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 By Barry Buzza
[Other articles by Barry Buzza]
One of the most inspiring books I've ever read is "Man's Search for Meaning". Viktor Frankl wrote of his years trapped in the horrific hell-holes of Auschwitz and Dachau. Along with thousands of others, with no idea where his family had been taken, Frankl was trucked there like an animal to the slaughterhouse. He was given two minutes to strip or be whipped; every hair was shaved from his body and he was condemned to humiliation and death.
He later found out that his parents, brother and wife had been sent to the gas ovens or had died in camps. His existence was full of fear, cold, starvation, pain, vermin, dehumanization and exhaustion.
Frankl wrote that he was able to survive because of one thing--hope.
Other prisoners who lost sight of possible reprieve in their futures were trapped by doom. He observed that when a fellow captive lost hope, he began to decline; when that inner despair took hold, they became subject to mental and physical decay. They began to die from the inside, out.
It happened surprisingly suddenly. One morning a prisoner would wake up, but refuse to face the day. He wouldn't dress, wash or go outside to the parade grounds. No encouragement from his fellow inmates, and no threatening from his captors would affect his despair. He simply had given up. He lost hope. He would then lie in his own excrement till he was dead.
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Soldiers who've returned from long term prison camp incarceration describe the behaviour pattern as "give-up-itis". When a person loses hope, Frankl wrote, he loses his spiritual hold.
I've just finished a teaching on the last book in the Bible called Revelation. It ends on a high note of triumph in the last two chapters--what hope for those with deep spiritual hold!
Contrast that triumph with what historian Will Durant has written; His perspective holds only despair for the future: "Life has becomeÉ a fitful pollution of human insects on earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it, but defeat and death."
It's our choice of what we see for the year ahead - hope or despair. A very slight spacing of letters makes a world of difference in how we see life in 2009--is it, "God is nowhere", or "God is now here"?
A strong spiritual hold is vital for each of us as we face this new year.
Barry Buzza, a veteran pastor, is the president of the The Foursquare Gospel Church of Canada. www.foursquare.ca
January 15/2009
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