Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday November 20, 2007

Many are the apparent reasons given for the malaise in the moderns. I do not by any shape of the imagination think that I have all the answers, but I do know some of what has been wrong with men and women since they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is a recurring disease that captures the majority of each generation. Only a few really lay hold on the truth and live the life abundant.

Viktor Frankl survived the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, his wife of only a few years was murdered at Bergen-Belsen, his mother perished at Auschwitz. I read his book, Man's Search for Meaning while still far too young to grasp much of it. Over the years I have reread the book many times and I find some jewel that escaped me in earlier readings. Here is one that puts the finger on our modern problem:

"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." From the Christian perspective Frankl's grasp was incomplete yet he put into words the truths that many Christians can only feel and not express. I have never suffered anything near Auschwitz, yet in my sufferings and being witness to the suffering of others, be the suffering health associated, deprivation of commonly accepted means of comfort, a weak person tormented by a strong one in a position of authority, or hunger while sleeping under a bridge, I noted the truth of Frankl's position on the importance of meaning, of knowing that the living of your life however horrible it may be at the time, is not in vain, but in some way it really does have meaning. On Page 123 in Man's Search For Meaning Frankl wrote:

"If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life - an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival."

In my studies of POW's and political prisoners of all persuasions each has the testimony of enduring the unendurable by resorting to the power of the spirit. When I was 15 years old I knew a man who had survived the infamous Death March of Bataan. He had a habit of taking several of us and we would all set around a fire and he would tell us of the awful atrocities and the privation he and the others suffered and how they survived by sticking together, talking about home and the ones they loved and who loved them, and when placed in solitary or some other form of torture they had learned to "retreat inwardly" and thus prevail outwardly. Giff was always telling us, "what is going on inside is more important than what is going on around you." This is the universal statement of those who prevail.

This inward prevailing was not new to Viktor Frankl. Nor was it new to the heroes of modern torture camps. A man named John endured unspeakable privation while working in exile on a Island in the Aegean Sea. During the time of his imprisonment it was common practice for the prisoners to work naked in the rock quarries and exist on the meager fare the jailers felt like giving to them. His name was John, John the Apostle and he wrote in the midst of this barbaric torture, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day," and during this in the spirit exercise John received what the New Testament calls the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. John not only survived Patmos, he prevailed through the Spirit. And you also can survive whatever Patmos comes into your life by grasping Giff's statement, "what is going on inside is more important than what is going on around you."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with credit.

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