In the face of the threat of a full-scale war, the church should not only reassure people-it should give them the right guidelines.
This opinion was expressed by Metropolitan Dymytry of Lviv and Sokal of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in an interview for Religiyna Pravda.
“Will there be a war in Ukraine? A question that everyone asks. There is no shortage of thinking about it. For some reason, many people forget that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has long taken place, and this fact was recorded back in 2014. The church always calls for peace, the Church preaches peace, but peace is just, not forced. Unfortunately, such information does not reassure people, because they are already exhausted because of the pandemic and, finally, the war that has been going on for 7 years,” the Metropolitan said.
According to him, people are now not quite mentally healthy. Obsessive conditions and problems with depression have not yet been overcome just like that, and it seems that they are obvious.
“The Church should not only reassure people, but it should also give them the right guidelines on how to act in this situation and how not to lose personal freedom and common sense in all this, because for these reasons someone may even want to impose certain restrictions on human freedoms. We all need to be as focused and organized as possible as people,” he said.
According to the hierarch, the methods of warfare are constantly changing, and we all know about such a term as “hybrid warfare”, or “information”.
He noted that for believers, the words of Christ the Savior will always remain relevant in the most difficult moments of betrayal for him: “then Jesus says to him, return your sword to its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt. 26, 52). ” All heads inflamed before the war should remember this," Metropolitan Dymytry said.