Forever a Foreigner

“This is the Holy Bible of Jesus,” I said, picking it up. “Have you seen or heard of this book before?”

The elderly woman across from me squinted. “No,” she said. “Never.”

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I had the opportunity to open up the Bible and teach an elderly Cambodian woman about Jesus. She was a survivor of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and though she lived alone with disabilities, she was quite savvy and independent. She was also a devout Folk Buddhist, even spending many years living in a temple compound as a “Yey Chi,” a term for an older woman who devotes herself to Buddhism and the earning of merit at the end of her life.

It was she who asked to study with me, as soon as she heard that I taught about Jesus. The first day she came, we sat on my living room floor on a mat.

I had with me a Bible study tool called Firm Foundations. The first lesson is about the Bible–its nature, its origin.

The Bible is entirely unlike other religious texts. It is rooted in history and full of first-hand accounts. It contains multiple genres. Most extraordinary of all, it is proof that God communicates with people. He wants to reveal Himself. He wants to be known. He has something to say.

“We study the Bible in order to know God,” I said. “In Buddhism, you listen to the sacred texts in order to earn merit, but the Bible is different. We study it to know who God is, and to know who we are, and how we can find salvation.”

The Bible is also ancient. A common criticism against Christianity in Cambodia is the claim that Christ was born hundreds of years after the Buddha. Buddhism therefore has the claim of being the elder religion. But parts of the Bible were written long before the Buddha lived.

Another important matter to clarify is that the Bible was written in the land of Judea, which is now called “Israel.” Many Cambodians are confused and believe that Christianity originated in the West, because many missionaries are Westerners. But actually, the Bible was written in Western Asia. Later, it was translated into many languages, such as English and Khmer (Cambodian). The Bible was first translated into Khmer in 1954.

The Bible study book had a helpful map of the world that we looked at together.

“Do you want to stop here?” I asked her.

“No, keep going,” she said.

So we went to the next lessons, which cover God’s nature. I began with this, that God has always been and always will be. He was before all things, and has no birth or beginning.

This stunned her. Her impression of Jesus and who He is was so vague that she had never heard this before.

“God is a spirit. He exists by His own power, and needs nothing. He is one God in three persons.”

She stopped me here, wanting to understand this better. How did Jesus connect to this God? How was he born later, but existed before the beginning of the world? We discussed it. I tried to explain the nature of the Trinity, trying not to create the wrong impression with her, that Jesus has divine parents. “Jesus is the Lord God, and the Lord God is Jesus,” I said. “God is three persons, but one God. This is deep and hard for humans to understand.”

“Yes, it’s deep,” she said.

We covered the lesson on God creating the angels, and Satan’s rebellion. Angels had to be explained, because the Folk Buddhist categories for these types of spirits, demons, angels, etc. are entirely different. Again, I emphasized that God is the Creator. He made all things and all spirits, and He is more powerful than anything.

Then this elderly woman said, “So this is the God who created all things. Jesus was before Buddha. He is greater than the Buddha.”

She had a question for me, something that had bothered her for a long time about Christianity. “How can it be that a great sinner, like a robber, could rob and steal all his life, and then at the end be forgiven of all his sins, just like that?”

In Buddhism, karma is king. Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad. This is the moral law, and there is no escape from it.

“Granny,” I said, using a respectful relationship term, “it’s true. In man’s eyes it seems unjust, that someone can sin and just be forgiven. But I think it comes from our pride, to think that one sinner is worse than us. In truth, we are all sinners before God, deserving of punishment. It is only because of God’s mercy and love that we can be forgiven.”

Even though I didn’t know how much she could understand now, I skipped ahead to the gospel. “We all have sin, and we deserve punishment. In Buddhism, Granny, don’t they say, ‘Self depends on self?'”

“Yes.”

“But those who believe in Jesus know we can’t depend on ourselves. We can’t save ourselves. Even if we try and try, even if we earn lots of merit–what is the saying? ‘One sin erases a hundred merits.’ When I look at Buddhism, I feel there is no hope. You can only be born again and again, on the wheel of suffering.”

“Yes,” she said. “There is no hope. The Buddha himself lived 50 lives before he achieved nirvana.”

I paused, seeing another need for explanation. “Granny, in the Bible there is no reincarnation. There is no next life or past lives. In the Bible, we are born once to our parents. We live one life, and then we die. When we die, we either go to heaven with God, or we go to hell. But we are not reborn.”

“No reincarnation,” she repeated. “That’s completely different from Buddhism! This, the Bible, it’s completely different!”

“Yes, Granny. So in the Bible we have hope, because we have a Savior to help us. We can’t do it ourselves. Jesus came and was born as a man so that he could live a perfect life without sin. With us humans, there has never been a person who was perfect, without sin. But God is. Jesus lived a perfect, holy life, and then he died, taking all the punishment of the world’s sin onto himself. He took the punishment on our behalf, so that we might have a way to be saved. This is the love of God.”

“Oh, that’s what this is,” she said, holding out her arms in mimicry of a cross. “I’ve seen it. So he took the punishment for sins. I understand. So God loves and pursues sinful people, like a father who loves his child.”

My heart stirred with awe. “Yes.”

And that was the first day.

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:19-21