Hungarian Church Press, 1957 (9. évfolyam, 14-15. szám)

1957-11-30 / 14. szám

HOHE3-XL. 30,1957, Yol. U,/l4- 11 -167

succumb to the temptation, of mistaking this earth for heaven where there is no evil, neither were the men of this generation tempted to picture the church as a special paradise in which men of the pre-fall time enjoy the company of the angels.

I must sum up this long and still sketchy exposition» For some people I have already said too much;, while others may find that I have failed to he specific. I have been led by the consideration that I shall tell as much to the Bight Reverend Convocation as is necessary and sufficient in the present situation. Necessary for what? For understanding why became all church movements, from October 1956, to February, 1957, expressions of a more severe judgment that God pronounced over us.

Nevertheless, if we were right with our insight that we live off the righteous and merciful judgment of God in this land, in the Hungarian People's Republic, and it is here that we build the Reformed Church in Hungary according to a socialist society, then the rejection of this insight could only have resulted in God's new and humiliating judgment. If our misfortune was more than simply making two mistakes within the life of one generation, - the mistakes of betting twice on the wrong horse and so inducing the terrible and cruel losses of two world wars; if the calamities befalling us were the manifestations of God's judgment who could not overlook our sins, specifically the sins of our social, economic and political life and the cold and decaying life of the church which found expression in the enthusiastic acclamation of war, in the approval of the anti-Jewish legislation and in the failure to risk its own life in order to prevent the massacre of the Jews; then, with a deep sigh, we must conclude that the new judgment which God executed was just and inevitable !

What Turns the Scale

The foregoing self-scrutiny may be defective, and our penitence not deep and comprehensive enough. But one thing is certain: what I have told you so far, notwithstanding its deficiencies, has been sincere*. And the same sincerity will mark our "boasting" winch must first come before we could look back cn the stormtossed days, burdens and miseries of the past year. For there is something that tips the scale, and that is the life of the congregations, We have often, in many foims, expressed our conviction that everything is for the congregations, and it is a wrong view of the church’s life that comprises only the super structure, the good or bad functioning of the governing bodies and neglects the congregations in which the life of the church actually pulsates. What has happened in our congregations? When World War II came to its dreadful end, both the exterior and interior conditions of life in our congregations collapsed. They had the debt of the past, the period between thgwtwo world wars when no mention was made of God's judgments but all the more talk/Hungarian Advent, Hungarian hope and Hungarian gospel.

It was not even tried that we then later struggling and sweating, at least tried, namely to find the guidance of God's Holy Word with respect to the destiny of our people arid, within our people, to the destiny and. calling of our church. Now, after World War II, we had the legacy of hundreds of ruined church buildings and the still worse ruins in the minds and emotions of men: disappointments, crushed hopes and the lure of false expectations. So the question inevitably emerged whether the church leadership under the weight of so many, liabilities was given and appointed by God's grace, or was it in fact an instrument of executing God's further judgment over us. The work of material reconstruct ion .-as on a very large scale. In the meantime, amidst the big convulsions of a revolutionary transformation of our society, we succeeded in securing the continuous flow of state subsidies which were so decisively important especially for the smaller parishes (i admit that probably this, too, resulted fron our yielding to the temptation of love). Yet while about fourhundred-arid-fifty ruined churches were rebuilt, the erection of new parish halls and church buildings also began. This probably meant an as yet