From The National Film Board of Canada:

H/T: Unfinished Christian

I once had a heated discussion with a person who had left the Dutch Reformed Church to form – with others – a new denomination because the Dutch Reformed variety was insufficiently Calvinist. As I recall, I pointed out to him that I was unimpressed since, by his own admission, he had little choice in the matter.

One of his idiosyncrasies was that he believed that the King James translation of the bible was the only reliable one; no argument could budge him from this. To the average Evangelical this might sound absurd; nevertheless, Malcolm Muggeridge used to claim that the beauty of the language of the Authorised Version was an inseparable part of the truth it conveyed: change the language and you damage the truth. Before I was a Christian, I was inclined to agree; less so now.

Rex Murphy seems to have a similar view:

I’m driven often to the Bible, both for its wisdom and its prose. Strange that the only text that seriously can be said to rival Shakespeare in trenchancy and power of expression should be a work primarily of religion, not literature, a compound book by many authors and, for English readers, a work of translation as well. The King James Bible is the only – as we say these days, though perhaps with some impiety considering my subject – standalone creation that can claim equal status, for its literary excellence, with the otherwise unmatchable harmonies of Shakespeare.

I think the apparent dichotomy between the powerful literate expression of reality found in the KJV and the more accurate to the original but prosaic ESV, for example, is that language does create an aesthetic truth of its own that can be captivating – or perhaps it uses aesthetics to drive home more effectively the truth it carries.

It is the Authorised Version that has insinuated itself into our language and, thus, into our psyche: “through a glass darkly”; “vanity of vanities; all is vanity”; “In the beginning was the Word”; “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”   – and so many more.

The Message tells us: “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog”;  “Smoke, nothing but smoke”; “The Word was first, the Word present to God”; “GOD, my shepherd! “I don’t need a thing.” Arresting perhaps, but hardly memorable.

A lesson for any of us who have ever complained about a church service:

‘Our Father’
Praying like you have never prayed before.

By Leo Thorsness

Sunday morning at the Hanoi Hilton was church time. To gather our “congregation,” the Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) tapped “cc,” quietly on his wall. Each cell in turn tapped “cc,” and soon all have been alerted to Church Call. The service was a prayer and a reciting of Bible verses. If I was lucky, I was in a cell with one or two other POWs, and we could pool our knowledge of the Bible.

A failed rescue attempt led to the most memorable of our church experiences. It happened on November 20, 1970, when U.S. Special Forces staged a mission to rescue the POWs believed to be at Son Tay, one of the small prisons the North Vietnamese maintained outside Hanoi. The raid was brilliantly planned and executed perfectly. Our men landed at the prison in helicopters and came home without the loss of a single American. There was only one problem: All the POWs had been moved out of Son Tay about four months before the rescue effort so none of us went back with our rescuers. The mission still turned out to be a huge success for us, however.

Realizing that such rescue attempts could happen again, the North Vietnamese brought us in from outlying prison camps into the main Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi: the Hanoi Hilton. Within hours of the raid, we were moved into large cells — 43 of us in my cell. It was the greatest day of our prison life. For the first time, we were meeting POWs whose names we had memorized years earlier. Many of us had formed intense friendships through the tap code with men we’d never seen. As we met that night, “So this is what you look like” was heard over and over throughout the cell.

We compared our treatment, and it seemed important to each of us to tell one another of our torture experiences. I’ve never seen more empathy in anyone’s eyes than when telling a fellow POW about being tortured. We each needed to tell our torture story — once. We never told them again to the same POW.

The handshakes, back slapping, and bear hugs went on and on. Some of us had been tortured for the protection or benefit of a “tap-code buddy.” Now there was love and respect to be repaid. No one slept that first night; too much joy, excitement, and talk. The next morning, we needed to determine the SRO. The highest rank in our cell was O-4, which is a major. (“O” stands for officer, so O-1 is second lieutenant or ensign, O-2 first lieutenant, O-3 captain, O-4 major, O-5 lieutenant colonel, O-6 colonel, O-7 brigadier general, and on up to O-10 for a four-star general.) We put all the O-4s together and then compared the date when the rank was attained and arrived at a hierarchy. We did the same with the O-3s, the O-2s, and the O-1s. When we were done, all 43 of us knew exactly where we stood in the command structure.

Our SRO turned out to be Ned Shuman — a really good Naval aviator. The first Sunday in the large cell, someone said, “Let’s have church service.” Good idea, we all agreed. One POW volunteered to lead the service, and we started gathering in the other end of the long rectangular cell from the cell door. No sooner had we gathered than an English-speaking Vietnamese officer who worked as an interrogator burst into the cell with a dozen armed guards. Ned Shuman went to the officer and said there wouldn’t be a problem; we were just going to have a short church service.

The response was unyielding: We were not allowed to gather into groups larger than three persons and we absolutely could not have a church service.

During the next few days we all grumbled that we should not have backed down in our intention to have a church service and ought to do it the coming Sunday. Toward the end of the week, Ned stepped forward and said, “Are we really committed to having church Sunday?”

There was a murmuring of assent throughout the cell. Ned said, “No, I want to know person by person if you are really committed to holding church.”

We all knew the implications of our answer: If we went ahead with the plan, some would pay the price — starting with Ned himself because he was the SRO. He went around the cell pointing to each of us individually. “Leo, are you committed?” “Yes.” Ned then moved to Jim and asked the same question. “Yes,” Jim responded. And so on until he had asked each of us by name.

When the 42nd man said yes, it was unanimous. We had 100-percent commitment to hold church next Sunday. At that instant, Ned knew he would end up in the torture cells at Heartbreak. It was different from the previous Sunday. We now had a goal, and we were committed. We only needed to develop a plan.

Sunday morning came, and we knew they would be watching us again. Once more, we gathered in the far end of the cell. As soon as we moved together, the interrogator and guards burst through the door. Ned stepped forward and said there wouldn’t be a problem: We were just going to hold a quiet ten-minute church service and then we would spread back out in the cell. As expected, they grabbed Ned and hauled him off to Heartbreak for torture.

Our plan unfolded. The second ranking man, the new SRO, stood, walked to the center of the cell and in a clear firm voice said, “Gentlemen,” our signal to stand, “the Lord’s Prayer.” We got perhaps halfway through the prayer, when the guards grabbed the SRO and hauled him out the door toward Heartbreak.

As planned, the number three SRO stood, walked to the center of the cell, and said, “Gentlemen, the Lord’s Prayer.” We had gotten about to “Thy Kingdom come” before the guards grabbed him. Immediately, the number four SRO stood: “Gentlemen, the Lord’s Prayer.”

I have never heard five or six words of the Lord’s Prayer — as far as we got before they seized him — recited so loudly, or so reverently. The interrogator was shouting, “Stop, stop,” but we drowned him out. The guards were now hitting POWs with gun butts and the cell was in chaos.

The number five ranking officer was way back in the corner and took his time moving toward the center of the cell. (I was number seven, and not particularly anxious for him to hurry.) But just before he got to the center of the area, the cell became pin-drop quiet.

In Vietnamese, the interrogator spat out something to the guards, they grabbed number five SRO and they all left, locking the cell door behind them. The number six SRO began: “Gentlemen, the Lord’s Prayer.” This time we finished it.

Five courageous officers were tortured, but I think they believed it was worth it. From that Sunday on until we came home, we held a church service. We won. They lost. Forty-two men in prison pajamas followed Ned’s lead. I know I will never see a better example of pure raw leadership or ever pray with a better sense of the meaning of the words.

Those of us in ANiC who have made very minor sacrifices in order to continue worshipping the one true God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – can be thankful for our freedoms and the inspiration provided by the actions of men like Leo Thorsness. Easter day, tomorrow, I hope to say with a thankful heart,  “Christ is Risen!” at sunrise in a local park, at 10:00 a.m. in our Sunday service in a local school, and in the afternoon at a local prison – a more comfortable prison than the Hanoi Hilton.

Ian Sample discusses John Polkinghorne’s transformation from quantum physicist to Anglican priest here:

Earlier this year, a former Cambridge physicist, John Polkinghorne, published a book called Questions of Truth: God, science and belief. I interviewed John shortly after it came out, and as Easter is now upon us, it seemed as good a time as any to post the whole interview.

There was plenty in Polkinghorne’s book I found offensive. In one passage, he says that God hides from us because if we ever clapped eyes on an infinite being, we’d be unable to carry on as we are. We’d be overwhelmed to the point of hopelessness. As John says in the interview: “We’d sort of shrivel up.”

It’s extraordinary stuff. And surely a bit patronising. My reaction to superbeings in comics has always been excitement and mild envy (great powers, but not sure I could go with the outfits). If I was to see the ultimate superbeing, I’d be very excited for a long time. I might even get a poster and go around praising them. But I think I could carry on a life of human mediocrity.

We have clapped eyes on an infinite being: Jesus. He was incarnate in order that, knowing him, we would know the Father: if we have seen Jesus, we have seen Father.

Jesus emptied himself and became human (Phil 2:7) for the specific purpose of offending Ian Sample; not really, but it does illustrate how foolish and arrogant in a 21^st C. idiomatic way it is to be “offended” by the idea that a personal encounter with the undisguised infinite could be anything less than shrivelling.

I wonder how far we have come in our perspective of the universe: Aristotle had the earth at the centre of the universe; Copernicus, the sun; Fred Hoyle had no centre; Stephen Hawking has decentralised multiverses and now – Ian Sample is the centre of the universe and will be offended if told otherwise.

When a child of our new age of reason finally meets his maker, what will be his response to God and reason for not believing in him? It seems as if it will be “don’t patronise me”. At least Bertrand Russell had prepared the marginally more modest – if no more helpful – “there was not enough evidence”.