A Reflection From Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl begins his book MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by saying that the best people he knew did not survive the Holocaust. Cut throat attitudes and the ability to become callous to terrible suffering was too important for survival. Frankl says gloomily that the survivors have to live with the terrible knowledge that the 'best of us did not make it'. This seems a profound and sad truth about life as well. One only made right if there is some afterlife wherein that which is of enduring value, that which incarnates God in this world most, has some kind of greater existence in another world. If goodness imprints upon God, and eternalizes more of a person, then this world is not inherently tragic. If God's grace is real and His Kingdom present, we have hope. Without it, the final word on this life is simply tragic.