What James Cameron Got Wrong

I had the pleasure of hearing D.A. Carson speak at my church in Dubai back in October.  In one of his illustrations he contrasts the sinking of the Titanic and the men onboard who sacrificially gave their lives for the women and children with the depiction that is portrayed in Hollywood version of the movie.  What he finds is a "damning indictment of the development of western culture, especially Anglo-Saxon culture in the last century."


A while back, I tried to find the story online to repost, but wasn't able to.  Thankfully, Carson now has a book which is, I believe, a collection of excerpts from his talks.  And, Kevin DeYoung has posted that exact anecdote on his blog:

Perhaps part of our slowness to come to grips with this truth lies in the way the notion of moral imperative has dissipated in much recent Western thought. Did you see the film Titanic that was screened about a dozen years ago? The great ship is full of the richest people in the world, and , according to the film, as the ship sinks, the rich men start to scramble for the few an inadequate lifeboats, shoving aside the women and children in their desperate desire to live. British sailors draw handguns and fire into the air, crying “Stand back! Stand back! Women and children first!” In reality, of course, nothing like that happened. The universal testimony of the witnesses who survived the disaster is that the men hung back and urged the women and children into the lifeboats. John Jacob Astor was there, at the time the richest man on earth, the Bill Gates of 1912. He dragged his wife to a boat, shoved her on, and stepped back. Someone urged him to get in, too. He refused: the boats are too few, and must be for the women and children first. He stepped back, and drowned. The philanthropist Benjamin Guggenheim was present. He was traveling with his mistress, but when he perceived that it was unlikely he would survive, he told one of his servants, “Tell my wife that Benjamin Guggenheim knows his duty” –and he hung back, and drowned. There is not a single report of some rich man displacing women and children in the mad rush for survival.

When the film was reviewed in the New York Times, the reviewer asked why the producer and director of the film had distorted history so flagrantly in this regard. The scene as they depicted it was implausible from the beginning. British sailors drawing handguns? Most British police officers do not carry handguns; British sailors certainly do not. So why this willful distortion of history? And then the reviewer answered his own question: if the producer and director had told the truth, he said, no one would have believed them.

I have seldom read a more damning indictment of the development of Western culture, especially Anglo-Saxon culture, in the last century. One hundred years ago, there remained in our culture enough residue of the Christian virtue of self-sacrifice for the sake of others, of the moral imperative that seeks the other’s good at personal expense, that Christians and non-Christians alike thought it noble, if unremarkable, to choose death for the sake of others. A mere century later, such a course is judged so unbelievable that the history has to be distorted (30-31).

An Audience with the King

An inspiring anecdote from the 1800s that I found on my friend Corrie's blog:

A number of years ago I went to America with a steamship captain who was a very devoted Christian.  When we were off the coast of Newfoundland, he said to me, “The last time I sailed here, which was five weeks ago, something happened that revolutionized my entire Christian life.  I had been on the bridge for 24 straight hours when George Mueller of Bristol, England, who was a passenger on board, came to me and said, Captain, I need to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon. ‘That is impossible’, I replied.  ‘Very well’, Mueller responded, ‘if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way, for I have never missed an engagement in 57 years.  Let’s go down to the chartroom to pray’.  “I looked at this man of God and thought to myself, ‘What lunatic asylum did he escape from?’ I had never encountered someone like this.  ‘Mr. Mueller’, I said, ‘do you realize how dense the fog is?’ ‘No’, he replied.  ‘My eye is not on the dense fog but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life’.  “He then knelt down and prayed one of the most simple prayers I’ve ever heard.  When he had finished, I started to pray, but he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to pray.  He said, ‘First, you do not believe God will answer, and second, I believe He HAS.  Consequently, there is no need whatsoever for you to pray about it.’  “As I looked at him, he said, ‘Captain, I have known my Lord for 57 years, and there has never been even a single day that I have failed to get an audience with the King.  Get up Captain, and open the door, and you will see that the fog is gone.’  I got up, and indeed the fog was gone.  And on Saturday afternoon, George Mueller was in Quebeck for his meeting.”

In case you don't know, George Mueller was a great prayer warrior of the 19th century.  After becoming a Christian, he felt called to help the orphans in Bristol, England.  He built several orphanages, and during his life time helped 10,000 orphans.  The most amazing thing is that he raised the money for the housing and care of the orphans solely through prayer.  He resolved to never ask anyone for money so that that God would receive the sole praise as their needs were met.

Where Has Christianity Gone

J.D. Greear just finished reading a book by Mark Noll called The New Shape of World Christianity.  He shares some interesting and thought-provoking statistics that he gleaned from the book:

• In 1900 over 80% of the world Christian population was Caucasian and over 70% resided in Europe; today, 2009 (when he wrote the book) there are more practicing Christians in Africa than in all European countries combined.

• On any given Sunday, more Christians attend church in Kenya than in Canada, and more believers worship together in Nagaland than in Norway.

• Uganda has more Anglicans than Britain, Canada and the United States combined. The same is true for Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria.

• This past Sunday there were more Presbyterians in church in Ghana than in Scotland.

• In 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China. But it is estimated that today the number of practicing Christians in China is equal to the number in the United States.

• The largest church in Korea has more people present for a single worship service than are at Canada’s ten largest churches combined.

• Brazil now sends more overseas missionaries than does Britain or Canada.  

• The looming explosion of Christians is in the Muslim world, where 2/3 of all the unreached peoples now live.

Christianity is not a Western thing; it never has been a Western thing. I love how Bob Roberts says it: “Christianity began as a Jewish movement to God; it will conclude as a Muslim movement to Jesus.” The Gospel is for all peoples of all times in all places in the world.