The Upper Register Blog

Archive for the 'Cambodia' Category

Teaching in Cambodia

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

The reason I haven’t posted in over two weeks is that my wife and I were in Cambodia for about 10 days. We were sent by our church to help a mission team in Phnom Penh who have been sent by Mission to the World. Misty did some discipleship for a handful of Cambodian women, while I taught on the Johannine Literature for pastors and church leaders from a neighboring country. Our teaching was done in translation and involved the usual difficulties of cross-cultural communication. But it was a joy to see the ways in which the Lord is working in South East Asia. The people we met were very sweet, patient, and kind to us. It was wonderful to worship with them, to sing hymns with them, and to enjoy the fellowship that we have in Christ. We also had a chance to visit Angkor Wat and some of the other temples in the area.

Posted in Cambodia | Comments Off

Dith Pran, 65

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Dith Pran died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday. He was the Cambodian who helped the American journalist Sydney Schanberg report the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge to the West. The LA Times has a good obit today:

He saved Schanberg from death at rebel hands before facing it himself many times during the four years of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody reign. When Schanberg won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for his Cambodia reporting at the New York Times, he shared the honor with Dith …

For Dith, life became an unremitting nightmare. The Khmer Rouge were hellbent on a radical restructuring of Cambodian life, abolishing religion, separating families, driving city dwellers to rural labor camps, closing hospitals and schools, and exterminating professionals, intellectuals and anyone with ties to Westerners or the U.S-backed government of President Lon Nol. The atrocities he witnessed, particularly the murders of children, plagued him long after he was free.

One of the most heart-breaking aspects of this story is the sad tale of Dith Pran’s futile search for justice. Note that in the following paragraphs, justice is elusive: Pol Pot dies in peace, Dith’s friend is murdered by robbers in LA, and at last he himself dies of cancer:

In 1989 he returned to Cambodia with members of the Cambodian Documentation Commission, including Haing S. Ngor, the Cambodian doctor who portrayed Dith in “The Killing Fields.” Ngor won an Oscar for his wrenching performance, in part because he, like Dith, had lived through unimaginable horror.

He and Dith shared a common goal: to see Pol Pot stand trial for leading one of the worst slaughters of the 20th century. But Ngor died in 1996, shot to death by robbers on a Los Angeles street. Dith vowed to continue their fight to make the former dictator answer for his crimes.

Two years after Ngor’s death, Pol Pot died under house arrest in Cambodia within hours of an announcement that the Khmer Rouge was turning him over to an international tribunal. His death — reportedly from heart failure but possibly from suicide — thwarted Dith’s hope for justice and a measure of peace.

Dith Pran may have died a deeply disappointed man. But for those of us who believe in Christ, our hope for justice lies beyond this world in the eschaton. None of the unspeakable crimes that have been committed on this earth escapes God’s notice. Secular people talk a lot about ”justice,” but in fact it is we Christians who believe in real justice. We have a solid hope that every injustice will be punished and every wrong will be made right. By raising Jesus from the dead and installing him as Lord of the cosmos, God has assured us that perfect justice will come and will reign forever. Pol Pot and his wicked gang will be punished with perfect justice. They will not escape.

Here’s a great quote from Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (ch. 34):

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement [or punishment] of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed.

[Quoted by Timothy Keller in The Reason for God, p. 33. I’ve added the words “or punishment.” Undoubtedly Dostoevsky had a more universalistic interpretation. I do not believe in universalism. The Lamb’s eschatological wrath will have objects.]

Posted in Cambodia | Comments Off

Infinite Grace!

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

It has been in the news lately that Comrade Duch’s trial is about to begin. This is an incredible story.

This man was responsible for the brutal deaths of 12,000 Cambodians during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In 1995, he was transformed by the gospel and gave his life to Jesus Christ. Imagine the feelings of the Cambodian Christians who now embrace him as a brother. Perhaps this might give us some idea of what Gal 1:23-24 means. I’m reminded of the hymn:

Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, infinite grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin.

I don’t know if “infinite grace” in the refrain is original. All the online versions that I could find repeat the first line, “Grace, grace, God’s grace.” But in the version I sang growing up, we said “infinite grace” the second time. It’s certainly in keeping with the last stanza: “Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe.”

No man is too wicked to be saved. No sin is too much for Christ’s blood.

Image courtesy http://www.yale.edu/cgp/duch_v3.html

Posted in Grace, Khmer Rouge, Cambodia | 2 Comments »

The Upper Register Blog

Archive for the 'Cambodia' Category

Teaching in Cambodia

Dith Pran, 65

Infinite Grace!

Pages

Archives

Categories