In 1945, in a Japanese internment camp in China, a forty-three year old man did everything he could to effectively lead and serve his fellow prisoners. Without the benefit of equipment or supplies, he taught science to many of the children in the makeshift school they created. He also taught Sunday school, led Bible studies for adults and tended to the elderly and infirmed.
Along with teaching and assisting others, he organized youth sporting events to promote fitness and boost morale. In fact, he especially enjoyed helping the children with athletics because he had been an athlete himself–an especially well-known one in England and his native Scotland. Many years earlier, the people had called him the “Flying Scotsman” because of his prowess in track.
If you’ve seen the movie Chariots of Fire, then you know his name: Eric Liddell. A 100-meter sprinter by talent and training, he declined to run in that race in the Paris Olympics of 1924 when he learned that it would be run on a Sunday. A devout Christian, he believed that running on Sunday violated the keeping of the Sabbath, something he would not do for king, country, or Olympic glory. For the stand he took, some of his teammates, English sportswriters, and fans called him a traitor.
The movie that tells his story and that of several other British athletes was remarkably accurate. For example it portrayed Liddell competing in a race in which he was bumped off of the track. An actual account of the race from The Student (October 22, 1924) explained:
For a moment [Liddell] seemed half inclined to give up. Then suddenly he sprang forward and was after his opponents in a flash. By this time the leaders were twenty yards ahead, but Liddell gradually drew up on them, and by the time the home stretch was reached, he was running fourth. He would be about ten yards behind Gillis [the runner who had bumped him] then. It seemed out of the question that he would win, but he achieved the apparently impossible. Forty yards from home he was third and seemed on the point of collapsing, but pulling himself together he put in a desperate finish to win by two yards from Gillis.
Not surprisingly, at the 1924 Olympics, Liddell performed in similar fashion. When he refused to run in the 100-meters, he instead got the opportunity to run in a 400-meters race. Though he had not trained for that distance, he took the opportunity. Remarkably, he not only won–he set a world record in the process!
Now a hero, the welcome that Liddell received in England was incredible, but it was nothing compared to the celebration in his native Scotland. What was his response to this overwhelming fame he was suddenly shrouded in? Liddell quietly finished his degree in science and divinity, and then in 1925, he travelled to China as a missionary.
For nearly twenty years, he worked with the Chinese people, teaching, sharing his faith, and serving in numerous other ways. At one point, he worked with the Red Cross to gain greater access to the more remote regions of the country. And he made the most of it.
While working with the Red Cross following the Japanese invasion of China, he once heard that a Chinese man lay wounded in a temple, the locals afraid to help him because they feared the violent reprisals of the Japanese military. Liddell travelled two days to find the man, who, Liddell found out later, had survived a botched beheading from a Japanese executioner. The man was rescued and eventually fully recovered.
In 1943, Eric Liddell found himself in a 150-by-200-yard internment camp along with eighteen hundred other “enemy nationals.” While there, he served everyone he could, and the children there especially delighted in him. They had grown up hearing the story of the athlete who refused to run on Sunday. He gained not only the love of the children, but also that of the imprisoned adults and even a number of his Japanese captors grew to respect and admire him.
If Liddell was ill or in great pain in 1945, he never really let on. He simply continued his responsibilities, teaching and coaching the children. But on February 21, 1945, just months before the end of the war, Eric Liddell succumbed due to an undetected brain tumor. He was laid to rest in a little cemetery located just outside the walls of the camp.
The record books may remember Eric Liddell the runner, but the people whose lives he touched remember him not as a leader in the sport of track, but, rather, as a life and faith leader. In the end, where you lead and who you lead are less important than how you lead. Eric Liddell was a leader who served wherever and whenever he was able. While doing so, he always offered a kind smile while he led by example.
The race of the Christian life–not the Olympics–was the one that mattered most to Eric Liddell.
“Being the first to cross the finish line makes you a winner in only one phase of life. It’s what you do after you cross the line that really counts.” – Ralph Boston, Olympic Gold Medalist
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué