The bible as a tool for resistance

Ivana Noble 

Bible belonged among symbols that the communist ideology put on the list of „properties of the enemy". In other words, the state that claimed to be founded on atheism and persecuted active religious believers, saw in the „holy book" a danger operating with powers that the state could not fully control. I remember a discussion with my teacher of the civics who claimed: „Christians are a danger with whom we cannot win. When they prosper, they say that their prosperity comes from God. When we persecute them, they say that their faithfulness is tested - and it comes from God as well." According to him, the „weapons" of the Christians came from the bible, that in the eyes of the communist teacher included magic instructions for the survival of Christianity. However strange and unrealistic the communist phanthasies concerning religion were, they strengthened two basic approaches to the bible, both outside as well as inside of a Christian community. The first - magic approach - similarly to the teacher of the civics, assumed hidden powers in the book as such; the second - symbolic approach - searched for the meeting points between their life and experiences of the people of God in the political and religious unfreedom as depicted in the bible, where they found inspiration and comfort.

Similarly to the bells on the church towers that did not stop ringing throughout the years of communism and were passing on a message that God still was worshipped here, the magic approach assumed that the mere knowledge that there was a bible promissed divine help when needed. Many of my non-believing friends had a bible they inherrited from their grandparents at home as a special treasure. They almost never red it and if they did, they said that they did not understand a word of it, yet they believed that the bible was reading them, that their lives were somehow included in the book and blessed by its presence. To speak of a pure superstition here, I think, would not be enough. Rather it seemed like a respect to the belief of the ancestors and a hope that it might bring them some blessing in spite of the fact that they themselves did not have an access to what such belief meant., except an intuition of what the book of belief of their ancestors said: For I the Lord your God am ... showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Ex 20: 5.6). Among the believers the magic approach to the bible was represented by those who searched for arguments that God with all the angels and archangels was fighting on the side of the group that verbally expressed such belief, and only there. This conviction to some people gave strength to resist the persecution. However, as well as in the case of non-believers hoping in the blessing of the belief that had once been alive but now was gone, this elitism did not have much to offer for the time after the changes and for a new generation that did not share in the same experience of persecution.

The symbolic approach was usually found among groups of believers involved in some form of work for the changes in the society. The stories of the Exodus, of Israel being in the exile, the cries and the hopes of the psalmist, the words of the prophets calling for justice and courage, Jesus living in the land with a foreign army, the apostles who were asked not to worry if called to the court or to speak in front of the rulers - and many other stories provided a fresh insight into what it may mean to believe. They were brought into the context in which the people of the communist Czechoslovakia lived their day-to-day situations, their tensions between becoming Zealots or Sadducees, their being pharisees and the outcasts. Breaking the word of God rarely pointed to generalised attitudes, like - all Christians were called by God to sign Charta 77 - or all Christians were called to distance themselves from it to protect the church from even a worse persecution. Ambiguities of the options as well as a need of responsibility on the side of those making decisions could not be substituted by „the magic sentence in the book" - but rather the word of God was sustaining, giving strength, openning new horizons and cultivating relationships.

As was shown, to speak of the bible as of a tool for resistance has a different meaning for those who took it as a magic book and for those who saw in it stories of how God was acting with people throughout the history - up to their times. Although, different levels of maturity can be traced in the magic and in the symbolic approach to the bible, they have a hope in common: not only we are reading the bible, but also that the bible is reading us, that our lives are in the word of God and also that our lives are blessed by the word of God and by belief of our ancestors, which included in the word of God remains alive and active for the generations to come.