Viktor Frankl, A Nazi Victim Who Led Millions to Find the Meaning of Life
Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl (1905 -1997) suffered the horrors of internment in four Nazi concentration camps from 1942 to 1945. He was able to survive the unspeakable abuse and deprivation by focusing on the real purpose and meaning of human existence.
Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Frankl developed a school of psychology in the 1930s called logotherapy in which he treated patients by causing them to search for and find the meaning of life. He regarded the meaning of life as the greatest and most basic human motivation. Frankl found the ultimate meaning of life in religious rather than materialistic values.
Frankl connected psychology to religion at a time when Sigmund Freud was focusing on sex and pleasure as the most basic human motive and Alfred Adler was focusing on power as the main motive.
Freud and Adler instituted the First and Second Viennese schools of psychology. Frankl’s logotherapy is considered to be the Third School of Viennese Psychology.
Persecuted for Being Jewish
Frankl married nurse Tilly Grosser in 1941. The following year he and his family were deported to the Nazi concentration camps. Tilly was separated from him and she died at Bergen Belsen. Frankl was able to survive in the camps because of his tenacious grasp of the meaning of life and his desire to help his fellow prisoners endure the horrific treatment by focusing on the larger issues of life.
After liberation he wrote the book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” in a stunning burst of inspiration over a nine day period. This book became an international bestseller, published in more than 20 languages and had an incalculable impact on millions of people. The book is an autobiographical sketch of Frankl’s life and poignantly describes his struggles and triumphs during his time in the Nazi camps.
Shortly after World War II he married a Roman Catholic lady named Eleonore Schwindt. They attended church and synagogue and celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah. Frankl was very respectful of both Judaism and Christianity. Frankl saw no purpose in a secular, atheistic, materialistic world which claims humans evolved from apes, have no souls and have no conscious existence after death.
The Meta-Narrative of Civilization
Every civilization must have a meta-narrative. Frankl, wrote many books and gave many lectures and drew his meta-narrative from belief in God. “Meta-narrative” is a fancy way of saying “the over-arching reason why we live.” It’s the transcendent story or summation of values or worldview that guides a civilization.
The dominant religion of the ruling elite of Europe and America is a secular mishmash of ethical platitudes. This secular religion has produced no coherent meta-narrative.
Bible based Christianity has given us the true meta-narrative. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) states that the purpose of man is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
The meaning of life which Frankl sought all his days is to receive Christ as Savior and follow Him as Lord. Frankl was a Jewish man who had a great deal of respect for Christianity. God knows if he ever received Christ into his heart. I hope he did.
The secular, politically correct cabal of woke culturists that currently rule the United States of America has no vision for the future of America. They have no meta-narrative. They’ve rejected biblical revelation. They have no transcendent narrative or story as a guiding light to produce a happy and productive society.
A meta-narrative can also be called absolute truth. Absolute truth is a code of morals or moral truths that are transcendent and are given from above. Absolute truth or absolute morals are morals that apply to all people in all cultures at all times. The reason why secularists do not have absolute truth is because they don’t believe in the absolute truth giver, who is the creator, God.
They Deny God as Creator Because of Darwinian Evolution
The whole edifice of secularism rests squarely on the foundation of atheistic Darwinian evolution. Darwinism is the origins myth of secularism. Their whole worldview goes back to their denial of God as creator. They claim that living things formed by accident.
If they deny God as Creator, they deny the authority of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and all the guiding lights of absolute truth that are given by divine revelation in the Bible.
Each of us has a smartphone. You might be reading this article on a smartphone. Let me start by saying that the simplest bacterial cell is more complex than a smartphone. A bacterial cell could never form by itself, by accident in the early earth.
A simple bacterial cell such as e-coli is composed of over 200 different types of protein. Each of these proteins is a complex compound composed of over 400 amino acids that must be sequenced in precise order to make each protein functional. The proteins then must be properly assembled to build a bacterium capable of life.
The secularists want us to believe that the first bacterial cell formed spontaneously in the primordial ooze of the early earth. They say it could happen without a creator.
There have been been numerous scientists, including microbiologist Harold Morowitz, who have run the numbers and done the math on the on the probability of even the simplest cell forming by unguided collisions of atoms.
The number they’ve worked out is less than one in ten to the 90 billionth power. This shows that a simple bacterial cell could essentially never form by random collisions of atoms. We see that spontaneous generation, or as it is more commonly called now, abiogenesis, is impossible. That’s just the first step of evolution.
The fossil record does not conform to what is predicted by evolutionary assumptions. We have fossils of complex organisms that are buried beneath fossils of their alleged ancestors!
All the evidence points to the need for a super-intelligent designer and builder of all living things: God!
Evolution is taught as fact in our public schools in the United States and in government-run schools in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. Young children are being brainwashed into a secular faith that claims that life self-assembled and there’s no God and there’s no revelation, no absolute truth, no absolute morals, no meta-narrative and no purpose for life.
The secularists at the top of governments on Earth have been brainwashed by the school systems and the universities and trained to believe in secularism. This is why they believe that the only hope for humanity is to build a Utopia on Earth according to their materialistic precepts. Viktor Frankl was not fooled by the claims of totalitarian secularists. Neither should we.
The Great Reset
Right now the elite, including radicalized billionaires and some members of the World Economic Forum are pushing something called The Great Reset. The Great Reset is a radical agenda of implementation of totalitarian police state controls and digital surveillance to control the world population.
The radical secular elitists plan to reduce the standard of living of the world population so that human life can be “sustainable.” Climate change is the pretext for implementing radical controls to reduce human consumption to reduce pollution to reduce greenhouse gases.
The recent Covid pandemic and climate change alarmism are the two-headed Trojan horse to get people to embrace governmental surveillance through financial controls implemented through a digital one world currency. This is a central part of the Great Reset.
Once money is digitized and cash eliminated, every transaction must be done on a device and be trackable so they have complete surveillance of the people and complete taxation of the people. No money can be hidden. They’ll know what you spent, what you spent it on, where you traveled and what political conferences you attended.
When currency is digitized, then they can impose global taxation and a one world government with a global legislature, global executive, global judiciary, global martial law and global repeal of the Bill of Rights.
This would be enforced by confiscations, account freezes, negative interest rates, living standards reduced to sustainable levels to wipe out the middle class which consume too much in the eyes of the one percent. The 1% would have all the power and the wealth.
Secular People Take a Fresh Look at Their Lives
Many secular people are seeing the vacuous nature of the claims of atheistic materialism and its lack of moral guidance and absolute truth. They are beginning to ponder and consider that there is something more to life. Secular people are taking a new look at Christianity. We can introduce them to Jesus. Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah of Israel and He is the only begotten Son of God.
We can show them that Jesus came in fulfillment of over 300 Old testament prophecies. No other figure in all of world history can make this claim. Jesus worked miracles and His followers work miracles of healing today. Jesus took the penalty of our sins upon Himself when he suffered and died. Isaiah the prophet predicted this hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus rose from the dead to offer salvation and forgiveness of sins to all who call upon Him in repentance. I invite you to turn to Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins.
Steps to salvation:
Jesus said “Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)
1) Believe that God loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus Christ came to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5–6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
3) Repent of your sins and call on Jesus Christ to ask for forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord and be baptized (John 14:15, Acts 2:38).
Prayer to receive salvation:
To receive the salvation which Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer:
“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I’m a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart, then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!
Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA
© 2022 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.
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