Unlikely turnaround – book review and comment: ‘Miracle on the River Kwai’

I’m reading the book ‘Miracle on the River Kwai’ by a Scotsman, Ernest Gordon, and published in 1963. Allied soldiers are captured by the Japanese and, as slave labourers, forced to build a railroad between Bangkok (Thailand) and Rangoon (Burma) and a bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand. Appallingly treated by the Japanese, soldiers, in their thousands, slip into despair, selfishness and depravity, expressing what must be the very darkest side of human nature. Men die lonely deaths and those left alive live only to care and fend for themselves. And yet, another principle is also working in the camp, that of selfless love and self-sacrifice and living by the words of John the Apostle, ‘whoever loves God must love his brother also.’  (1 John 4:21)

 In this story, at which only the steeliest heart can remain undented, the stark contrast between two kingdoms – two extreme kingdoms – is portrayed; it is light and dark at opposite ends; the huge difference between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light is displayed. What is more, the Rule of Love is shown to be the winner, hands down.

A while ago walking through a museum in Nottingham, I chanced to read a notice advising citizens how to conduct themselves in the blackout. It was striking – everyone was commanded not just to look out for themselves but for their neighbours. Every man for himself? – Not then. Yet, now, sixty five years on, with many, many notable exceptions, society seems to have taken a step downwards. We no longer seem to care about the whole; it is me, my immediate world that counts so much; people in their thousands die lonely – and people live lonely too.

Perhaps days of greater austerity are ahead – it looks that way. Maybe we will find ourselves experiencing extremes of poverty we have not known for decades. Many will suffer – particularly the already-poor. But perhaps, too, it will ultimately lead to a measure of turning around as in that prison camp by the River Kwai in WW2.

The way of Jesus’ kingdom society is always to puts others first; at it best it is a society where heroic self-sacrifice abounds, a society whose remit is ever ‘whoever loves God must love his brother also.’ Society as a whole needs the church to be at its best and, if this is so, what we are as church,  will spill over into, salt, however you want to say it, our families, our neighbours, our towns, our cities, our countryside. It begins with us. One book has convinced me that turnarounds are possible: ‘Miracle on the River Kwai.’