War and Forgiveness

WAR AND FORGIVENESS

I cannot watch the annual Royal British Legion Service of Remembrance at the Albert Hall without thinking of the late Bishop Leonard Wilson.

For those of you who can go back to the years before 1970, he was the Bishop with the distinguished white beard who used to appear at the end of the procession of choristers and clergy wearing a cope and mitre. He was a large and impressive figure of a man who symbolised both human courage and the power of the Christian Faith in times of adversity.

He was a no nonsense man. When once asked by Geoffrey Fisher, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, why he was not wearing his gaiters and frock coat at a Bishops’ meeting at Lambeth Palace, he replied "Mind your own business".

Leonard Wilson was appointed Bishop of Singapore in 1943. He arrived four months before the Japanese invasion of the island. Thanks to the good offices of the Japanese Director of Religion and Education, Lt. Ogawa, who was also an Anglican, he was permitted to visit the prisoner of war camps without escort for the purposes of taking confirmation services.

Later in the year, when Ogawa was transferred to Sumatra, Wilson was interned at the infamous Changi prison. There he joined about 3000 other prisoners of war in squalid conditions with an inadequate diet.

On 17th October, he was removed for the purpose of interrogation concerning an alleged spy ring which was thought to be responsible for the receiving and transmitting of messages to encourage sabotage and anti-Japanese propaganda in the community.

For three whole days he was questioned before being returned to Changi prison in a semi-conscious state.

A companion in Changi, the Reverend John Hayter, records Leonard's recollection of his interrogation with these words:

"In the evening of his arrival Leonard was questioned, interrogation being punctuated with beatings, for between three and four hours. On the following morning he was again taken to the torture room, where he was made to kneel down. A three angled bar was placed behind his knees. He was then made to kneel on his haunches. His hands were tied behind his back and pulled up to a position between his shoulder blades. His head was forced down and he remained in this position for 7½ hours. Any attempt to ease the strain from the cramp in his thighs was frustrated by the guards, who brought the flat of their hob-nailed boots down hard onto his thighs. At intervals the bar between his knees would be twisted, or the guards would jump onto one or both projecting ends. Beatings and kicks were frequent. Throughout the whole of this time he was being questioned and told that he was a spy. This was one of the times when he lost his nerve and pleaded for death.

Again, the next morning, he was brought up from the cells, and this time tied face upwards to a table with his head hanging over the end of it. For several hours he remained in that position while relays of soldiers beat him systematically from the ankles to the thighs with three folded knotted ropes. He fainted, was revived with warm milk, and then the beating was continued. He estimated that he must have received over 300 lashes. The beating, he said, was far easier to bear than the excruciating pain of the previous day. It was not long before he lost all sense of feeling. The blows had lost their power to hurt, so dead were the nerves of his body. Finally he was taken down to the cells and thrown on the floor. There was no skin left on the front of his legs from his thighs downwards. He had no medical attention while he was in that state, and he said that if it had not been for the help of a fellow internee in his cell, who subsequently died from the treatment he himself received, he would not have survived."

While such cruelty might have weakened the faith of some in a loving God, for Wilson it strengthened his faith. He was totally convinced that he had been upheld by God's love beyond the pain of return. This religious experience was to become a constant source of strength for him in the years ahead.

If that is how he felt about God after his experience of such cruelty at the hands of the Japanese, how did he feel towards those who inflicted such pain upon his body?

In a sermon preached some three years later on the BBC he said:

"I remember Archbishop William Temple in one of his books writing that if you pray for any particular virtue, whether it be patience or courage or love, one of the answers God gives to you is an opportunity for exercising that virtue. After my first beating I was almost afraid to pray for courage lest I should have another opportunity for exercising it, but my unspoken prayer was there, and without God's help I doubt whether I could have come through. Long hours of ignoble pain were a severe test. In the middle of that torture they asked me if I still believed in God. When, by God's help, I said, "I do", they asked me why God did not save me and, by the help of his Holy Spirit, I said, "God does save me. He does not save me by freeing me from the pain or punishment, but he saves me by giving me the spirit to bear it.” And when they asked me why I did not curse them, I told them it was because I was a follower of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we were all brethren. I did not like to use the words, "Father, forgive them". It seemed too blasphemous to use our Lord's words, but I felt them, and I said, "Father, I know these men are doing their duty. Help them to see that I am innocent". And when I muttered, "Father, forgive them", I wondered how far I was being dramatic and if I really meant it, because I looked at their faces as they stood round and took it in turn to flog, and their faces were hard and cruel and some of them were evidently enjoying their cruelty. But by the grace of God I saw those men not as they were, but as they had been. Once they were little children playing with their brothers and sisters and happy in their parents love in those far off days before they had been conditioned by their false nationalist ideals, and it is hard to hate little children; but even that was not enough. There came into my mind as I lay on the table, the words of that communion hymn:

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,

And only look on us as found in him;

Look not on our misusings of thy grace,

Our prayers so languid, and our faith so dim;

For lo! between our sins and their reward

We set the passion of thy Son our Lord.

And so I saw them, not as they were, not as they had been, but as they were capable of becoming, redeemed by the power of Christ, and I knew that it was only common sense to say ‘Forgive’.”

I have in recent years visited Changi prison in Singapore and seen the chapel which the prisoners built for their use. I have visited the town of Karichanaburi in Thailand where the infamous railway to Burma begins. I have also visited the nearby war graves there of those who never returned and the local museum, run by Buddhist monks, which houses a collection of memorabilia associated with the POW camps along the railway.

Yet as one born during the war, whose only personal experience of the Japanese has been as colleagues in Ministry during peacetime, I find it very hard to appreciate fully the recent debate about the adequacy of the Prime Minister of Japan's apology, during the VJ Day celebrations.

On a more local level, I found it very hard a few years ago to understand fully the attitude of one of our former regular parishioners when he refused to consider buying a Japanese car because of what they had done during the war. Incidentally, I noted that he had not fought in the Far East himself and was quite happy to have a Japanese TV set and video recorder!

There is no doubt that the hurt caused by the Japanese during the war is still deeply felt by many people.

However I cannot believe that as Christians, who believe in a loving and forgiving God, we should allow such hurt to continue to fester and warp our personalities.

Now I know it is easy for me to say that since I did not suffer at the hands of the Japanese and this is the reason why I have chosen to draw your attention to one who did; to one who experienced their cruelty and yet found it in his heart to forgive. The key to unlocking that capacity to forgive is to be found in that final sentence when Leonard Wilson says: "and so I saw them, not as they were, not as they had been, but as they were capable of becoming, redeemed by the power of Christ, and I know it was only common sense to say, 'Forgive'.”

I have experienced hurt many times in my ministry. I do not mean physical hurt, but emotional hurt by parishioners and friends alike. There have been many times when I have wanted to hold back from putting the body of Christ into their hands and the blood of Christ to their lips at the altar rail when distributing Holy Communion.

At such times l have found myself recalling how such people have hurt me in recent times, or how they have hurt me in the past either deliberately or unintentionally. But that is no way to go forward. To permit the hurt to continue to fester destroys any chance of reconciliation and future growth in relationships.

The only way forward is to try and see what people are capable of becoming with the help of God, and to say with Christ upon the cross, as he looked down upon those who had put him there, "Father, forgive them”.

This is not easy because it means swallowing pride but with the help of God it is possible to unlock our capacity to forgive. We need not remain enslaved by our refusal to forgive. We can be freed. But first we have to want to be free, and that is the hardest part: to want to forgive. Sometimes, I think we find it safer to stay in prison with our pain, than allow ourselves to be freed to forgive.

But does forgiveness work?

Let me answer that question by recalling a recently published letter from the pen of Bishop Wilson's daughter, the Reverend Doctor Susan Cole-King. She writes: "After the war, when my father returned to Singapore he had the joy of baptising and confirming one of the men who had tortured him".

And now to him, whose forgiveness towards us knows no limits, be praise and glory today and forever. Amen.