Finding Hope in Cambodia’s Killing Fields
September 12, 2007
SIEM REAP, KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA, Sept. 9 - Gentle rolling thunder is among the most hauntingly beautiful sounds in the world to me. As a little boy growing up next door to my father's small Lutheran church in a tiny Northeast Iowa farming town, it was this ominous sign of a coming storm that strangely put me at ease.
If it is true the Lord speaks to us most clearly in those times of solitude, it is also true that we must be paying attention to appreciate the message He has for us in that moment.
Shortly past sunrise on Sunday morning approximately 30 miles north of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, in the dirt-poor village of Skun, gentle thunder began rolling with a warm breeze through the large green leaves of palm trees swaying over a wooden shack filled with Cambodian villagers.
A country still shell-shocked by the brutal regime of Pol Pot, Cambodia is a nation the size of Missouri whose new Christians are stubbornly defying government proclamations prohibiting public distribution of Bibles.
14 new Cambodian Christians are singing old familiar hymns at the top of their lungs as the threat of rain grows over this one-room "miracle"—one of hundreds of new church plants springing up all around the rice fields of Southeast Asia.
The Need for God’s Word
For every one of the more than 2 million men, women and children mercilessly tortured and murdered on the appropriately named “Killing Fields,” torture camps and once bustling streets of Phnom Penh between 1975 and 1990, there is a heart-wrenching tale to go along with that soul.
The urge for Cambodian Christians to hate anyone associated with the unspeakable evils of the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine must be almost irrepressible, but for the truths spoken by Jesus in the New Testament.
The gathering storm outside our Sunday worship service suddenly seems inconsequential as I remember yesterday meeting a 46-year-old survivor of a Khmer Rouge S-21 prison camp. The image that grips me is the way she clutched her Bible against her heart like a newborn baby.
The tears streaming down her cheeks as she spoke of the more than 20,000 victims killed in that Phnom Penh torture chamber she occupied for many months are as indelible to me as the bullet mark on her left leg.
Meas Sophary's amazing ability to forgive her Khmer Rouge captors is powerful evidence of God’s grace and what countless Cambodians need to begin thirsting for a Bible they can call their own.
Separated from her parents and siblings not long before their agonizing deaths at Tuol Sleng Prison in 1975, this woman of God cannot imagine spreading the Good News to Buddhists and Muslims without the necessary armor of a holy Bible.
Infinitely more powerful than an AK-47 draped over the shoulder of a 10-year-old boy recruited by Khmer Rouge, a single Bible has the proven ability to save a family, a whole village and eventually convert an entire nation of 14 million. (Were our United States not so spoiled by the ridiculous excesses we can't help but take for granted, there would no doubt be a much greater sense of urgency to get God's Word to a country whose Christian population plummeted at least 90 percent on the evil wave of Pol Pot's killing spree.)
With countless Cambodians still crushed by the unrelenting flood of horrifying memories of children gunning down their own families under the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (often at point-blank range in the middle of the night), there is only one hope of easing the unimaginable pain.
Without Jesus, the late Pol Pot can never be forgiven, nor can there ever be the inner peace uniquely experienced by Christians.
Growing Up in Iowa
As the soothing breeze of a passing storm that promises rain, but delivers none, moves over these earnest Cambodian Christians and us, their American guests, my thoughts drift still further back in time—some 35 years.
The screen door in the back of our parsonage slams shut as Dad finishes the short walk across our lawn from his church office. The distant echo of rolling thunder is growing gradually louder as my father roams into the kitchen where my mom is doing dishes.
"Things keep getting worse over there in Vietnam," he says quietly. "I heard we just lost another boy two towns over."
My dad doesn't mention the heartache of the young man's family and friends. He doesn't have to.
As American involvement in the Vietnam War came to an anticlimactic close in 1975, the bloodiest storm over Southeast Asia was just beginning to gather a few hundred miles to the south here in Cambodia.
The evacuation of U.S. forces flung the door open for the almost indiscriminate, 15-year killing spree of Pol Pot, who a decade ago died a coward's death in a remote jungle along the Cambodian border with Thailand.
Although the four years of horrors still buried in those 343 known Killing Fields are the most painful for the people of Cambodia, Pol Pot's genocidal reign lasted into the early 1990s.
In the 28 years since the South Vietnamese stormed the streets of Phnom Penh to liberate the capital city from the grip of Khmer Rouge, Meas Sophary has forced herself against all human nature to forgive those who so tirelessly tortured her since her youth.
The scar of that randomly fired bullet from another teenager's gun is the only physical evidence remaining from those months at Tuol Sleng, but her soul will forever bear the scars, she says, of a season in her life impossible to imagine without knowing Jesus as her Savior—the One in whom she can rest all her pain, worries and indescribable fears.
Amazing Grace
As our worship service on this muggy Sunday in Cambodia comes to a close, I continue to consider the lessons learned in our time together at Tuol Sleng Prison the day before. God is about to speak clearly to me and His message is not about to be missed. Again my thoughts are on Meas Sophary, and what I remember is her greeting: "Thank you so much for coming," Meas said softly. "It’s an honor to meet you today."
Her humble words have just become for me the most hauntingly beautiful sounds in the world.
Thor Tolo is the host of “Live From Seattle.” His program is heard daily on KGNW-AM 820 in Seattle and at KGNW.com. Contact Thor at thor@kgnw.com. If you would like to join Thor in helping support the Bible League’s work in Southeast Asia, please go to KGNW.com.
Originally published September 13, 2007.
