On the right track

The film Railway Man is out on DVD this week. I missed it at the cinema, and having read the autobiography by Eric Lomax on which the movie is based, I’m looking forward to catching up with it.

Lomax (1919-2012) was brought up near Edinburgh, and developed a passion for railway engines as a teenager. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the Army as a Signals Officer. Taken prisoner when the Japanese captured Singapore, he was compelled (with cruel irony) to service the rolling stock used in building the ‘Death railway’ between Thailand and Burma, a brutal project leading to the deaths of 12,399 prisoners of war.

Having been caught building a radio receiver in the POW camp, Lomax and others were mercilessly beaten, waterboarded, held captive in coffin-sized cages, subjected to gruelling interrogations (‘You will be killed shortly,’said the interpreter, mercilessly) and finally imprisoned in ‘a place in which the living were turned into ghosts.’ Lomax survived the years of anguish, and returned post-war to an uncomprehending world. 

As a young man, he had come to Christian faith, joined an evangelical church in Edinburgh, attracted by their ‘fellowship and certainty’, and believed as they believed. He left for war engaged to a young woman in the church, Nan (who isn’t named in the book.) His faith and evangelical certainties sustained him during his time in captivity.

Returning from war, carrying profound psychic wounds, he married his fiancée to discover that neither she, nor the church, nor anyone else understood what he had been through or appreciated the nightmares and daylight agonies he was enduring. He tried to talk, was not heard, and clammed up for many years.

Lomax is very critical of the church, over-critical, I think in describing them as, for example, ‘certainly above compassion.’ But there are lessons for us. Lomax criticises ‘Petty divisions, petty anger, small minds.’ Does that ring true to our church experience? Are we inward-focussed, trivial, while the world aches for compassion?

How good are we at hearing people in pain, providing safe spaces when they can be open? How good are we at travelling with those whose circumstances have prompted deep questions about faith which we may never have asked? And how do we handle the questions which rise up in our own minds about, for example suffering, God, justice, the reliability of the Bible? Do we, as it seems the folk in Eric Lomax’s church did, bury them, rather than working through them? Is exploring, questioning, journeying actively encouraged in our church?

After many years, Lomax’s marriage finally disintegrated. Not just he, but his wife and daughters were victims of what had happened in Thailand. And then (on a train!) he met Patti who became his wife in 1983. Understanding of post-traumatic stress was growing, and Patti saw the pain he was bearing. 

In time found a measure of healing through counselling. But he retained a deep hatred of Japanese people. His future was still a ‘nursery of revenge.’ Then he discovered that the interpreter on whom his hatred was particularly focussed had a name – Nagase Takashi -  was still alive, had devoted his life to charity in an attempt to atone for his part in war-time atrocities, and had written a book in which he recalled, and deplored how Lomax had been treated. A Buddhist, he described a spiritual experience in which he had a sense of being ‘pardoned.’ Patti felt that he had found pardon too easily.

In the end, Lomax and Nagase met in the mid-1990s, the former still simmering with revenge. But he realised that ‘It was surely worth salvaging as much as we could from the damage to both our lives’ and so forgave Nagase. ‘Sometime the hating has to stop.’

Lomax doesn’t describe his spiritual beliefs at this time, but in offering forgiveness he demonstrates profoundly the very heart of Christian faith. The conviction that none of us is beyond redemption, that if we are humble, repentant, open to change we receive God’s forgiveness as a free gift made possible by the willing death of Jesus.

All this prompts deep questions. Is there someone I should be exploring the possibility of forgiving? Do I need to learn to accept another’s forgiveness, to forgive myself? Have I, in self-revulsion been repelling God’s freely-offered forgiveness?

Briefly in Kashmir en route to Singapore, Lomax described it as ‘the most beautiful place in the world.’ This vision he said later ‘went some way to keeping me whole. If I had had no idea of perfection, I don’t know if I would have come through.’ 

It seems to me that Christians are given glimpses of the perfection of God’s coming kingdom, glimpses which keep us on track through our dark days.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 8th May 2014)