‘Some time, the hating has to stop.’ How are you going, with forgiveness? Has the hating stopped, and the inflamed wound in your soul been replaced by forgiveness?

Not quite that easy, you state bluntly. No, it isn’t, as is memorably presented in The Railway Man. This Boxing Day release is based upon the true story of Eric Lomax, a tortured British POW. Starring Colin Firth as the ageing serviceman afflicted by psychological torment, the slow-burning drama builds to a remarkable showdown between hatred and forgiveness.

Lomax was one of almost 45,000 Allied soldiers captured by Japanese Forces in 1942, after it took Singapore. Winston Churchill called this military defeat ‘the greatest disaster ever to have befallen the British Empire’. A lifelong devotee of trains, Lomax was, somewhat ironically, forced to work on ‘Death Railway’. Made famous by The Bridge On The River Kwai, this notorious 400-kilometre stretch between Thailand and Burma was constructed by slave labour, through mountainous jungle of lethal resistance.

Discovered with a DIY radio, Lomax endured torture from his captors. Amid flashbacks into Lomax’s war-time treatment, The Railway Man outlines what led the traumatised survivor to confront one of his Japanese guards, decades later.

By way of stuffy drama, the crucial confrontation takes too long to arrive. While Lomax’s wife Patti (Nicole Kidman) embodies how devotion is fuel for unrelenting concern, palpable emotion is stifled by the straight-laced presentation of her being admitted to his guarded past. However, impact still resounds when Lomax confronts Takashi Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada).

Ever experienced injustice? Of course you have, because imperfection is common to all our lives. In every facet of life, equal portions are not handed out – from relationships, to physical pain, or who got ‘my’ promotion. The only difference between us is how much, or often, we have been unjustly treated.

Lomax’s admission of ‘nursing myself to sleep’, with vengeful thoughts of making Nagase beg and scream as he is painfully killed, are understandable. Coping with injustice often involves longing for retribution. Shouldn’t punishment fit the crime? How else can amends be made, unless perpetrators experience what victims have?

Poignantly, Lomax’s reaction to confronting Nagase is a remarkable lesson in dealing with injustice. Lomax chooses to treat Nagase in a way which seems impossible, given their history of hate.

The Railway Man provides an astonishing challenge: Would you do what Lomax does?  We should encounter this same challenge, whenever Jesus Christ is mentioned, or The Lord’s Prayer is said. Familiarity can breed apathy about the magnitude of forgiveness which permeates God’s dealing with us.

But consider the greatest injustice you have experienced. Consider, then, how unjustly we treat holy and perfect God, whenever we dump His loving guidance and just do what we want. Across human history, the compounded scope of such injustice is incomprehensible. Still, God forgives. At great cost – to Himself, not us.

Our attitude to forgiving others should mirror the ultimate expression of it. Allow the cross of Jesus to empower your forgiveness.