So today we took a little tour of
Phnom Penh, which I don’t know if it was intended to be this way but
it turned out to be a very heavy day. Our first stop was the Tuol
Sleng Genocide Museum. So to make an incredibly long story really
short, in the 1970’s Cambodia was under the Khmer Rouge with Pol Pot
as it’s leader. Under Pol Pot’s regime Cambodia was very
anti-modernism, so anyone who was a technician, doctor, teacher, etc
and of course anyone who still supported the old regime were
imprisoned with the rest of their family in these concentration camps
to be tortured until their deaths. It’s estimated that during Pol
Pot’s reign one third of Cambodia was killed in mass genocide.
Tuol Sleng was a high school until the
Khmer Rouge converted it into a concentration camp where over 10,000
men, women and children were imprisoned, tortured and killed. While
touring the museum I got to see the cells and the torture tools that
were used. But what was most disturbing were the pictures. There
were mugshots taken of the inmates as they were being processed.
Some as old as 60, others as young as 6. You could see the fear in
their eyes. I also saw paintings that were done of actual torture
and other acts done to the prisoners that were just atrocious.
People getting there fingernails pulled out and then having rubbing
alcohol poured on them, people being hung upside down until they’re
unconscious and then dunked into putrid water to wake them up,
lashings, electrocution, the list goes on. And if that’s not bad
enough, one of the rules was that during torture you couldn’t cry or
yell.
The next stop on the tour was Cheung
Eik (The Killing Fields). This is the place where several
concentration camps would take there prisoners to be executed. To
put in perspective how many people were executed here there is a 4
story tower of skulls that were found of the people who were killed
and buried here. You can still see old clothes sticking up out of
the ground where people were buried.
It seemed the longer I walked around
and looked at these things, the more my heart ached about the evil
that was done to these people. And the more my heart ached the more
I began to wonder…where was God in all this? And like the polite
God He is, He answered. He was there in the cells…crying. It tore
Him apart to see His children doing this to each other. But He
showed me something very important. He showed me that the guards in
this prison had incredible power. They had power to take away all of
your possessions, and your family, cause you incredible physical pain
and even take away body parts. But there was one part of you that
they could not touch without permission, your spirit. They can’t
give you fear unless you let them, they can’t steal your joy or hope,
you have to give it to them. And its these people’s hope, that was
their greatest treasure in this place of suffering. If all they had
was hope that they would go home, then they probably lost hope, if
they didn’t lose hope then their hope in going home failed them in
the end. Same thing for Buddha, or their ancestors. If that is
what they had hope in, then they’re hope eventually failed them.
But, if they had hope in the Lord, then they also had hope that they
serve a living God. One that is comforting them in their cell,
giving them strength in the midst of their torture and when it’s over
and their physical body is dead they will live forever in the New
Jerusalem with the glory of the everlasting God as their new sun.
The Khmer Rouge happened, and it was
horrific. But just because it happened doesn’t mean that God liked
it or approved of it. It just means that God is a lover not a guard.
He doesn’t use His power to force us to do what He wants.
Unfortunately we abuse that freedom.
But thats where we come in and why
it’s so important that we understand that the Great Commission, at
it’s core, is not just something we do because we’re right and
everyone else is wrong. The Great Commission is giving hope to a
hopeless world. It’s giving anyone that is in the midst of
suffering, something to hold onto. It’s purpose to the empty and an
adventure to the bored. It’s rest to the tired and relief for the
burdened. We have a treasure to give out to a poor world. It’s one
of those things that I knew in my head, but it took me seeing these
things to really understand it.
Was reading this blog hard for you?
If so, good. That means that you do not have a heart of stone. You
feel pain for these people and that is a powerful weapon. Don’t run
from it or push it away, feed off of it, draw strength from it. God
uses our pain to drive us to do something about it. Because lets be
honest, if this isn’t happening somewhere around the world right now
it’s going to be. Get some people together and do some intercessory
prayer for a nation under genocide. Pray for the people who lived
through it that they wouldn’t be held down by fear and despair of
their past. God hears the prayers of righteous people. And they do
make a difference, especially when its His body praying in agreement.
So lets take back our world for God and spread some hope.
