When Dictators Fall and Christians Don’t Know Where to Stand

A reflection by Pablo Nunez, Uniting Church minister of Australia, sharing his thoughts on the US government incursion in Venezuela as someone who has lived under dictatorship.

The news from Venezuela didn’t arrive quietly.

It came crashing in: alerts, headlines, hot takes, certainty. Too much certainty.

Some people popped champagne.

Some people reached for the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Some people whispered, “Finally.”

Others said, “This ends badly.”

And almost everyone knew instantly which side they were supposed to be on.

That alone should give us pause.

Because when a moment this heavy gets flattened into slogans, strength versus imperialism, freedom versus lawlessness, something human is being lost.

And Christians are supposed to be people who notice when that happens.

Let’s start where the ground is solid

The Maduro regime was brutal. Full stop.

This isn’t cable news exaggeration or partisan mythology. It’s documented reality: political prisoners, torture, extrajudicial killings, a nation hollowed out from the inside. Millions displaced. A stolen election conducted without shame. Heck, many stolen elections since the times of Chavez.

If someone insists this was just “politics as usual,” they haven’t been paying attention—or they’ve decided that some suffering is tolerable as long as it’s far away.

And then there’s María Corina Machado.

Years of nonviolent resistance. Years of threats. Years of courage. When someone like her, who has paid for hope with her own safety, says, “This feels like liberation,” that voice deserves weight. Not blind agreement. But respect.

It’s easy to romanticise sovereignty when you’re not the one being crushed by it.

So yes, let’s say it clearly: the fall of Maduro may very well mean relief for millions of people. That matters. That matters a lot. Just listen to the voices of the expat Venezuelans around the world. I have many friends among them, and I am trying to see the situation through their eyes. Their voices cannot be silenced. Not again.

Christians should care about that.

But then comes the knot in the stomach

Because the question isn’t only what happened.

It’s how.

And who.

And what story this tells the world next.

International law exists for a reason. Not because dictators deserve protection, but because power, unchecked power, always finds a way to justify itself. If the standard becomes “we’ll remove governments we find intolerable,” then the line between justice and convenience gets very thin very fast.

And lines matter.

Especially when the one holding the pen is a superpower.

Then there’s the tone coming from Washington. Talk of “running” Venezuela. Casual annexation language. A posture that doesn’t sound like accompaniment, but ownership.

You can hold two thoughts at once:

A dictator falling is good news.

An empire rejoicing is often not.

Those thoughts don’t cancel each other. They keep each other honest.

Right now, we simply don’t know the ending of this story.

Will Venezuelans actually get to choose their future?

Will foreign troops leave when the cameras do?

Will freedom mean dignity or just a different kind of dependency?

Anyone declaring victory this early is reading the first chapter and reviewing the whole book.

A fragile world just got shakier

There’s another layer here, and it’s uncomfortable.

For years, the global order, fragile, inconsistent, imperfect, has been held together by an idea: you don’t get to change borders or governments by force just because you can.

That idea mattered when Russia invaded Ukraine.

It matters when China eyes Taiwan. It should have mattered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other instances.

But principles only carry weight when they’re applied even when it’s inconvenient.

Every exception becomes a precedent.

Every precedent becomes permission.

Great powers always have narratives. They always have reasons. The danger is not that reasons exist, but that power decides they’re sufficient.

I’m not saying all situations are the same. They aren’t. Context matters. History matters. Human rights matter.

But I am saying this: the erosion of shared norms doesn’t happen all at once. It happens moment by moment, decision by decision, each one defended as unique.

And eventually, the rules-based order becomes a polite story we tell ourselves while everyone sharpens their knives.

A Latino memory that won’t let me simplify

I grew up in Uruguay, under a dictatorship.

It ended, not with bombs, not with foreign armies, but through democratic pressure, courage, persistence, and time. It was slow. Painfully slow. People suffered. People disappeared. There are wounds that still ache.

So I don’t romanticise patience. Waiting can be violent too.

But I also know this: when freedom finally came, it came with ownership. It was ours. No one could say it was imposed. No one could claim the country as a prize.

That history lives in my bones. It makes me ache for Venezuelans. It also makes me wary of freedom delivered at gunpoint by another empire.

Both instincts are real. Neither cancels the other.

So where does that leave a Christian?

Not with slogans.

Not with certainty.

And definitely not with celebration.

Christians don’t throw parties for violence, even when it’s “our side.” Scripture doesn’t leave wiggle room here: do not rejoice when your enemy falls. If your heart rushes to triumph, pause. Something sacred is being trampled.

Christians are also meant to be sceptical of war. Not allergic to hard questions but resistant to easy ones. Just war theory isn’t a permission slip; it’s a warning label. It says: if you’re going to unleash this, you’d better be absolutely sure there was no other way.

And Christians are, stubbornly, inconveniently, called to peace.

Jesus didn’t bless the decisive or the dominant. He blessed peacemakers. The ones who slow things down. The ones who absorb tension. The ones who refuse to let violence have the final word.

Or as Nick Cave once put it, “Peace will come in time.”

But only if someone is willing to keep choosing it when it’s unpopular.

Which means we have to ask the question that sits underneath all the others:

Who owns our loyalty?

Not a flag.

Not a party.

Not an ideology that makes us feel righteous.

Our allegiance is to a kingdom that hungers for justice and refuses to worship power. A kingdom that tells the truth about suffering without pretending violence can save us.

So what do we do now?

We grieve.

We watch closely. We listen to the voices of the people that matter the most.

We pray with our eyes open.

We advocate for real self-determination, not symbolic freedom.

We refuse cheap narratives, especially when they flatter us.

And we keep our hope anchored not in empires, but in a promise:

That one day, the tears will stop.

That death won’t get the last word.

That swords really will become ploughshares.

Until then, we live in the tension.

Faithfully.

Uncomfortably.

With our hearts broken open just wide enough to still believe peace is possible.