Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
–C.S. Lewis
I couldn’t even see.
Curled up on the bathroom floor of the museum, hugging my knees, slowly rocking and savagely weeping, I couldn’t even see.
The sick green tiles retained every sting of the heat beating through the window. I heard birds singing outside. I felt another bead of sweat roll down the length of my back. The vicious humidity breathed it’s hot, sticky breath across my body, causing my skin to stick like glue to the dirty floor.
Normally, I wouldn’t be here.
I’m not talking about Vietnam, although in my normal life, I would most certainly never find an occasion to be taking up residency here for any length of time.
I’m not talking about a museum, even though in my day-to-day routine, I wouldn’t have found any reason to walk through a building dedicated to an event that I would conveniently and comfortably like to forget.
I’m not talking about the bathroom floor, although a lifetime ago, in a luxurious place I called home, I would have found no occasion to seek solace in the unforgiving heat of this room, in the filth of wet tiles.
Normally, I wouldn’t be in Vietnam, in the War Remnants Museum, weeping on the floor of the farthest bathroom stall.
But the here I would normally be in is not a location:
It’s a state of heart.
Normally,
I wouldn’t be broken for displaced families
I wouldn’t be weeping for lives lost
For atrocities committed in the name of peace
For lives robbed of all joy
For innocence stolen
For children born without eyes
For hands stained with blood that will taint their soul past the idea of forgiveness
For limbs missing by landmines forgotten
For the corpses of mothers holding their children
For innocence maimed
For skin melted
For the effects of agent orange found in the dual heads of a single child’s body
For men dragging the corpses of fellow mankind
For twisted arms and bulging eyes and limbless stumps on children who never had a chance to live a normal life.
Normally, I would walk through this museum and find the images of war violent and disturbing, but I would push down that rising surge I don’t understand. I’d suppress it because I’m afraid of it. What would happen if I truly let it wash over me, allowing me to feel what I would normally walk out of this building and ignore?
What would happen if I let the magnitude of the multi-lingual texts register in terms of people, of families, of souls?
What would happen if I let go of my cynicism, of my justifications, of my patriotism, of my biases, of my apathy, and allow myself to be ravaged by what I saw?
What would happen if God could give me His heart in this moment?
I’ll tell you.
I’d end up crying on the bathroom floor.
I knew nothing of the Vietnam War before I came here. I knew nothing of the constant oppression and discouragement and war that the people of this country have endured for thousands of years from countries I honestly never even thought had diplomatic relations in this part of the world.
I recall hearing of Agent Orange. I had no idea for what it was used or that it still significantly impacts people in their daily lives.
I only had a slight idea of why America came here to fight in the first place.
The only representation I’d ever associated with the conflict was that of Tom Hanks, hollering in a slow Alabama drawl, looking for Bubba in the tall grass while bombs ignited in the sky.
Other than religious facts about this country I learned in Asian Philosphy 309, I knew next to nothing about these people or this place.
Upon entering, I felt led to pray to God in an entirely different way concerning this country. I asked that He would truly and powerfully break my heart for them in a way I had never experienced. I prayed I would see all these people with His eyes, love them with His heart, and find in them all the reasons He deemed them worthy enough to warrant the death of God Himself.
I just didn’t expect to find it in a history museum, facedown on the bathroom floor.
The images I saw not only lurched my stomach into a morbid churn, they gutted my heart until the evidence of the pain inside could no longer be held within. I found myself unable to breathe normally, the queasiness of my innards and despondency of my heart were physically altering my face, my eyes.
I wanted to turn away from the pictures of chemical warfare on the lives of civilians. I didn’t want to see their twisted bodies, their empty eye sockets, their inflated faces… But I forced myself to look. I found no fear in the looking, the fear we so often find in beings that resemble humans enough to stab our consciousness by how blessed we are with our ten fingers and symmetrical faces, yet fails to connect us with the reality that they actually are, in fact, just as human as you or me, with our ten fingers and symmetrical faces.
I looked at every picture, realizing in a way I can’t describe that each person is. They are not the crookedness of their spine of the lack of their limbs. They are a person, fully known and loved by God. They are my brother or sister, they are loved by family members that cry themselves to sleep at night knowing that their crippling deformities will inhibit them from ever running through grassy-blown fields in the late summer or feeling the cooling rush of water surround them as they swim and laugh and play.
I wanted to turn and vomit from the pictures of torture and murder I saw, but I made myself soak in the horror of each image. One, in particular, may haunt me for the rest of my life. The odd part is, I hope it does. I hope I never slip back into apathy or become desynsitized to what has, this day, seemed to have broken the very legs I stand upon.
The picture shows an American soldier holding the charred corpse of a Viet Cong solider. I use the term “corpse” in the loosest sense, only to describe the remnant of what once was a living, breathing, laughing human being, now lifeless. What was left of this man resembled only what I can describe as roadkill after it has been left in the road and ran over many, many times. I don’t know if any of his bones were in tact, it seemed as if only his skin was left. His head was the only thing clearly discernable in the rag of burned flesh and bloody organs, the clarity of his face contributing the second-greatest horror I have ever seen in a photograph.
The greatest horror I have ever seen was on the other face in the photograph:
The soldier was laughing.
My stomach hit the floor so hard I swear the people around me could probably testify to hearing the “splat” upon the tiles. I realized something completely true in this moment that I have never known more powerfully.
Jesus is the only hope for this world.
You can’t completely blame the Viet Cong for the evils of the war. You can’t completely blame America for the evils of the war. You can’t blame the generals, the politicians, the soldiers, the civilians. But on whichever side you find yourself, you will always find evils and injustices.
Could America turn a blind eye to the oppression of the Southern Vietnamese at the hands of the Viet Cong? If so, we are apathetic and uncaring, as guilty as Nero who read his books by human torchlight in his garden every night. We allow the demise of others to occur, not caring for one millisecond about the pain and anguish and torture of innocent people. Isn’t this in every way evil?
And yet, if we enter into the fray of battle, we so demonize those who have oppressed the innocent that we become the very inhuman creatures we swore to defeat, maiming their innocent and disembowling their lives. Either by omission or comission, we find ourseleves entrenched in evils we cannot contain or control. One act of desperation always leads to another, and a bloody path of lives discarded trails our way to hell.
The only hope for this world is Jesus.
Only He loves purely.
Only His love holds the answer to all of life’s questions.
Only Jesus can save the world.
He loves every person in a way I could never understand. His forgiveness is complete and purifying. His grace can never be overexagerated.
As I stumbled out of the bathroom after nearly half an hour of sobbing, I looked at myself in the mirror, asking,
“Why am I so affected by these things? Why is my heart breaking so horribly? Why can’t I control these feelings of grief for all that has been lost?”
As if in anticipation of my question, my eyes fell upon the very T-shirt I was wearing. It once belonged to Ashlee who passed it along to me, and I never even noticed it’s significance until now. The shirt simply says,
“Give Me Your Eyes.”
And today, I recieved God’s eyes. I felt the tremors of what splits His heart like an earthquake every day. That He should so invest Himself in this world when the very presence of sin and evil so breaks His heart… I can’t imagine how vast His love must be, that He would willingly walk through such grief every single day in the mere promise of bringing a few through the narrow door. His love amazes me.
What amazes me even more is that His love is enough to cover every single evil committed against every single innocent. His love is enough to redeem every abomination executed in the name of ourselves. His love is enough for Vietnam, for America, and for ever nation under the roof of this world.
His forgiveness is enough to wipe away every thing. The soldier in that picture, holding the raggedy, melting remains of God’s beloved son as if he were trash, can be completely cleared of all evil and stand before a holy God without blame or condemnation. How powerful is the forgiveness, the grace, the love of Christ for us?
But how deep is the sorrow of His heart to see the effects of sin on this world He created! I saw a glimpse of what God feels every moment His omnipresent eyes scan the expanse of earth. And how great is His love for us, that He endures such pain day in and day out, prolonging the day when His pain will cease, simply for that one last son that might come into His presence!
I saw the heart of God today. I felt it in my inmost being.
I know that if I, who can only grasp a hair’s breadth of the measure of His love for us, can feel such pain, He must feel much more than I can ever understand.
I am convinced that God Himself curls up on the bathroom floor, buries his face in His knees, and weeps for the evil that robs us of our joy. I am convinced that He heaves great breaths of desperation, air-deprived from the fervor in which He grieves our pains. I am convinced that His stomach marinates in a constant state of anguish for the rape of innocence and the murder of hope in so many, many lives.
God knows a pain far greater than what we can fathom. He enters into it willingly for the love of us.
“No one has suffered more than our Father in heaven. No one has paid more dearly for the allowance of sin into the world. No one has so continuously grieved over the pain of a race gone bad. No one has suffered like the One who paid for our sin in the crucified body of His own Son. No one has suffered more than the One who, when He stretched out His arms and died, showed us how much He loved us. It is this God who, in drawing us to Himself, asks us to trust Him when we are suffering and when our own loved ones cry out in our presence.”
–Bread of Life
