The Consistent Testimony of Eric Liddell
Reading biographies of significant Christians can be encouraging. The sorts of people about whom biographies are written are often those through whom God has done some impressive things. Sometimes the study of such Christians is a good reminder that God can do great things through ordinary, flawed people.
The study of Eric Liddell is a bit different than other missionaries. By all accounts, he seems to have been someone who achieved a surprising degree of holiness. Even secular biographers, like `Duncan Hamilton, find themselves awed by the consistent character of Eric Liddell.
Liddell, of course, is most famous for winning an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1924 games in Paris. The movies, Chariots of Fire, reasonably accurately represented his life. That film went on to win four Academy Awards in 1981.
The focus of Chariots of Fire was the Olympic competition, especially Liddell’s refusal to participate in the 100m race because there were heats of it being run on Sunday. As a strong Sabbatarian, Liddell refused to engage in such entertainments on the Lord’s Day. Liddell’s character is portrayed as being affable, if a bit stubborn on religious matters, and deeply concerned with holiness.
That bit of the story is all good. But the viewer is left with a limited picture of Liddell. There is a brief scene at the end of the movie where viewers can read that Liddell went to be a missionary and died in China. It’s that death and the manner of life until his death that is the most significant thing.
Eric Liddell appears to have been one of the most consistent, faithful, and Christlike men to walk the face of the earth. Read the words of a recent biographer, Hamilton:
“Skeptical questions are always going to be asked when someone is portrayed without apparent faults and also as the possessor of standards that appear so idealized and far-fetched to the rest of us. Liddell can sound too virtuous and too honorable to be true, as if those who knew him were either misremembering or consciously mythologizing. Not so. The evidence is too overwhelming to be dismissed as easily as that. Amid the myriad moral dilemmas in Weihsein [a prison camp], Liddell’s forbearance was remarkable. No one could ever recall a single act of envy, pettiness, hubris, or self-aggrandizement from him. He bad-mouthed nobody. He didn’t bicker. He lived daily by the most unselfish credo, which was to help others practically and emotionally.”
In the short book that Liddell wrote, but which was not published until 40 years after his death, Liddell suggests a fourfold test of obedience to God’s moral law:
“Here are four tests of the moral law by which we measure ourselves––and so obey the biblical commands.
Am I truthful? Are there any conditions under which I will or do tell a lie? Can I be depended on to tell the truth no matter what the cost? Yes or no? Don’t hedge, excuse, explain. Yes or no?
Am I honest? Can I be absolutely trusted in money matters? In my work even when no one is looking? With other people’s reputations? Yes or no? With myself, or do I rationalize and become self-defensive?
Am I pure? In my habits? In my thought life? In my motives? In my relations with the opposite sex? Yes or no?
Am I selfish? In the demands I make on my family, wife, husband, or associates? Am I badly balanced; full of moods, cold today and warm tomorrow?”
These questions logically follow on from Liddell’s definition of a disciple:
“A disciple is one who knows God personally, and who learns from Jesus Christ, who most perfectly revealed God. One word stands out from all others as the key to knowing God, to having his peace and assurance in your heart; it is obedience.”
Liddell penned those words somewhere between 1941 and 1943, when he wrote The Disciplines of the Christian Life. It was a little manual for discipleship that he wrote during a time when he was stuck in Japanese occupied China, but wasn’t allowed to minister to the local Chinese.
By all accounts, Liddell appeared to compare well to those four tests.
In his book, Shantung Compound, Langdon Gilkey is very critical of many of the Christians in the camp, especially the missionaries. He seems to delight in recounting every time they got caught up in their own misery and allowed their pettiness to overcome them. His opinion of Liddell, whom he calls Eric Ridley, is surprisingly positive.
He writes,
“It is rare indeed when a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known. . . . He was aided by others, to be sure. But it was Eric’s enthusiasm that carried the day with the whole effort [of entertaining the teens in the camp.]”
Liddell’s life is more than interesting; it is convicting. That he seemed to be just as much at his best in a prison camp as he was in a relaxing situation is a testament to his character. His character is one that Christians should seek to emulate.
The hope of Christians for creation is not that we will be able to make things entirely correct through our efforts. Rather, we work with the knowledge that we have been given a ministry of reconciliation, which includes all of creation (cf., Col 1:20; 2 Cor 5:16–18). We work toward reconciliation in hope, but recognize that hope will not be fulfilled until Christ comes again. Creation exists in futility in the present age because of God’s curse on creation. (Gen 3:17–19) Our task is to till the ground in hope, making our living, (Gen 3:20) looking forward to the moment when God supernaturally sets everything right.