Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Hungary is on my mind

September 22, 2006

Hungary · Random · Spiritual Musings

I took this pic­ture last March while vis­it­ing Budapest, Hun­gary . It is a memo­r­ial to the 1956 rev­o­lu­tion against the Sovi­ets in Hun­gary. This Octo­ber marks the 50th anniver­sary of that failed rev­o­lu­tion. I did a paper on the rev­o­lu­tion when I was in college.

I find it ironic that as we approach the 50th anniver­sary of that event, Budapest is expe­ri­enc­ing riots and protests. As I read the reports of what hap­pened ear­lier this week, it reminded me of the accounts that I read about the first days of the 1956 revolution.

This week, peo­ple began demostrat­ing after a tape was leaked in which the prime min­is­ter admit­ted to lying to the pub­lic in order to win the elec­tion last April. On Tues­day night, the protests became vio­lent as uglier ele­ments of the crowd stormed the state run tele­vi­sion sta­tion and looted it. Cars were set on fire. There was also a protest in front of the socialist’s head­quar­ters. Today the pro­test­ers are not met with tanks and bul­lets, as in 1956, but by water can­nons and tear gas.

The cur­rent prime min­is­ter made com­ments at his social­ists’ party retreat in May, just after being re-elected. He admit­ted that the party had not done any­thing in the gov­ern­ment for the pre­vi­ous 4 years and that they had lied about the state of the econ­omy and planned reforms. One of his com­ments was that, “We lied in the morn­ing, we lied in the evening…” Sup­posely he made the com­ments as part of a speech to wake up the party to the eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion that has been lied about for at least the past four years. A tape of this speech was leaked to the pub­lic on Sun­day. The prime min­is­ter is claim­ing that his com­ments did not only include his party but the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments of the last 10–15 years.

From what I read, the demon­stra­tions last night were peace­ful but there are fears that they could turn vio­lent again over the week­end. I think this cur­rent sit­u­a­tion high­lights the moral cri­sis in this coun­try. It is a moral cri­sis with its roots in the com­mu­nist sys­tem and the athe­is­tic philoso­phies which pro­vide no basis for morality.

One of the rea­sons that I con­tinue to go back to Hun­gary is to address this issue with indi­vid­u­als as I explain how the God who cre­ated them wants to have a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with them. Only Christ can trans­form our cor­rupt hearts and lives. I just pray that Hun­gar­i­ans will find Christ in the midst of the cur­rent turmoil.