#bakruptcy

Well he was put in the death camps, in a concentration camps & he survived, but when he came out he wrote a classic called “Man's Search for Meaning”

It is I think very underappreciated—but here's what he saw & this is what I got from reading the book & it was very powerful.

Now by the way, this is not a case for Christianity.

It's a case for GOD.

But listen it's not a case for Christianity per se—he noticed the people in the concentration camps were under incredible pressure.

   •  They were stripped of everything    •  They were stripped of their wealth    •  They stripped of their social status    •  They stripped of their clothes    •  They are stripped of their family members

Very often their family members were taken away from them among other things.

   •  They stripped of their jobs    •  They stripped of homes    •  They stripped of everything

And he found that there were three responses:

[a] One kind of person became cruel & in some cases       evil there were some prisoners that began to steal       other people's [other prisoners'] food & anything       to survive including collaborate with the enemy..

      Collaborate with the Germans, the Nazis, so they       became cruel or evil

[b] The second group just shriveled up they almost       literally curled up into balls & died in some cases.

      They actually literally did it, but it just meant you       could just see them collapse; they couldn't think,       outside they didn't look at anybody else.

      They didn't see anybody else, they just saw them       selves & their problems & they just collapsed.

[c] It was a third group of people who maintained an       ability to love/serve/sacrifice for other people.

      The first two were utterly absorbed in themselves       —they just, it's like they were just sucked in & only       one of the three groups was able to maintain a       certain amount of hope.

      A certain amount of it may well not be hope for       getting out—but it was just a love a caring for their       neighbor as it were.

…………………………………………………………………       And by the way if I remember correctly they were       not three equal sized groups. The first group was       small, the third group was small, the middle group       was probably the biggest! …………………………………………………………………

      He realized he said when he got out as he reflected       on he said “Now why in the world would people &       probably they're all Jewish people of course & they       were all German Jews. I mean there were European       Jews & so why would they respond so differently?!

      Here's what he decided:

      It's in the title of the book everybody lives for some       -thing, but if you live for your career/family/human       approval/power/influence/social status..

      In other words, if what gives you meaning in life, if       the thing you're living for [here's what he said almost       everybody he realized was living for things that the       Concentration Camp could take away]

…………………………………………………………………       The only people who stayed heroic, the only       people who stayed sane were people whose       main meaning in life wasn't something death       camps could take away from them. …………………………………………………………………

And I don't know what that is by the way.

You know I said what would that be?

Well all I know is it has to be awfully spiritual. Now wouldn't it? Because if you're living for your career/ human approval..if you're living for power/comfort/ control or for anything other than GOD

      —in other words, you better have a spiritual       dimension to your life because you know

      you probably aren't going to be stuck in a       concentration camp, but I can tell you a       lot of the things that mean the most to       you are going to be stripped away from       you one day soon, & when it does

Are you going to curl up into a ball & die?

F4.1] Reason to Believe in GOD

Now lastly so what I'm trying to say is, if there is a GOD that's what you live for & you can be stuck in a concentration camp.

If there is a GOD fine-tuning the Universe makes sense, love has significance.

If there's a GOD then human rights & moral obligation makes sense, but if there is no GOD those things you can believe in them—but there's a bigger leap of faith

Don't you want to believe those things are significant in spite of what you believe about the Universe, and about GOD? Then if you actually believed in GOD, do you see the problem that non-belief brings???

Just to have the integrity to see it & consider a question —if all these things make more sense, if there is a GOD than there isn't not a GOD.

What's your problem with believing in GOD?