Sometimes They Truly Do Not know what they are doing

​Vladimir Putin was born in the Soviet city of Leningrad. Shortly before he was born, more than 3 million people in his hometown had been systematically murdered - most through starvation - by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis during World War II.

It was no accident. Hitler sent this directive to the Army group that was choking the city of Leningrad:

"After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban centre. Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population."

That is why many historians consider what happened in Leningrad a genocide.

Putin's father was badly injured in the war. His mother nearly starved to death. His parents lost two of his siblings before he was born. By most accounts, Putin's childhood was fending for himself in a city full of grief and anger.

Why am I telling you this?

I'm telling you this in case you are struggling with a struggle I've battled this past week watching the scenes in Ukraine.

I have struggled with feelings of hate for another human being, something I've worked hard to overcome. And I have wrestled with this idea that evil just randomly appears - that evil is a product of God and not a product of us.

In her essay - "The Ignorace or How We Produce the Evil" - Alice Miller says the following:

"Every dictator torments his people in the same way he was tormented as a child. The humiliations inflicted on these dictators in adult life had nothing like the same influence on their actions as the emotional experiences they went through in their early years. Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will. As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them. Instead he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears."

Who I am today - who you are today - who Vladimir Putin is today - has childhood as it's most deciding factor. More than anything, that is brain science. It would be nice if it was as simple as you didn't like what was done to you so don't do it to others. But that's not how life works, because that is not how the brain works.

Some of you reading this will understandably think I am making excuses for a man who is likely one of the most brutal humans on the planet right now. To many he is the face of evil.

I promis, I get it if that's your response to reading this.

But he IS the most brutal man on the face of the planet to me right now. He IS the face of evil. Which has made it hard for me to love him. So my writing here is not an excuse for Putin's behavior as much as it is me searching for a path to love. Or at the very least - a path around hate.

I've discovered the search for trying to understand anyone doesn't begin with who they are but where they've been.

The hero of my life died at the hands of dictators. He died at the hands of evil. But in his dying moments, looking down on his killers as they gambled to see who got to walk away with his garments, Jesus said, "father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I don't think Jesus was excusing his killers. I think he was looking for a path to love them. Even as they were killing Him.

I think Jesus knew the path to not knowing what they were doing wasn't a lack of knowing the difference between right and wrong in that moment - it was a lack of knowing that went all the way back to their childhoods.

It's really hard for me to understand what Vladimir Putin is doing. But it's impossible for me to understand growing up against the backdrop of a city of millions that had been purposefully choked to death.

I wake up this morning and read about the cities Putin is choking to death. On purpose. And all I can find myself saying is - father forgive him, for he knows not what he is doing.

Because I truly believe - he doesn't.