No More Hatred! – by Eliezer Gonzalez
Jan 27, 2016 2261
From the 1952 movie, “Bridge on the River Kwai,” directed by David Lean.
There is a power that is stronger than hatred. It is the power of forgiveness.
During WWII, Scottish soldiers were forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad. Under the brutality of the Japanese, the men degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing.
The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said.
Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death.
When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first checkpoint.
The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! The incident had a profound effect.
The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors, and instead of attacking their captors, insisted:
No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness.
Sacrificial love has transforming power. It is the very power of Christ, given to us through His Spirit. We don’t need more hatred. We don’t need more doubt, uncertainty or fear.
We need to learn what it is to walk as God’s forgiven children, and never look back again.
– Eliezer Gonzalez (Story told by Dale Ratzlaff, taken from Ernest Gordon’s Miracle on the River Kwai.
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