How the Titanic encapsulates the human dilemma

Last month a gold pocket watch worn by John Jacob Astor, the richest passenger on the Titanic, was sold for £1.2m at auction.

The watch was not recovered from the wreck but had been found when his body was recovered from the sea. Rather like ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’, it had stopped at 2.20pm when the ship slipped into the freezing waters of the Atlantic.

At the time, Astor was worth $87million, which would make him a billionaire today. He was sailing to New York with his pregnant wife Madeleine. Like so many passengers, when the ship scraped an iceberg at 11.40pm he did not think that they were in any serious danger. Later he helped his wife into a lifeboat, and she survived. He, however, was turned away and joined other first-class passengers as the ship went down. He was last seen smoking a cigarette.

Today, 112 years after the sinking of the Titanic, the tragedy still grips our imagination, and the prices paid for Titanic memorabilia are ever increasing. The story was made into a plucky British drama (A Night to Remember), a slushy upstairs-downstairs romance (James Cameron’s multi-Oscar-winning Titanic) and the pretext for the ludicrous Raise the Titanic (Lew Grade: ‘It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic’).

The sinking of the Titanic taps into our deepest existential fears. It represents the height of human hubris and faith in technology (‘unsinkable’), the danger of competitiveness as the ship took risks to try and win the coveted Blue Riband, the harshness of class division between rich and poor, and the end of the Edwardian ‘Golden Age’ so soon to be engulfed in the folly of the Great War. At a more personal level, we all instinctively imagine what it must have been like to be amongst the passengers, as initial confidence that all would be well gave way to panic and hopelessness. We wonder whether we would have faced death with such sang-froid as Astor and others.

The story of the Titanic encapsulates the human dilemma. We face death and need saving. It is unavoidable and we cannot save ourselves. It is a reverse of the Biblical story of the ark. The waters that engulf are a symbol of the wrath of God that will be poured out against us. The passengers were oblivious of what awaited them until it was too late. They were caught out like the rich fool in Jesus’ parable, as that very night their lives were demanded of them. Whether tonight or not, we know that the same fate awaits us, and all those around us.

The gold pocket watch of John Astor is a powerful reminder that ultimately wealth, even extraordinary wealth, will not save us from death. Today some of the world’s richest men are using their wealth to try to achieve immortality for themselves, but they will not succeed. The Bible warns that no man can redeem his life from eternal judgment by money. No sum would ever be enough. John Astor’s wealth and status could not secure him a seat on a lifeboat.

However, one of the tragedies of the Titanic is that, whilst there were insufficient lifeboats for all the passengers, many of the lifeboats were not filled to capacity. The 20 lifeboats could have saved 1,178 people, but only 706 were saved. It is thought that this may be because crew members were afraid that the lifeboats would buckle under the weight of more people. This is surely a reminder to us as Christians to make every effort to seek to save the lost. We must never be satisfied with simply saving some. God promises a great salvation through Christ, and there is no lack of capacity or danger that the church might buckle under the numbers. How tragic when people prefer a small church for their own comfort and convenience rather than a greater salvation.

As the Titanic went down, one passenger who went down with her was the Scottish Baptist pastor John Harper, who was en route to take up the pastorate at Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. As the ship sank, he preached the gospel to the passengers, especially from Acts 16:31. He continued preaching even in the icy water to those who were drowning.

John Astor’s wealth could not save him. The only thing that could was the good news of Jesus, and His death for our sins. That is the message that he might have heard as the ship went down. A total of 1,517 souls lost their lives when the Titanic went down. We will only know in eternity how many of them were truly saved and rescued into God’s new creation.

The watch of history continues to run. We need to remember the urgency of our saving mission. We need to see through the hubris and confidence of our world that is ignorant of the danger. We need to proclaim the good news of Jesus to rich and poor alike while there remains time. We need something of the spirit of John Harper. We are drowning men preaching to drowning men, but who know there is hope.