Forever a Foreigner

“I believe,” the woman insisted. “I truly believe. But I also still light incense and want to participate in [Buddhist ceremonies and rituals]. Can I still do these things?”

“Granny,” I said, using a relational term of respect, “for we who follow Jesus, we cannot participate in any other worship. Jesus does not allow us to worship other gods. For you, Granny, right now it seems to me that you are still of two minds. You have not yet fully decided to follow Jesus.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am still of two minds. But I do believe!”

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This was the second time I was sitting down and opening up the Bible with an elderly Cambodian woman about Jesus. (More details here.) We were once again sitting on my living room floor on a mat.

Today we were covering Creation. I read the story straight from Genesis, in her own language, and she listened.

“So Jesus really is the God who made all things,” she said. “He is the greatest God.”

In speaking of the sixth day, I emphasized how God made man and animals with different statuses. People cannot be born as animals, and animals cannot be born as people. There is no crossover. Mankind was created to be unique before God, and God created the world for man. Therefore, in Christ, it is allowed for us to use animals for food and so on.

In Buddhism, the truly devout avoid killing, because any life could be the reincarnated soul of a person. Granny had even previously joked with me that she avoids all killing–except for mosquitoes and flies that come in her house! There she draws the line.

I spoke about the need for people to acknowledge and worship their Creator. “It makes me sad that so many people do not worship him. He is the God who created everything–even us! But so few honor him or offer him gratitude.”

To be ungrateful to a patron in this culture is particularly dishonorable. In the Cambodian language, this insult to God comes across strong.

“I didn’t know!” Granny said. “I had no idea about any of this until just now, when you told me. I never knew this before.”

Before we moved on into studying the Fall, she handed me a piece of paper and asked me to write down the names of God. She found the different names being used (Jehovah, Jesus, the Spirit, etc.) confusing, and was trying to understand the relationship of these names and of the Trinity. I wrote them down and re-explained, emphasizing that there is only one God.

She took back the paper, and we covered the Fall and the Curse.

“God is good. Everything he created was also good. It was only when mankind disobeyed God that sin entered the world, and the world was cursed. All the suffering in the world today is because of this.”

Sin being an act of disobedience against God is a very different concept from the Buddhist idea of sin. In Buddhism, sin is not relational. It is more like a system of morality points, constantly being given out and deducted in the cycle of karma. When you sin, you mostly sin against yourself, building up bad karma for your own future.

I closed the Bible there.

“I want to go to heaven,” she said to me. “I don’t want to be trapped in the cycle of reincarnation. I want Jesus to heal me of my emotional illness (perhaps anxiety), and then I will follow him.”

I could not promise her healing. “Granny, I will pray for you about this, and you can pray to Jesus as well, yourself.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You can just speak to God in whatever way, and he will listen.” I prayed for her, then, to demonstrate. Perhaps this was the first time she had seen someone pray to Jesus.

Before she left, I gave her Genesis 1-3, printed out. The amount of information packed into those chapters turns one’s worldview upside down. It’s hard to take it in all at once.

She went home and proceeded to share videos with me that she was seeing on Facebook, including that of a Cambodian evangelist who shared the gospel clearly, from Genesis 1-3 to Christ.

“What does this word mean?” she texted me. “This one, ‘Amen.’ I keep seeing it in the comments. ‘Amen,’ ‘amen.'”

“Oh, that,” I replied. “It’s from the language of the Bible. It means something like, ‘let this be so.’ Followers of Jesus usually say it when we end our prayers.”

The learning curve for such a person–elderly, a life-long Buddhist, and a Cambodian–is so incredibly steep. There is so much to explain. A whole world of information. For anyone, it would be daunting.

But she was seeking One Who wants to be found.

Read about the next meeting in Part 3.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:1