Trangbang – wonderful.

As he tried to make sense of it, near tears; I thought , how do men face a churning, frightening world without God?

Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” is probably in the permanent top 5 of my personal booklist.

He actually quotes Nietzsche (oh the irony) in the book, something to the effect of, “Man can always find a ‘how’ to live, so long as he knows a ‘why.’”

God is a why. Some would say, the ultimate Why. (And the ultimate Who.) Frankl writes that those who survived Dachau all, to a one, had found a why, though it took on a number of different expressions — God, reuniting with a loved one, surviving so that their child would have a parent, surviving to testify & seek justice, etc. In Frankl’s case he put his professional training to work and survived by seeking purpose in understanding the why of human nature — why some lived and others did not, why some were decent and others indecent.

Lots of skeptics over the years have discounted the idea of God as a crutch, invented by humans to help them cope. If so then it appears God is certainly no worse than all the other “crutches” that Frankl witnessed — the motivations of love, justice, and meaning.

As for myself, I’ve found God to be not so much a crutch as a yoke. Believing might make some things easier, but it makes others much, much more difficult. So why Christ’s yoke?

Well, first off, I don’t think there is such thing as a yoke-free existence for anyone. As in, it’s not a question of *whether* you wear a yoke in this life, only a question of *which one.*

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Second – His burden is, indeed, lighter than all the others I’ve found.

Just my two cents’ worth.