By Chuck Colson (1931-2012), December 24, 1997, at: http://www.breakpoint.org
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I stood shivering in the autumn chill at the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszko (1947-1984). Jerzy was a young pastor who once delivered the dynamic messages that stirred the Polish people to overthrow their Communist oppressors. His theme was always the same: The Christian is called to defend the truth and overcome evil with good.
Father Jerzy was a young man, pale and gaunt, and his sermons were neither fiery nor eloquent. Yet his monthly masses, dedicated to the victims of Communist persecution, attracted tens of thousands of Polish people. He never preached revenge or revolution. He preached the power of good to overcome evil. It was a passion that dominated his own life, as well.
In 1980, martial law was declared in Poland. Tanks and troops clogged the streets until the entire country was one vast prison. Jerzy hated the occupation as much as his countrymen, but he fought it using God’s weapons of overcoming evil with good. On Christmas Eve, Jerzy slogged through the snow handing out Christmas cookies to the despised soldiers in the streets.
Father Jerzy continued his peaceful, but firm, resistance. The authorities feared his powerful influence on the Polish people. In 1984, he was kidnapped by the secret police. The nation was electrified. In churches, schools, factories, and homes across Poland, people gathered to pray. Steelworkers demanded his release, threatening a national strike. Fifty thousand people gathered to hear a tape of his final sermon.
Then came the crisis point. Jerzy’s body was found floating in the Vistula River. He had been brutally tortured, his eyes and tongue cut out, his bones smashed. Yet the gentle pastor had taught his people well. There were no violent protests and no angry riots. After his funeral, hundreds of thousands of Polish people marched through the streets of Warsaw, right past the secret police headquarters carrying banners that read, “We forgive.” They were assaulting evil with good.
Under this nationwide movement, the Communist regime soon crumbled. In 1993, I traveled to Poland for the chartering of Prison Fellowship Poland, a ceremony held outside the very church where Jerzy had preached. His grave is in the courtyard, and as I laid a wreath of flowers on the grave, I looked up at the balcony where the martyred pastor once preached his most powerful message: “Overcome evil with good.”
Suddenly, I felt a stab of conviction as though the Holy Spirit were saying to me, “Pick up the baton. Make that your message, too.” In that instant it was clear to me that the message Jerzy preached has always been God’s strategy for overcoming evil. The supreme example is the Incarnation itself, when God Himself entered human history to overcome the evil of the world.
America is not in the grip of a Communist regime as Poland was, yet Christians are battling a hostile secular culture. We often wonder how we can fight more effectively. The answer is that God’s people are to fight evil using God’s strategy and God’s weapons. When God wanted to defeat sin, His ultimate weapon was the sacrifice of His own Son. Two thousand years ago, the birth of a tiny baby in an obscure village in the Middle East, was God’s supreme triumph of good over evil.
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“An idea which needs rifles to survive, dies of its own accord.”
“Let us pray to be free from fear and intimidation, but first and foremost from the thirst or revenge and violence.”
–Father Jerzy Popieluszko
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Pope John Paul II at the grave of Father Jerzy
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Romans 12:17-21 — Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Matthew 5:43-47 (Jesus said), “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
I Thessalonians 5:15 — See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.
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Give us courage, O Lord, to stand up and be counted,
to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves,
to stand up for ourselves when it is needful for us to do so.
Let us fear nothing more than we fear you.
Let us love nothing more than we love you,
for thus we shall fear nothing also.
Let us have no other God before you,
whether nation or party or state or church.
Let us seek no other peace but the peace which is yours,
and make us its instruments,
opening our eyes and our ears and our hearts,
so that we should know always what work of peace
we may do for you.
–Alan Paton (1903-1988) South African author and anti-apartheid activist
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