SEE.  JUDGE.  ACT.

Travis Pander, Writer/Producer, Crawford Media Group

The following is a summary of the introduction to Live Not by Lies, by Rod Dreher.  

Note: it would help you to understand the following and much of the book Live Not by Lies, if you understand the basics of the Bolshevik uprising in Russia in 1917, and a little about Nicholas II, Lenin, Stalin and Marx.  There are tremendous resources available to you and I assure you that you will fall down a rabbit hole, just as I did once you begin learning more about it, to get you started, here is a good resource on the Bolsheviks; as you learn about them, reflect on our current culture and how truth is being usurped in preference of “my truth”, and how our country is being torn into two groups, a la 1984: the Proles and the Party (Elites): find it here.

I’m reading a unbelievably good book right now which you will undoubtedly see a review of in the coming days as I tear through each page like a starving person at a Golden Corral.  This post is intended to focus on one incredible person, a man who was celebrated in the west during the Bolshevik revolution and the Gestapo.  A man who devoted his life to spreading the Gospel and teaching his congregation to focus on Christ alone.

You may call him a prophet, you may call him an activist, or maybe he’s just a gifted thinker, but the man is a true hero to democracy despite being raised in a society that flipped truth on it’s head, denied the basic fundamental rights of human beings and was responsible for 18 million deaths (a conservative estimate).

This man’s name was Tomislav Poglajen, a Jesuit Priest who fled his native Croatia in 1943 just barely ahead of the Gestapo, settling in Czechoslovakia for a time where he assumed his mothers surname: Kolakovic.  He took a teaching position in Bratislava, and being a Slovak region it had become a vassal state of Hitler’s.

Father Kolakovic, leader of the underground Christian church in Czechoslovakia

Kolakovic had incredible foresight in believing that the defeat of Nazi totalitarianism would create conflict between Soviet totalitarianism and the liberal democratic west.  By the time Kolakovic got to Bratislava, it was pretty apparent that the Red Army was poised to defeat the Germans in the East; the Czech government (in exile) made a formal agreement with Stalin guaranteeing that after driving the Nazis out, the Soviets would give the nation it’s sovereignty back.  Kolakovic was doubtful.

Father Kolakovic knew how Soviets worked and thought, and he warned Catholics that when the war ended, Czechoslovakia would fall to a Soviet puppet government under Nicholas II and dedicated his whole life to preparing his congregations for persecution. The pastor taught that only a life TOTALLY committed to Christ would enable them to endure the trials that were coming.

“Give yourself totally to Christ, throw all your worries and desires on Him, for He has a wide back, and you will witness miracles” -Father Kolakovic

Kolakovic taught his followers that they would need to give their WHOLE selves to Christ, not as an abstraction but in a concrete way, and that it had to be COMMUNAL.  He included a group of young Christians called The Young Christian Workers into his fold, they were colloquially called The Jocists (after their initials in French).  The Jocist motto became Kolakovics’ own within what he called his “family”: SEE.  JUDGE.  ACT.  See meant to keep your eyes open to the world around you, not allowing the serpentine lies from the Russian government (read: the woke mob) to influence objective truth as you plainly see in front of you.  Judge was the command of discernment; taking the fact that you know something is true into the analytical, especially teachings from the Christian Church, which was held hostage by the Russian government.  After you’ve reached a conclusion, you are to Act to resist that evil.  It’s interesting to see how fully and instantly Kolakovic was successful in garnering support from such a diverse group of Christians, creating a community of trust and mutual friendship in a region so torn apart by lies and vitriol.  Almost in a miraculous or at the very least providential way.

In 1946, the Czech authorities deported Kolakovic and two years later the communists sized power totally, EXACTLY AS KOLAKOVIC HAD PREDICTED.  Most of the “family” had been imprisoned under the institutional Czech church, but when the family members emerged from prison in the 1960s, they followed Kolakovic’s instructions to the letter, immediately and quietly standing up Christian circles nationwide, building the underground church which today is still persecuted by some of the Slovak population, although technically it is legal.

These circles would become a principle means of dissent to the totalitarian government of Czechoslovakia for the next FORTY YEARS. In 1988, the church held a candlelight demonstration that was the impetus for the Velvet Revolution that would topple the communist regime one short year later. The Slovak Christians were some of the most persecuted groups in the Soviet Bloc, and the church thrived there all due to the foresight, discernment and faith of one single man who saw it coming and prepared Jesus’ people.

“By the end of the school year 1944, it would have been difficult to find a faculty or secondary school in Bratislava where our circles did not operate” -Vaclav Vasko, a Kolakovic follower.

Today’s survivors from that era are our Kolakovics’, warning us of the coming totalitarian wave in our beautiful republic. Ours won’t look like the USSR’s, using armed revolution and torture, but a soft totalitarianism, exercising control in soft forms (at least initially) like the breakdown of long-revered laws, the demand that we use certain speech (such as pronouns) at risk of excommunication or exile, and the requirement that we accept things that we know are not true (like men becoming pregnant). In the book Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher, he calls this type of totalitarianism “therapeutic”.  We are made to believe that it’s necessary and virtuous to accept these false claims that men can feed babies with their breasts, and that there’s no need for moderation of sexual deviance or that our nation is evil and oppressive.  It’s also an important distinction that the author makes, that while we have authoritarian events taking place, it is fully totalitarianism, meaning that the end goal is for the state to control each and every facet of our lives and existence.

According to Hannah Arendt, the foremost scholar on Totalitarianism, the main goal is to displace all prior institutions and traditions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under a specific ideology.  “A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is what the rulers decide it is”

“Wherever totalitarianism has rules it has begun to destroy the essence of man” -Hannah Arendt, a scholar on totalitarian governments

One of the prerequisites for totalitarianism is the breakdown of any religious order that places another entity above the government, and the breakdown of moral objectivity in America has never been this detrimental.  Our own president claims to be a Catholic and yet perpetuates the lie that killing babies for convenience is in some way virtuous due to the freedom of the mother to choose to murder her baby.

These are times, friends, when we need to take a page from Kolakovic’s mantra to SEE.  JUDGE.  ACT.  It might seem inconsequential to just let leftists do what they want, at times it may even seem virtuous under the auspices of democracy.  But as Christians, we’re held to a standard, which we are all aware of.  In order to see, we must keep our eyes open.  In order to judge, we must know the Word personally, and inside and out.  And in order to act, we must maintain our lives in such a way so as to not invite footholds for either The Satan or cultural heroes.

Please look forward to a full unpacking of this incredibly dense book over the coming weeks.

-TJ