Hi Friend,

He is one of the most unforgettable people I have ever met.  He agreed to speak at a church event to describe his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi Concentration Camp.  As we sat over lunch in an upscale restaurant, he recounted his childhood memories of being separated from his family, losing all his possessions, confined to the unfamiliar surroundings of barracks built for political prisoners.

He is a brilliant man and uncharacteristically humble for a retired Physics professor who speaks four languages.  He has an excellent knowledge of history, has traveled the world, and reflects a rare understanding of life. He talked about the death of his father in Auschwitz—how the Nazi’s had kept such detailed records that after the war he was able to find the recorded accounts of the day his father entered Auschwitz and the day he was killed. Despite the horror, such insanity made both of us chuckle.

He told me of a Rabbi who smuggled a miniature scroll into Bergen Belsen, the same prison camp he was in. He used it to prepare a Jewish boy for bar mitzvah, which was accomplished in the camp. Imagine observing a ceremony that acknowledges you’ve become a man, in a prison camp. Afterward the Rabbi gave the small scroll to the boy telling him that he did not expect to live through the experience. The boy grew up to become a Physicist and the scroll was given to Ilon Ramon, the Jewish astronaut who perished in the Columbia space disaster. The irony is that my friend was in the same concentration camp as the boy who observed his bar mitzvah there. My friend also has a tiny scroll that survived the concentration camp. He is also a Physicist. And he loaned his scroll to NASA for use in a ceremony as a substitute for the one lost in space. So many coincidences that he wants to believe God was involved with his life—yet, as he says “I have a few issues with God.”

Several years ago, I had a house built by a man who was Jewish. He had an aunt that lived through the holocaust and she did not believe in God because of the terrible experience. I think it is incorrect to say these people do not believe in God. They are angry at him. “There cannot be a God that could allow such things to happen” was her statement. My Physicist friend did not use those words because he is less angry and is a genuinely humble man. But it was easy to read his thoughts.

It deepened my conviction about something I learned long ago. The history of man’s existence is filled with suffering, therefore the Messiah had to suffer.  It is inconceivable that God would require more of mere man than he required of the Messiah. If character is developed through suffering and standing alone, risking everything for a righteous cause—could that be the domain of man and not God? The thought resonated with my friend sitting across the table. If Jesus was not the Messiah, then the Messiah to come would have to go through all the things Jesus went through. It was the same issue the Apostle Paul dealt with almost 2,000 years ago when he convinced many Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. It is something traditional Christianity has overlooked.

The central issue about healing has only recently come to the surface of my cognitive thought process. Suffering is required to accomplish healing. The difference between Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler demonstrates one of the essential characteristics of healing. Hitler was too sensitive to suffer, so he was incapable of effecting healing among the German people. He stayed inside his bunker, afraid to visit his soldiers or walk the streets of the bombed cities. He could rule over them like any other tyrant. But the difference between a tyrant and a leader is the willingness to suffer WITH people. Churchill walked among the rubble and experienced the same pain as all the other citizens. While Hitler was cowering in the bunker, Churchill was walking among the ruins, visiting soldiers at the front, taking a ship’s gun in hand ready to engage the enemy in battle alongside a sailor. That experience gave him the ability to speak words that healed the nation. Hitler risked nothing yet lost everything. Churchill risked everything and gained freedom for the world.

When the Apostle Paul refers to Jesus as the High Priest he uses these words.  “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.  Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; (Heb. 5:6-9 KJV).

All forgiveness of sin in the Old Testament looked forward to the time when God would suffer with man. There could be no other way for man to be healed. And forgiveness and healing are inseparable.

Maybe that is the pathology of the self-appointed false prophets who dot our landscape. They teach the government of God apart from suffering. They are so willing to condemn men, even brothers of the faith, to the tribulation and Gehenna fire. They see their job as accusing mankind, not as repairing the breech. They do this because they are not willing to suffer with people. Therefore, they are incapable of healing.

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien