I read a fascinating article about how Christ’s liberty, the Gospel, and the Four Spiritual Laws began the peaceful revolution against communion in Poland. This underground and peaceful revolution undermined the lies of socialism, communism, and Marxism. While the Gospel is always about and inside our CONVERSION bringing liberty, socialism
and its counterparts are always about COERCION and bring about tyranny. You can read this article in it’s fullness here. From this point on, I am quoting the article.
“Communist regime was demoralizing the nation during the rest of the week. Propaganda, poverty and intimidation formed people’s attitudes contradictory to the Gospel. It was known that petty theft was socially acceptable. Stealing from the state company, was labeled as “organizing”.
Shop shelves were stocked only with vodka, cigarettes and the Communist party daily newspaper. The majority of families lived in a small confined space. Some were allowed to built small villas (to succeed they would steal part of the material from the workplace and the other half were bought with bribes). In the same time alcoholism was destroying families. Hundreds of thousands of Polish babies were killed by abortion. Atheist schools were programming children how to think about the world, country and family. The majority of Poles buried their hope for a change and seemed to be content with life in a cage. A Polish literary writer Tadeusz Konwicki observed that people were satisfied having “their own small stabilization”.
The breakthrough came with influential Catholic renewal Light-Life movement, supported by Campus Crusade for Christ. Probably the most important organization that helped bring real change. During the summer retreats organized by the Light Life movement between 1970 and 1989, millions of Poles received Jesus as their Personal Lord and Savior. They reflected on four spiritual laws. Poles may have heard the Gospel being nominal Catholics but they were not able to learn about it in such an easy-to-understand and personal way as spiritual laws: (1) God created man to be with Him (2) but he sinned and willfully rejected Him thus creating a chasm between God and himself, so (3) God sent his son and put cross as a bridge, (4) now man needs to accept Jesus’s sacrifice, confess sin and receive Him as His Lord and Savior. God was touching peoples’ lives. Many new believers declared their permanent abstinence from alcohol and cigarettes, to be an encouragement for those who were struggling with their addictions. (Alcoholism was the most serious
This Christian revival, called sometimes “revolution of conscience”, had a decisive role in the success of peaceful negotiations between the Solidarity movement’s representative and Communist regime. For various reasons, too complex to explain here, it was an unfinished revolution. After thirty years it is however even more crucial to emphasize that democratic changes were the fruits of an invisible spiritual change. The fall of Berlin Wall preceded a massive come-back of Polish people to God’s presence.”