The Real Bridge Over the River Kwai

 

 

“Our rags were taken from us and burned. We were given green jungle shirts and trousers, soap and towel, tooth-brush and tooth-paste…Next morning, when one of the nursing sisters entered the ward, she said, ‘I’ve never had patients like these in all my nursing experience. Every one has made his own bed, and men are competing for the privilege of sweeping the wards.’ This expressed the attitude of the POWs. They lived not to be served but to serve.” To End All Wars, Ernest Gordon, Zondervan, 1965, page 217. Italics mine.

 

“Our feelings were mixed as we waved farewell to Rangoon, the East and our years of captivity. The jungle had been challenging, there had been comradeship of the highest order, and we had found a way of life that proved to be vital, meaningful, and beautifully sane. By the deaths of so many of our friends we were tied to those places with invisible cords that could never be broken.” Page 217. Italics mine.

 

“I was musing by the rail [of the ship taking them back to Great Britain] when I noticed my friend John Leckie standing next to me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s all over. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. It was rough, all right. But I learned an awful lot that I couldn’t have learned at the university or anywhere else. For one, I’ve learned about the real things of life, for another, it’s great to be still alive.

 

“I knew exactly what had made him say this. The experiences we had passed through had deepened our understanding of life and of each other. We had looked into the heart of the Eternal and found Him to be wonderfully kind.” Pages. 217 – 218. Italics mine.

 

Ernest Gordon lived the real story of the Bridge Over The River Kwai. As he wrote in his introduction to To End All Wars, “We were exhausted, sick from tropical diseases and starvation, overworked, injured, dying off at a preposterous rate. Sixty thousand Allied prisoners of war were forced into slave labour as well as 270,000 Asian workers. More than 80,000 died during the railway’s construction. That’s approximately 393 lives lost for every mile of track laid, - a hideous cost.” Page v.

 

When Gordon and his fellow POWs reached Liverpool they found that the dockworkers were threatening to go on strike for higher wages. The POWs were worried that if they did so that people in Britain would not be able to eat; for much of Britain’s food was imported. (Britain had rationing into the 1950s. Among the letters we have from C. S. Lewis are letters thanking Americans for sending food.) The POWs volunteered to work the docks but were turned down.

 

Gordon writes on page 218, “We thought we had come home to freedom. While we were prisoners we had been free to contribute to the general good, to help create order out of disorder. Here in a society which paid lip service to freedom, we were prohibited, apparently, from applying the lessons we had learned.” Italics mine.

 

Ernest Gordon and many of his fellow POWs met Jesus Christ while building the railroad of death. They learned to serve one another and to show mercy to their captors. They “had looked into the heart of the Eternal and found Him to be wonderfully kind.”

 

There is only true freedom in serving our Lord Jesus Christ and our neighbor, in laying down our lives for others. What fools we are to think otherwise.

 

The words and behavior we see around us in much of the professing church is “earthly, natural, demonic.” The “wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (see James 3:13–18).

 

There is no dual citizenship for the disciple of Jesus Christ, for Jesus said that we cannot serve two masters. We are either going to live as citizens of heaven or not (Phil. 3:20).

 

O dear friends, our neighbors need to see Jesus Christ within us, His love, His kindness, His gentleness, His mercy.

 

Are we willing to be identified with Jesus, and only with Jesus?

 

How is that Ernest Gordon and his fellow POWs lived as free men under hideous conditions, and we live as slaves in the most prosperous nation in history? Is it possible we are prisoners of pleasure and “self,” rather than prisoners of Jesus Christ?

 

Much love, much, much love,

 

Bob