Dan's Thoughts

Vision #21 - September 2, 2006

Last night, Trish and I had dinner with Barnabas Mam, whom Pastor Hardwick had met him on his Asia tour last February. Pastor had invited Barnabas to our church to speak. So he has been in town for couple of day, preparing to speak for us this Sunday. He is quite a guy!

His father was a Buddhist monk who had second thoughts about celibacy so decided glorify God by taking a wife and raising a family. Nonetheless, he raised Barnabas in the temple where he studied Buddhist philosophy and religion. He became proficient in Sanskrit and Pali, the foundational languages for the sacred texts of Theravada Buddhism and learned a number of modern languages as well. In early adulthood though, he became a communist and was soon appointed by the government to spy on Christians.

He got too close! As he spied on believers, he herd the gospel and soon his spiritually hungry heart opened to Jesus. That got him in a lot of trouble. The Khmer Rouge, the Maoist group that ruled Cambodia from 1975 -1979, didn’t like Christians. They especially didn’t like intellectuals. So, after having been a Christian for only two years, this brilliant young believer was sentence to hard labor as a political prisoner. Out of the hundreds who were sentenced with him, only a handful survived. He had no Bible, was not allowed to speak to other prisoners and forbidden access to literature of any kind. He knew only two hymns – How Great Thou Art and When the Roll is called Up Yonder, which he sang everyday as part of his devotions.

After being released from prison, Cambodia was still in the midst of the civil war that claimed two million lives. So Barnabas went to Thailand where he lived for eight years in a refugee camp. During that time, he devoured the Bible. When he returned to Cambodia, he was elected president of the Cambodian Bible society! Soon, he began overseeing a new translation of the scriptures into his native language, drawing upon all the knowledge of ancient Eastern language he had gained in the temple. He also began a new church and started traveling to all parts of his nation to encourage the hundreds of little groups that have sprung up and to speak in established Christen churches of all kinds, Protestant, Catholic and Pentecostal. “In Cambodia, you can’t tell the difference anyway!” he said to us last night. “Everyone prays hard, reads the Bible a lot and love to sing. We are all just followers of Jesus who have been through a lot and are bringing our country to Christ.”

I had just finished The Beginning of Wisdom, by Leon Kass. It was clearly one of the greatest books on Scripture I had ever read. Kass shows how God advances his cause on the earth through flawed men whom he allows to go through trial and affliction in order to develop in them a love for the Word of God. Every once in a while, someone really “gets it.” He or she begins to understand what covenant is all about and how different the ways of God and His people are from the ways of the world. When that happens, the life change that results from the penetration of God’s Word into a heart set on fire, lights up a generation or two. The natural and spiritual of such a person often get caught up in a love of scripture that inspires them to change the world. Such people are never legalistic or hateful but are full of such joy and purpose that their lives become beacons in the darkness. They overthrow kingdoms and subdue evil, though they are usually unaware that they are doing so. In their minds, they are just following the Lord and loving others.

Over Thai food last night, I looked into the face of a Cambodian man who couldn’t stop laughing. He is brilliant but it wasn’t his brilliance that moved me. He has suffered but many people suffer. He has ambition but his energy is not a nervous form of anxiety or narcissism. As he spoke about Buddhists, there was not a hint of distaste or disdain. He spoke of them as spiritually hungry people who taught him much and to whom he owes a great debt. He believes that telling them about Jesus is the way the debt can be paid. And it must work, the Buddhists are receiving him and the Lord he so ably represents.

Kass’s book had deeply moved me. Then, I saw the book come alive across our table there at the Thai restaurant last night. As Barnabas told me about how his twenty two grandchildren have been meeting with him each Sunday night to study the Gospel of John, I understood what the book was teaching. As Barnabas told me about the many scripture he has put to music so the Cambodian people can quickly grasp the Word of God, I remembered how our poor people in the Andes had done the same thing. Barnabas kept saying, “God has been wonderful to us; Just wonderful.”

Yes He has! And there is no greater testimony to the goodness of God than those people who come into our lives reflecting the glory of the Lord and embodying the Words of Covenant. It helps people like me keep walking on the path that leads to life.

Barnabas – son of consolation, it’s a good name.

I really do believe in the communion of saints!

Dan