human beings are being killed, they’re losing everything, and their homes and businesses and hospitals and favorite coffee shops are being bombed. The loss and terror felt in refugees leaving civilian husbands, dads, and sons behind to fight is something I can’t fathom.

I will also pray for Russia, because, like Ukraine, Jesus has built his church there and this is a time of trial and opportunity for them to reach others for the Gospel. I don’t cheer at the crashing economy and pain the Russian people are being put in, nor do I cheer for a Russian soldier body count; many have gone into eternity without knowing Jesus.

There is no perfect side here, and I wish conservatives—even if it starts from a desire to not see the U.S. involved in another war (ditto) despite that seeming to be the intent of our current leaders—would stop cheering on Putin, or trying to justify what he’s doing because they can’t see past Ukrainian/American corruption, Nazism, and Obama/Clinton/Biden/CIA/DOD connections to Ukraine. Wicked, lawless corruption festers in the governments everywhere, yet the bombs fall on the people.

Eternal things are at stake, and are happening before our eyes. Review what Joshua 5:13-15 has to tell us, and stop choosing the wrong side.

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*All the super powers have puppet states. Heck, the U.S. even has a puppet leader.