My parents weren’t sure if I was going to live.
Before I was born and still in the womb of my mom, the physician told her that there were complications.
Mom had to deliver me via cesarean section. As a baby, I was in respiratory distress.
The doctors transported me immediately to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at the University of Virginia. Mom later told me that she remembered watching me lay in an infant incubator. I was being sustained by an oxygen-breathing unit.
Louis Zamperini is a true World War II hero, whose story has been vividly portrayed in the N.Y. Times bestseller, Unbroken, by Laura Hidlebrand. What Zamperini endured in those war years was a most remarkable testimony of endurance. Zamperini was an Olympic runner, who was on target to become the first American to break the four minute mile, but when war broke out, he joined the U.S. Air Force. On one rescue mission, due to engine troubles, their B-24 airplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, but Zamperini and two other crew members amazingly survived the impact. Then, they lived the next 47 days on a couple life rafts, just barely surviving starvation, constant shark attacks, and being shot at directly by a Japanese bomber. One man died, but the other two men finally reached the Marshall Islands – only to be captured by Japanese soldiers. Zamperini would spend the next two and a half years spent in various prisons, where American prisoners were treated very cruelly. One big, sadistic Japanese guard, named Matsuhiro, seemed to have a demonic hatred especially bent toward Zamperini. Just about anytime they would cross paths, this guard would pound Zamperini in the face, sometimes with a belt buckle on his hand. About half of the story in Unbroken describes the horrible, humiliating suffering Zamperini and others endured in these Japanese prisons. It is truly the hand of God that he survived, especially at the end of the war, when Japanese soldiers normally killed all POW’s before fleeing, but in this case, they fled, and the prisoners were left to be rescued.
Zamperini shocked friends and family by returning back home alive and he was an instant celebrity. However, the celebrity status produced little income and he soon found himself in a quick marriage, which turned bad, and then he became more addicted to alcohol. Every night he was tormented by nightmares of the guard, Matsuhiro, attacking him. All this changed, however, in 1949 when he attended a big tent crusade in Los Angeles, where a young, popular speaker, Billy Graham, was preaching. Zamperini went forward in the second night to give his life to Christ. He returned home, poured out all his liquor, and slept peacefully for the first time in years. He never again had a nightmare of Matsuhiro. He was truly a new man in Christ!
A few years later, Zamperini had an opportunity to go back and visit some of the former Japanese guards, now prisoners themselves. He and other Christians shared the love and forgiveness of Christ to these former tormentors, who were greatly surprised.
Zamperini never saw Matsuhiro in his visits, but he sent him this letter. Matsuhiro never responded before his death, but Zamperini had obeyed the Lord in forgiving this former enemy.
To Matsuhiro [sic] Watanabe,
As a result of my prisoner of war experience under your unwarranted and unreasonable punishment, my post-war life became a nightmare. It was not so much due to the pain and suffering as it was the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me to hate with a vengeance…
The post-war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham, I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate I had for you. Christ said, “Forgive your enemies and pray for them.”
As you probably know, I returned to Japan in 1952 [sic] and was graciously allowed to address all the Japanese war criminals at Sugamo Prison … At that moment, like the others, I also forgave you and now would hope that you would also become a Christian.
Louis Zamperini[1]
What amazing forgiveness! You, too, can forgive – even your greatest enemies – because Jesus Christ suffered the terrible abuse and torments of men, and yet he chose to forgive us. While hanging on the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) Therefore, you must also “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col.3:13)
Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle on the notion that the nature of happiness is “what we state the end of human nature to be.”[1] However, Aquinas stated that perfect happiness was not any state of mind, but consisted in the sole contemplation of God seen in his essence.[2] Naturalists have said for years that one does not need God to achieve perfect happiness. Epicurus of Samos (341-270 B.C.) the founder of the Garden believed that pleasure is the telos.[3] Pleasure is the lack of pain. Pleasure is the freedom of the body from pain. Epicurus did make a distinction between the higher pleasures, which were the intellectual and aesthetic pleasures of the mind, and the lower pleasures, which were the pleasures of the body, including food, drink and sex. Epicurus believed that the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy life free from fear and absence of pain, and living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.[4] Many materialists of the last century from Bertrand Russell to Sam Harris have adapted some ethical aspects from Epicurus. The theses of this paper will consider Aquinas’s argument on philosophical grounds of what happiness is not. We will also look at Aquinas’s notion that perfect happiness consists in the end of the beautific vision. This blog post will examine Aquinas’s argument in light of both ancient and contemporary disagreements from primarily philosophical materialists.
