The course of
waterfalls
Jill
Carattini
In his book River Out of Eden, Oxford
scientist Richard Dawkins explains, "The universe we observe has precisely the
properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no
evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." (1) In a similar vein, Dawkins praises the humorous rejoinder of
Douglas Adams to arguments claiming an apparent order and purpose in the
universe. Writes Dawkins, "To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must
be somehow preordained for us because we are so well suited to live in it,
[Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself
snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly
the same shape as the puddle." (2) Their claim is clear:
Humanity has adapted to a blind and indifferent universe like water to the shape
of its container.
Ernest Gordon may have at one time
agreed. An officer of the British army during the Second World War, he was
captured by the Japanese while at sea. At the age of 24, he was sent to work in
the prison camp that would be constructing the Burma-Siam railroad.
For every mile of track, 393 men are said
to have died. Wearing nothing but loincloths, they worked for hours in scorching
temperatures, chopping their way through tangled jungles. Those who paused out
of exhaustion were beaten to death by guards. Treated like animals, the
prisoners became themselves like beasts trying to survive. Adapting to their
harsh captivity, theft was as rampant as disease among them. Gordon himself
eventually became so weak from illness that he was removed and placed in the
Death House. He describes his purposeless existence in that cruel and
indifferent setting: "I was a prisoner of war, lying among the dead, waiting for
the bodies to be carried away so that I might have more room." (3)
Each night the Japanese guards would count the work tools before
anyone was permitted to return to camp. One evening, when a shovel was found to
be missing, a guard shouted relentlessly that the guilty man must present
himself. When no one responded, he ordered callously, "All die! All die!" At
this, a young man stepped forward, confessing to the theft, and was immediately
killed before them.
The railroad prison camp was a place where many
could have observed in horror, "the universe has precisely the properties we
should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no God watching
over those in dire need of hope." Like water conforming to the shape of its
container, the captured men became like men fighting to survive, void of right
and wrong, void of reverence for life, void of all meaning. Yet, amidst the
stagnant waters of hatred and bitterness, something was astir.
After the
incident with the shovel, upon returning to the camp, one of the guards
discovered a mistake in their counting. There had never been a missing shovel.
One innocent man had sacrificed his life to preserve the life of his fellow
inmates.
Attitudes among the camp began to change dramatically. Instead
of men in a detached game of survival of the fittest, they began to look out for
each other. One of the men remembered the words of Scripture: "Greater love has
no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Gordon, who once
lay forgotten for dead, was slowly nursed back to health by fellow prisoners.
Fully recovered, he eventually became a makeshift chaplain of the camp. When the
prison was liberated in 1945—three years after his capture—Gordon entered
seminary to become a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "Faith thrives
where there is no hope but God," he later testified. How contrary to the words
of Richard Dawkins.
The transformation in the men of the prison was so
thoroughly unlike the world they were forced to live in that one could argue it
was more like a waterfall defying gravity and moving upstream than a puddle
naturally fitting into the crevice that holds it. The sacrifice of one innocent
man can reverse the flow of history. The Kingdom of God is among us, a spring of
living water in a dry and weary land.
---
(1) Richard Dawkins,
River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.
(2) As printed in The
Guardian, May 14, 2001.
(3) Ernest Gordon, To End All Wars (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002).