The Man Who Refused to Run on Sunday
How Eric Liddell Changed My Life
At the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, one of the fastest men on Earth made headlines around the world for refusing to run his 100-meter heat because it was held on a Sunday. His name was Eric Liddell, and after going on to win the gold medal in the 400 meters in a record-breaking 47.6 seconds — a distance he had not fully trained for — he disappeared into obscurity as a missionary in China, dying in a Japanese World War II camp in 1945.
While still training for the Olympics, his sister once upbraided him for putting Olympic Glory ahead of China. His response to her is memorably captured in this scene from Chariots of Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd5LCN53q9Y:
“God made me for China, but he also made me fast!” he told his sister. “And when I run, I feel his pleasure!”
When I first heard this story, it changed the direction of my life. I was 14 years old and it was a cold Sunday evening at Mason House — a boarding school for white schoolboys in Cape Town, South Africa. The speaker was an old retired ship’s captain, and he challenged us that evening to sacrifice everything for Christ — -just as Eric Liddell had done back at the 1924 Olympic meet. With blazing eyes, he dramatized for us the amazing story of Liddell’s stubborn refusal to run his 100-meter qualifying meet simply because it was held on a Sunday and he would have to miss church.
The enormity of his sacrifice made my skin tingle. I wanted to make that kind of commitment! I wanted to be sold out to a cause the way he was. And that evening I fervently invited Christ to become absolute Lord of my life.
From that moment onward, I never missed reading my Bible and praying before bed (even if it meant sneaking out to the toilets after the 10pm lights out). For weeks I thought I was the only real Christian on campus. So when I finally discovered another boy who was as crazy about his faith as I was, we started scheming together to start an “underground” Bible Club in an old Rugby shed on the edge of campus. And in the Fall of 1974, we held Bible studies and evangelistic services every night after supper in that old shed, with the purpose of leading every fellow border to a radical commitment to Christ. We wisely focused on the underclassmen, invited them to sneak out to the shed with us, and, after preaching an evangelistic message, delivered a fervent altar call. That semester, about 20 wide-eyed underclassmen accepted Christ into their hearts. It was the closest I have ever come to experience a revival.
Reflecting back on that year as a 60-yr old professor, I am still astonished at my audacity and fervor as a 14-year old. It was an amazing year. And even though I spent 4 years in my 20’s as a missionary in Japan, India, and Turkey, I have never seen God use me like that again. But I have come to realize what it was that motivated me to make a radical God-shift which would forever change my life. And it wasn’t a felt need for forgiveness, or mercy, or comfort. (It never even dawned on me, at that age, that I was a sinner, in desperate need of spiritual healing).
No, it was a deep, deep yearning for commitment. My life at boarding school was completely devoid of intimacy or a sense of belonging. I was a “red-shirt” for the Rugby D team, a D student in all subjects but English, and a social outcast who tried to drown out his classmates’ Beatles by cranking up his Beethoven. So when the old captain told me of Liddell’s ridicule for refusing to run his Olympic meet on a Sunday, I felt a strange electricity tingling through me.
It was the call to a sold-out and sacrificial Christianity, one which hopefully involved both pain and persecution (both of which I seemed to attract in copious amounts in my often obnoxious crusade to convert my foul-mouthed and racist classmates to my fervent Pentecostal brand of Christianity). And this same desire for commitment is what motivated me ten years after that to become a missionary, like Liddell at the age of 24, to the most remote and unreached part of the world I could find.
So how I ended up in Kansas is a whole other story…