"... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then 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. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...." (56-57)
What a powerful and poignant passage! This portrait of a man surviving the Holocaust for his beloved is even more moving when one realizes that by this point, unbeknownst to Frankl, his precious wife was dead.
Yet in Frankl's efforts to find meaning in the worst of human sufferings, the foundation of what he would later term "logotherapy," he adds greatly to the work of two other authors I have read in the past year: Elie Wiesel and Martin Seligman.
Wiesel, with words that drop upon the heart with the weight of tears, wrestled with the Holocaust he survived and in his final estimation, found God hanging from the gallows of his concentration camp. In the most repulsive of circumstances, Wiesel finally hung to despair. Frankl moved beyond Wiesel. He chose to "say 'Yes' to life," and seek our meaning in his tragic experiences. One could strive for meaning amidst any experience, whether it be future (love, life, learning, etc.), or--if faced with imminent suffering and death--the opportunity to do so with honor and dignity.
Seligman, wrestling with the modern deluge of depression, sought to combat the paralysis of helplessness and habitual pessimism with the art of disputing one's thoughts. Yet, in the final analysis, his helpful practice relied upon the same faulty nature that allows for depression in the first place. Frankl moved beyond Seligman in confronting the nature of a man, rather than just his thoughts. He realized that though depression evolves from one's thought process, that thought process evolves from one's worldview (my term). A person with meaning can scale the highest cliffs, but the nihilist (one who sees life as inherently lacking meaning) will wither at the slightest provocation.
Man's well being is intimately tied to his sense of meaning and purpose. Behind most psychological disorders are philosophical disorders, as witnessed by the current millieu of postmodern despair. In America, the breaking point from the utopian illusions of the early twentieth century came with Vietnam, Watergate, and a spate of assassinations. Ideals rooted in human goodness fell apart. Much of today's prevalent cynicism is a result of that dashing of human hopes.
But that dashing of human hopes merely did away with false man-centered idols of achievement, not with hope all together. And this is where I believe we can add to Frankl's "logotherapy" (logos is Greek for word/meaning/thing) and speak into the current generational despair. We need not project our own sense of meaning, as Frankl, the existentialist, would have us do in order to progress.
Irretrievable meaning was availed to sinners when the true Logos (Word) became sarkos (flesh)--the language we get from John 1. Meaning was bestowed upon sinners when the God who bestows meaning sent His Son to live the perfectly meaningful life (one lived fully to God's glory) in the place of sinners who sought meaning solely within themselves (Rom. 1).
Living in light of the cross--covered in the atoning blood of Christ and credited with His perfect righteousness--secures eternal meaning for the sinner. Along with his own nature, the sinner's suffering is transformed into sanctification leading to glory, and the sinner's death is transformed into a mere portal into surpassing glory. Man is a meaningful creature and will either deny meaning and despair, supply false meaning and live a lie, or cling to the God of meaning through Jesus Christ and have life and life to the full.
