PERSON TO PERSON-Closing the Circle [M, 4-27-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Isolation

PERSON TO PERSON-Closing the Circle    [M, 4-27-20]

 Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician whose writings, more theological than medical, were especially popular in the first couple of decades of my clergy career. Helen and I heard him tell this story at Union Seminary [Presbyterian] in Richmond, Virginia. Well, we heard his voice, but we really heard the story from the young woman who was translating.

His father died just after he was born, his mother died when he was twelve. He was raised by a stern, emotionless aunt. He never learned about simple human relationships. He had no social skills, and tried to cover up his loneliness with academic achievements.

Throughout his academic education, there was only one person who treated him as another person, his Greek tutor. They met in the man’s home, and shared tea as well as Greek, but not much else, except being together as persons.

Later, Tournier, on a ship, met a Dutch financier and his wife. They led him to Christ. It transformed his medical practice. He began to see people as persons instead of bodies. He began to treat the entire person, soul as well as body.

When he wrote the manuscript for his first book, The Meaning of Persons, he was not at all sure that it was any good. This was new territory, this idea of wholeness in persons. The only one he dared to expose it to was his old Greek tutor. [Any first-time author understands this, even if it’s not a book but just a little piece.] 

In the same room where he had sat and studied Greek, he read to his

old professor the first chapter. “Read on, Paul,” his tutor said. He read the second chapter. “Read on, Paul.” All afternoon long, as the shadows lengthened, he read, until he was hoarse and the manuscript was done.

“We must pray together, Paul,” his tutor said.

Tournier was astounded. In the few conversations they had in former days about spiritual things, his old tutor had always said that he did not believe in a personal God.

“Are you a Christian, too?” asked Tournier.

“Yes, Paul.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

John Robert McFarland