Volume 30, No. 21                                                
May 29, 2005

Atomic Reactions

   He was a 20th Century Samson.  One of the strongest men of his time, Joe Greenstein had a fierce temper, he got into trouble over women, his strength and his hair were inextricably linked, and he brought down the house — more than once.

   Born three months premature in Poland to a poor Jewish family, little Joseph was so close to death the doctor who delivered him offered his mother money to let him use the baby’s corpse for medical research.  Though Joseph survived, he had such severe breathing problems that, one day when he was 14, doctors again predicted his imminent death, from tuberculosis.

   That same day, the lad was beaten by a circus worker who caught him trying to sneak into the Big Top.  Greenstein crawled into the tent of a strongman named “Champion Volanko.” Volanko broke the circus bully’s nose, then took the teenager under his wing for 18 months, teaching Greenstein the secrets of his strength and endurance.  

   Brimming with new confidence, the young man went home, married his sweetheart, and became a wrestler.  But when a Polish soldier randomly killed a Jew, Greenstein murdered him and fled to American, landing in Texas where he wrestled and worked on the docks until he had enough money to send for his family.

   In October 1914, a deranged man obsessed with Greenstein’s wife, Leah, shot the wrestler between the eyebrows from 30 feet.  But the bullet flattened when it hit his skull, making Greenstein an instant celebrity!  Inspired by his near-death experience, he studied anatomy, psychology and hypnotism, to learn how to bypass the inner voice that told his body what it could and could not do.

   Just 5’4” and 148 pounds, Greenstein started to call himself TheMighty Atom.  He let his hair grow  and practiced pulling weights with it until he could use his long locks to tug a car uphill, or stop a small airplane from moving.  For a new vaudeville act, he learned to bite nails in half, bend an inch-thick piece of steel across the bridge of his nose, and expand his chest enough to separate three S-link chains.  The crowds loved him.  Greenstein also studied what’s now called holistic medicine, developing products like Gold Piece Soap and Pep-O-Lax (“Real cleanliness begins with internal cleanliness.”)

   When the strongman was attacked, tarred and feathered by the Ku Klux Klan, he tracked down his assailants and chased them with a butcher’s knife.  Later, he tore down an anti-Semitic sign in New York City and fought a crowd of angry Nazis, taking a knife from one and breaking another’s nose.  Even at age 91, Greenstein was still performing, bending horseshoes and pounding spikes through metal with his bare hands.  He died of cancer five years later, in 1977.

   “There are no little people,” Greenstein used to say, “just people who put limits on themselves.”  Shame on us when we do precisely that, despite the “glorious, unlimited resources ”from which God gives us “mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.” (Eph. 3:16)  We, too, have a Champion who teaches us the secrets of his strength and endurance but  we must first “experience the love of Christ...  Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God...   By his mighty power at work within us, He’s able to accomplish infinitely more than we’d ever dare to ask or hope!” (3:19,20)  No limits.  No excuses.

   But no perfection, either.  Even though “the Spirit of the Lord began to take hold of him,”(Judges 13:25) Samson was a weak strongman who shamed himself repeatedly at the same time he was doing the work of God. Like him, and Greenstein, we must contend with our tempers and temptations, our ego and emptiness, trusting that — in the end — God will give us the strength to overcome those tiny inner voices that tell us we’ll never do, or be, what we should.

   It’s true.  Real cleanliness begins with internal cleanliness.  When our minds and hearts are centred on the pure love of Jesus, we’ll defy death, learn to burst the chains that bind us, and be victorious with the amazing strength of God.  So hang tough.  Lost hope and confidence are like Samson’s hair.  They take time, but they grow.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ church family in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To receive these free weekly articles via email, send a note to sgamble@bfree.on.ca