A Faith Story by Luminitza Nichols
By: Luminitza Cristescu Nichols
Friday, April 25, 2008
Communist Romania gave the Protestant Church of the early 80’s little room to function, and the Christian faith, in its entirety, was being barbarically oppressed. When stories of early persecutions of pastors and Christian leaders reached my generation, they proved to be only a foretaste of much greater atrocities to come, as communism tightened its iron fists around every gestures of free expression. The Romanian communists were known to have pioneered brainwashing techniques in Eastern Europe. As children, we were exposed to communist propaganda from as early as preschool, while religious education was expressly forbidden.
Although the Romanian Constitution theoretically guaranteed rights such as freedom of conscience and religious belief, the government recognized no religious holidays and often demanded “voluntary labor” on Christmas and Easter in an obvious effort to limit church attendance and erode any faith-related influence.
Churches had to maneuver their way carefully through censorship, government-enforced limitations, potentially compromised “Christian”-spies, and a host of other adversities. Believers could not engage in religious activities outside the few “officially assigned” religious buildings; and often met without license or paid enormous daily fees.
My Christian journey began in such underground church, a small house in which someone allowed us to gather. I accepted Christ at the age of 13, when a friend invited me to go to church with her.
My decision to follow Jesus was received with absolute hostility not only by my parents, who both entered the communist party to promote their career aspirations; but also by relatives who often crowded our house in attempt to gain up and coerce me into recanting.
Not long after my conversion, I was called into the principal’s office to answer the rumors that I had become a Christian. Unaccustomed to breaking the rules, I entered his office visibly afraid, only to find him reposeful and strangely amiable. He showed genuine concern for my future and insisted that my premature decision will only lead to certain unhappiness. I thanked him and assured him that I had counted the cost and that I could not go back. He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and pointed to the door.
As I entered high school, I was known as the “repenter”. Often mocked by my teachers, I was asked to stand up in front of the class to be laughed at, and was warned that my “religion” may hinder my graduation.
But it was at home where my faith took the hardest hits. My parents viewed my newfound convictions as an affront to their authority, nothing less than dangerous sectarian indoctrination which jeopardized my success in life.
My father, afraid for his job and our family safety, began threatening to disown me and asked me to stop frequenting church or to stop coming home. When his threats did not achieve the intended result, he would slap me non-stop “interrogation-style” in spontaneous outbursts of anger, and demand that I called him “god”. Burning tears rolled down my numb face, and only God gave me the strength to turn yet the other cheek.
One evening, when I was sixteen years old, I walked home from church carrying my Bible in my hand instead of my purse and thought nothing about it. Halfway home, a police officer stopped me and asked me to follow him to the station. The offense was the Bible I was carrying. Communism placed severe restrictions on printing or importing Bibles; and possessing or distributing any religious literature was counted as a criminal offense.
I was interrogated in detail until late that night and asked to give out names and the source from which I obtained my Bible. Because I did not cooperate, they were certain that I hid Christian material in my home. My house was to be searched and if anything was found, my parents would have been arrested for possession of religious literature. On our way home, I prayed ferociously, when unexpectedly the two police officers noticed a dangerous-looking individual carrying an axe across the street. This took precedence over my house inspection, and they decided to follow him instead. My house was never searched.
One December evening when I was nineteen years old, I found myself in the middle of a restless crowd. First, with feeble voices which gradually grew less cautious, people started demanding food, heat and freedom, asking openly for what was forbidden to us to even think of for decades. I knew in an instant that this was bigger than I was; bigger than all of us and more dangerous than anybody had ever attempted. Yet, I wanted to be part of it. I had the choice to leave while things were still under control, but in my heart I believed in their cause. Their wish was what I wished; their cry was my own. I knew that freedom was a gift from God and no man or government had the right to take it away.
I joined the crowd and we left to tell the big city its deliverance had come. Army of soldiers with tanks and machine guns came against us; huge fire trucks with water pressure at maximum tried to disperse us, yet nothing stopped the crowd. But freedom, as anything else of value, comes at a cost. I was arrested that night and taken as a political prisoner to the biggest federal prison in western Romania.
Romanian dissidents were ordinarily tried and convicted as criminals in military courts. They could receive sentences from five to fifteen years of hard labor for “slandering the state” or for “any action aimed at changing the socialist order”. But in desperate situations, such as an anticommunist protest, many who were captured were instantly executed and speedily cremated to eliminate evidence. For almost a week, in the women’s penitentiary, I witnessed abysmal conditions of brutality and dehumanization. From the lack of water and ventilation, to hundreds of maggots crawling out of our plates; from the deafening screams coming from surrounding cells, to the violent interrogations with their beatings, “disappearances” and attacks against hope -- we were cruelly deprived of compassion and were shown no trace of basic civility.
Soon after my arrest I was asked if I belonged to a Protestant faith. I freely admitted that I was a “repenter”. We were thought to be the instigators who started this uprising. To be a Christian in that hour was instantly a guilty verdict. But I had what these others did not have: hope beyond this ugly life, faith in an eternal life, and a friend closer to me than the shirt on my body, waiting at the edge of my eternity. And there, in that dirty cell, I had the joy of comforting and introducing my fellow prisoners to this friend, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Like many who survived imprisonment under totalitarian rule, I returned to freedom believing that suffering was necessary to the Christian faith. As for me, I never felt happier than when I was forced to rely solely on God’s mercy. I never felt His presence more closely and never prayed more sincerely and successfully than in the clutches of that prison cell. “For it has been granted to you” says Paul, “on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him.” Philippians 1:29 (NIV)
Looking back, those seven years lived as a believer under communism were the most productive years of my Christian existence. They were the first seminary I ever attended.
Luminitza Cristescu Nichols was born in Timisoara, Romania to a family of non-believers. She received Christ as her Lord at the age of 13 and her only sister followed suit two years later. Ten years after her conversion, her father accepted Christ as his personal Savior and presently serves with her mother in the same church where she first began her faith journey. Luminitza came to America as a student when she was 20 years old, and graduated with a nursing degree in 1996. Her husband Eric and her have a baby girl, Ana Iova. She graduated from Eastern's School of Christian Ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Currently Luminitza is enrolled at Palmer Theological Seminary for the MDiv degree.