Eric Liddell

Almost everyone that I know of saw the 1981 movie "Chariots of Fire" featuring the life of Eric Liddell who was an Olympic athlete, winner of the men's 400-meter at the Summer Olympics of 1924 in Paris. Although Liddell, the "Flying Scotsman," later went as a missionary to China he really is not typical of such missionaries. Even now he is remembered by the public mainly as the Olympic athlete who also was a missionary to China. I would agree that this type of athletic renown makes for a great Hollywood movie even though Olympic renown is not necessarily a requirement of missionary service. Lots of missionaries devoted their entire lives to service in a foreign country lacking any particular sporting talents and having no ambition other than to minister to the peoples to whom they had been called. Sometimes God uses just "ordinary people," as the song goes. The fact that Eric was an Olympic athlete on top of it makes his story somewhat better suited for big screen publicity than the run-of-the-mill missionary lacking celebrity contacts and sporting glories. Still, the big screen hype detracts from the fact that actually many missionaries were unsung heroes even though they probably never will be portrayed on the big screen. Certainly it is hard for me to understand the fascination that some people have with missionaries when it really is just a lot of hard work. The bugs. The heat. The food. Yuk! In today's culture full of books and movies it might be easy to be misled into thinking that being famous is the goal but it's really not. The "Chariots of Fire" movie sort of distorts the message but anyway that's Hollywood for you. That's how people think nowadays thanks to movies.