March 13, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

'Remember the Alamo' reflects spirit of resistance seen in Ukraine today

By Mike Haynes

                I dragged Kathy to a Lone Star Ballet performance last week – not because either of us likes ballet, but because of Texas history.

                The event was the excellent “Remember the Alamo,” created by King Hill, the local theater teacher, writer, director and man of many talents. It presented
a streamlined version of the 1836 battle when fewer than 200 Texans were surrounded by thousands of dictator Santa Anna’s Mexican soldiers. Actors voiced historical quotes from key battle participants interspersed with dramatic music and young dancers illustrating the fighting and its sad aftermath.

                  It was hard for us not to compare the story of the “Shrine of Texas Liberty” to the 2022 war in Ukraine, where at this writing, the eastern European nation’s army and citizens were fighting off invaders from Russia in another David vs. Goliath mismatch.

                As an actor spoke words from young Alamo commander William B. Travis’s famous “Victory or Death” letter – addressed “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World,” young Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to mind.

            I pray that Zelenskyy’s fate will be more like that of World War II British Prime Minister Winston Churchill than that of the heroic martyr Travis. The Ukrainian has been called “Churchill in a T-shirt” for his bold leadership, and his inspiring words have been in the mold of Travis and Churchill.

            Here are some quotes attributed to Zelenskyy:

            “Life will win over death, and light will win over darkness.”

            “When you will be attacking us, you will see our faces; not our backs, but our faces.”

            And concerning Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his military: “They count on the fact that God’s retribution isn’t instant. But He sees. And answers. You cannot hide from His answers. No bunker can protect you from God’s answers.”

            Zelenskyy is Jewish, while Putin represents the traditional Communist establishment that for most of the past 100 years has been anti-religion. Certainly, millions of Christians and Jews have been praying for the well-being of the Ukrainian people and nation.

C.S. Lewis

            The same was true for those who opposed Hitler during World War II, and while the outcome remained seriously in doubt, Christian writer C.S. Lewis reminded us that whatever happened, no matter how terrible the situation, believers would be OK in the end.

            Lewis gave a sermon in 1939 titled, “Learning in War-Time,” urging Oxford University students not to forsake their education just because the war in Europe seemed so much more urgent.

            “Why should we – indeed how can we – continue to take an interest in these placid occupations when the lives of our friends and the liberties of Europe are

in the balance?” Lewis asked. He answered his own question:

            “I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates no

absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. …

“We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’ Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely

cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.”

                Lewis didn’t downplay the tragedy of war. He had been in the French trenches of World War I himself. But looking at the bigger picture in light of history, he reminded his audience that God ultimately is in control and that each person’s eternal destiny is more important even than suffering in war. He cited the Nazis’ then-recent invasion of Poland:

                “We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called Life. But there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that – of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.”

                That perspective may sound cold or callous, but it’s consistent with Paul’s statement to the Philippians:  ^“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

            In 1941, Lewis wrote in “The Screwtape Letters” that while Satan’s demons might be happy that war was causing grief for humans, the evil ones should worry because of the likely increased faith in God the conflict could encourage:

            “… if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy …” In the language of the book’s demons, “the Enemy” is God.

            Many prayers have been sent up since the Ukraine crisis began last month. I earnestly hope that, unlike the pleas of Travis in Texas, those of Zelenskyy are answered positively and that, in the longer run, many lives will turn permanently to God.