new church life : july / august 2017
not to be worthy of my suffering .” That speaks to the trials of temptation and regeneration .
In the midst of the horror of Auschwitz Frankl says : “ I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart : the salvation of man is through love and in love .”
He came to realize – in his “ search for meaning ” – that turning away from God is the source of all evil , and that in loving God and the neighbor man forgets self and becomes more and more human . He becomes more and more an angel . And it starts with forgiveness .
Another iconic book on suffering and redemption is Unbroken by Laura Hillebrand . This is the beautifully written story of Louis Zamperini , who was shot down over the Pacific in World War II , endured 47 days floating in a raft , then two-and-a-half years of brutal captivity in a Japanese prisoner-ofwar camp . For much of that time he was tortured by a grotesquely cruel guard nicknamed “ The Bird .”
When the war was over and Zamperini was freed , he returned home physically unbroken but psychologically scarred . He became an alcoholic , suffered a broken marriage and was drifting through an empty life . But he became worthy of his unbroken spirit when he found religion and gave his life over to the Lord . He was even able to return to Japan – on a mission to forgive his tormentor .
These lessons are extreme , far removed from our experience of relatively petty grudges , slights and the redemptive power of forgiveness . But they all contain the seed of what Frankl discovered – and took into a career of helping countless people through psychiatry : that it is evil spirits and the love of self that hold us back from forgiveness , and the Lord and His angels who are with us when we forgive .
Forgiveness is healing . Nursing a grudge , holding on to hate , and withholding forgiveness is said to be like swallowing poison – and hoping the other person dies .
( BMH ) what will you do in heaven ?
Most of my professional career was spent in journalism . I still keep up with the news . But I realize there will be no “ news ” in heaven . No “ latest ” video of catastrophes . No talking heads analyzing what ’ s happening in various parts of the spiritual world . No hourly “ News Alerts .” Maybe that ’ s what helps to make it heaven . But it also makes me wonder : what am I going to do there ?
We are familiar with the teaching in Heaven and Hell 393 that there are “ so many offices and departments , so many tasks [ in heaven ], that there are simply
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