Though these decadent sentiments may be shocking because they have emerged in a postcommunist country, they are by no means limited to young Hungarians. A 2019 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found a distinct minority of young American adults believed that religion, patriotism, and having children are an important part of life, while nearly four out of five said “self-fulfillment” is key to the good life.1 Similarly, the sociologist of religion Christian Smith found in his study of that generation that most of them believe society is nothing more than “a collection of autonomous individuals out to enjoy life.”
These are the people who would welcome the Pink Police State. This is the generation that would embrace soft totalitarianism. These are the young churchgoers who have little capacity to resist, because they have been taught that the good life is a life free from suffering. If they have been taught the faith at all, it has been a Christianity without tears.
Suffering As Testimony to the Truth
Though again, the totalitarianism we are facing today looks far more like Huxley’s than Orwell’s, both books teach a lesson about suffering and truth—and so do the survivors who felt the communist lash.
These lessons are important for us to take into our hearts. The days to come are going to force American Christians to confront personal suffering for the faith in ways most never have done before (African American Christians are the obvious exception). Besides, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough: the old totalitarianism conquered societies through fear of pain; the new one will conquer primarily through manipulating people’s love of pleasure and fear of discomfort.
We should not conflate being socially or professionally marginalized with prison camps and the executioner’s bullet—the latter of which were all too real for anti-communist dissidents. But know this too: if we latter-day believers are not able and willing to be faithful in the relatively small trials we face now, there is no reason to think we will have what it takes to endure serious persecution in the future.
“Without being willing to suffer, even die for Christ, it’s just hypocrisy. It’s just a search for comfort,” says Yuri Sipko, the Russian Baptist pastor. “When I meet with brothers in faith, especially young people, I ask them: name three values as Christians that you are ready to die for. This is where you see the border between those who are serious about their faith and those who aren’t.”
When he thinks of the communist past, about Christians who were sent to prison camps and never returned, of those who were ridiculed in the world, who lost their jobs, who even in some cases had their children taken from them because of their faith, Sipko knows what gave them the strength to endure. Their ability to suffer all of this for the sake of Christ is what testified to the reality of their unseen God.
“You need to confess him and worship him in such a way that people can see that this world is a lie,” says the old pastor. “This is hard, but this is what reveals man as an image of God.”
Mária Komáromi teaches in a Catholic school in Budapest. She and her late husband, János, were religious dissidents under the communist regime, and bore many burdens to keep the faith alive.
“You have to suffer for the truth because that’s what makes you authentic. That’s what makes that truth credible. If I’m not willing to suffer, my truth might as well be nothing more than an ideology,” she tells me.
Komáromi elaborates further:
Suffering is a part of every human’s life. We don’t know why we suffer. But your suffering is like a seal. If you put that seal on your actions, interestingly enough, people start to wonder about your truth—that maybe you are right about God. In one sense, it’s a mystery, because the Evil One wants to persuade us that there is a life without suffering. First you have to live through it, and then you try to pass on the value of suffering, because suffering has a value.
Wealth, success, and status are no real defenses against suffering, Komáromi says. Look at all the people who have everything this world can offer, but who still fall into self-destructive behavior, even suicide. Christians must embrace suffering because that’s what Jesus did, and because they have the promise, on faith, that to share in his suffering will bring glory in the next life. But sometimes, she adds, we can see results in this life.
“When I started to have children, more children came,” says Komáromi, whose kids are all adults now. “When we welcomed all these children back then, we were treated as idiots. Now, though, the whole situation has reversed, and people are so envious that we have such a big family. So in the long run, there is a sort of proof.”
Mária Wittner, now in her eighties, is regarded by her countrymen as a national hero for fighting the Soviets when they invaded Hungary in 1956. She was only a teenager then. The communist regime arrested her shortly after she turned twenty, and a year later, sentenced her to death. Her sentence was later reduced because of her youth. But she endured terrible grief and pain in her eight months on death row.
“There was an execution either every day or every other day, by hanging,” she tells me. “The people who were being brought to the execution, each one said their name aloud and left some sort of message in their final words. Some sang the national anthem, others praised their country, there were people saying, “Avenge me!”
There were days when several people were hanged, even seven a day. Wittner’s friend Catherine was also sentenced to death. They spent Catherine’s last night together
