Where Does the Power Come From? - Part 1

Our granddaughter, Kiara, runs in two kinds of races these days.  During August, she has been preparing for her cross-country season.  But for the past several years, Kiara has been preparing for another kind of race, one that is influencing how she will perform in cross-country and in other races in her life.  All of us who have “registered” for this other race of life need occasional reminders of how important it is.

To explain Kiara's second race, I want to refer to a famous runner whose life has been highlighted in an Academy Award-winning, 1980 British film, Chariots of Fire.  His character in the movie asks the question, "So where does the power come from to see the race to its end?"  Sounds like an important question for any athlete, student, or anyone seeking purpose in life.  Kiara is among those who have come to know this power.

Source of the Power
Where does this power come from?  The question is asked twice in Chariots of Fire.  Both times it points to the power that existed within Eric Liddell, the Scottish athlete noted for refusing to run his favored 100-meter race in the 1924 Summer Olympics.  Eric Liddell’s reason:  Because his faith in God included a commitment to refraining from athletic games on “the Lord’s Day” which happened to be when the heats for the 100-meter were held.  This was no shallow, legalistic practice but instead, a part of who Eric Liddell had become in his walk of faith in God.

Having put his hopes for Olympic gold on the line and refusing to budge under pressure, Liddell was providentially blessed with the opportunity to switch to the 400-meter competition which had scheduled heats during a weekday.  Famously, Liddell ran, won a gold medal, and set an Olympic record in spite of the odds against a short-distance runner winning this longer race.

"When I run, I feel His pleasure." - Eric Liddell

Eric Liddell expressed his faith in God with the now-famous statement, I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.  His example as a vigorously competitive athlete who attributed his success to God’s power and pleasure within has been an inspiration to many athletes, both Christian and non-Christian alike.  Partly because of its inspiring message, Chariots of Fire won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.  It is ranked 19th in the British Film Institute's list of Top 100 British films.  [Here is a link to a short YouTube video featuring Eric Liddell’s climactic race.]
What Is the Power?
What is the power that works within the life of those who claim to possess it?  Is it merely a subjective experience of an “emotional high” from a sense of connectedness to the spiritual realm?  If so, then anyone can have this power.  Just find time and a quiet place to meditate on where you came from, your relationship to some Higher Power, and how you find purpose and meaning in life.  Or, maybe this power comes by harnessing the power of physics, physiology, and just plain determination.  If so, then why do so many well-endowed and disciplined athletes evidently fail to excel?  Eric Liddell’s Olympic teammate, Harold Abrahams, used this latter approach in his largely unsuccessful effort to power his way to victory. 

Watching Eric Liddell run with passion "unnerved" Abrahams.

Abrahams was portrayed in Chariots of Fire as a disciplined athlete with great determination to win.  He was so determined to win that he even employed a professional coach who helped him apply the physics of running to improve his technique.  But Abrahams was intimidated by Liddell because Liddell possessed the power, passion, and purpose that didn’t come from practice, conditioning, and coaching alone.
Abrahams and many others did not experience Eric Liddell’s pleasure and success in their race because they had not entered that second race which Liddell and our granddaughter, Kiara, has entered.  In the movie, speaking to workingmen after one of his races, Liddell’s film character, Ian Charleson, gives an invitation to possess the power within (emphasis mine): 

You came to a race today, to see someone win.  Happened to be me.  But I want you to do more than just watch a race.   I want you to take part in it.  I want to compare faith to running in a race.

Many of us have come to “watch a race” but relatively few, figuratively speaking, “take part in it.”  Liddell compared his faith to “running in a race,” an idea that is expressed in the New Testament Scriptures (see 1 Corinthians 9: 24; Hebrews 12: 1).  According to the Apostle Paul, this faith, and the power of faith, comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10: 17).  But a person cannot take part in an athletic race unless he or she registers.  Likewise, we cannot take part in the race of life, the “spiritual race” without faith in God and His Word.  And the message of God’s Word, the Bible, centers around the Gospel Message, the “Good News” that Jesus Christ came as God in human form to die and rise again to save us from eternal judgment if we yield our lives to Him.

How we respond to the Gospel determines whether we will “enter the race.”  The Apostle Paul explains that Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God for salvation.  This power (Gr. dunamis, from which we get dynamite) can “blow up” our strongholds of pride and open our hearts to receive Christ as King of His rightful kingdom within our lives.  His kingdom is ruled by the Spirit of God who will abide in the Christ-follower as Helper, Comforter, and Teacher (John 14: 15-26).  This was Eric Liddell’s source of “the power to see the race to its end.”  He lived in personal relationship empowered by His obedience to the Living God (John 15: 1-17).  Unfortunately, this power was missing in Harold Abrahams, who sought the power through his intellect and technique only to find frustration.

Exploring the Power Intellectually
Besides Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, there is a third person of interest who was involved in Chariots of Fire—Ian Charleson, the brilliant young actor who played the part of Liddell.  According to an October 2, 1981 article in The New York Times, Charleson who described himself as having no religious background recognized that, to “find out what [a Christian man] was about” I had to “find something in the Christian religion that I myself - Ian Charleson - could represent.”

Charleson gave a stirring invitation
but did he accept it himself?

To accomplish this, Charleson read the Bible from cover to cover.  He said, “Whenever I came across a phrase, a passage, a piece of wisdom that I could relate to or think 'That sounds right, that sounds reasonable,’ I would mark it down.  I compiled a whole notebook of quotes that I thought were the essence of what I could believe in Christianity…”

Although Charleson read the Bible and quoted passages from the Gospel, my research on his biography has revealed no evidence that he ever made a decision to “take part in the race” by a response of faith in the Gospel message.  I hope he did.  We do know that Charleson was a gay man who died at the age of 40 of a fatal infection as a consequence of contracting AIDS.  Unselfishly, even though homosexuality in the 1980’s was a much more private matter, Charleson instructed in his final documents that his reason for death be made public to promote awareness of the need to address AIDS.

We also know that Ian Charleson was fascinated with the faith commitment of Eric Liddell and wanted to portray authentically Liddell’s genuine commitment to Jesus Christ.  As a result of his knowledge of Liddell and his thorough intellectual study of the Bible, Charleson chose to write an inspiring invitation to come by faith to Christ; an invitation that Liddell might have written.  Charleson’s message of invitation and his delivery of the message as he thought Liddell might have done it to common workingmen, became one of the most inspiring and powerful parts of the movie.  [See adjacent text box.  See also YouTube video clip of the message from Chariots of Fire.]

The Right Choice – Yielding to Christ
Did Ian Charleson, like Harold Abrahams, run the short race of his life only to end without coming to know the real power—“from within?”  I do not know.  But personally, I do know Jesus, the Source of the power, and I want to “see the race to its end” for myself.  I want to run my race without stumbling or causing my wife and family, including our granddaughter Kiara, to stumble because of me.

If you wish to know more about the Gospel, the “Good News,” let me help.   The Gospel is summarized in an outline called “Steps to Peace with God” which explains God’s love, our predicament (sin and separation from God), what Jesus has done to address our predicament, and what you can do by faith to receive God’s righteousness (right standing with a Holy God).  If you wish to respond, you may post a “Comment” below or e-mail me at silviusj@gmail.com

Recommended Reading:
For Ian Charleson: A Tribute by Ian McKellen, Hugh Hudson, Alan Bates, et al.  (London: Constable and Company, 1990).
Sports Without Spirit – Oikonomia, January 19, 2014