“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).
Of all the individuals I have ever met, Lou Zamperini ranks high on the list as a man of integrity, toughness, and indomitable spirit. You may recall seeing a picture of the former war hero at age 85, carrying the chrome and glass torch before the Olympics. His handshake is still firm, his eyes are clear and penetrating, he still jogs and rides a mountain bike. For a man who has been through what he has endured, he is not only remarkable, he’s a hero of gargantuan proportions.
Zamperini was fast as a kid. But he says he really learned to run, “running from the police.” He was good at it, too, so good that he got a scholarship to the University of Southern California. In 1936, he represented the United States in that controversial but long-remembered Olympics in Berlin, running the last lap in a blistering 58 seconds, so fast that Adolph Hitler demanded to shake his hand.
Soon, however, the mutual admiration tarnished. World War II broke out and Zamperini found himself wearing the uniform of a flyer as a bombardier in a plane that crashed in the Pacific. For 47 days, Zamperini was adrift on a small rubber life raft—an experience which few individuals live to describe. On that tiny life raft, he saw one of his mates die, and with insufficient water and only the fish they could lure to the raft and catch for food, he almost died. But God wasn’t finished with this scrappy kid.
A Japanese fishing boat rescued Zamperini and the pilot Russell Phillips from the raft, taking them to Japan, and a concentration camp where he was tortured, beaten, and abused. When the Japanese learned that he had run in the Olympics, he was forced to run against some of their best athletes, thereby proving—so they thought—that their athletes were really superior.
But one thing they could not break was his spirit. The man who ran the prison camp was a psychotic, a beast of a man who targeted Zamperini for some of the worst punishment meted out in that camp.
All things eventually come to an end one way or the other, and the surrender of Japan brought release for an emaciated prisoner of war who forgave his enemies and eventually returned to Japan as an ambassador of good will. The CBS network sent a television crew with Zamperini to document this mission of good will, but the monster who ran the camp refused to see Zamperini or have any contact with the crew.
So, what’s admirable about Lou Zamperini? Outstanding is the spirit of the man. God was his refuge and strength. So, instead of hating, he forgave. Instead of living with hatred and bitterness, he lives with hope. He told a reporter, “I figure the war took 10 years off my life. I decided to get those 10 years back. I see people gripe and complain and I say, ‘Hey, you’re shortening your life.'” When he tells his story, he always includes his personal testimony as to what his faith in God means to him and how it brought him through dark days when others curled up in fetal positions and died.
Could he have made it without his faith in God? Zamperini doesn’t think so. They say there are no atheists in fox holes; neither are there in POW camps. Lou Zamperini was a believer and his faith in God brought him through.
Our hats are off to a role model who says he gave up skateboarding on his 81st birthday but has carried the Olympic torch four times. Who knows? God may just let him carry an Olympic Torch through gates of pearl down streets of gold. I think he’d like that a great deal.
Resource reading: Philippians 4.
