Introduction

I often gone on retreat when the stresses of ministry become too difficult to manage and this year I sensed I needed to go overseas and felt led to Cambodia.  I believed the trip would have three foci: trauma, the beauty of Christ and the purity of how God builds his kingdom.

I have personally suffered from traumatic life episodes and Cambodia is one of the most traumatised nations on earth. During the four-year reign of the Khmer Rouge (1975-79) a quarter of the population were senselessly slaughtered (2 million) e.g., if you had glasses you were an intellectual and needed to be exterminated. Today 50% of the population suffers from some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder[1]. The slaughter of a generation broke down the normal bonds of family life.  Prostitution for example has been normalised for many Cambodians. An Australian friend explained how he attended a local village wedding, the next day the wife will go back to work as usual and her husband will be helping transport her clients[2].

Decades of civil war opened the country up to new levels of corruption. On the Transparency International table of nations Australia comes in at 7 and Cambodia at 157[3]. Corruption is systemic; journalists critical of the government have simply “disappeared” and my friend was pulled up by a policemen one day who demanded money from him because his car was dirty! Problems on this scale are extremely hard to solve[4].

Well here I was on the final morning of my stay walking down a street in Phnom Penh littered on both sides with foul smelling rubbish and an open drain on one side of the road running with the greyest water I have ever seen. It was in this context that the Lord started to speak with me in unusual ways, starting with ultimate foundations.

Fatherhood Beauty and Trauma

God the Father’s glorious wisdom is the architecture upholding creation; “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom 11:36 ESV cf. 1 Cor 8:6)[5]. The final goal and pinnacle of the divine plan is a radiantly beautiful Bride who will be a fitting eternal partner for his Son[6]. The alpha and the omega of God’s identity as Father is as the one who brings Jesus and the Church together (in the power of the Spirit) in a relationship of eternally pure love. Despite all external appearances the world is one vast beautifying centre where everything will be made beautiful in its time (Eccl 3:11).

If God the Father’s grandest achievement is to be a marriage maker, then the essence of all forms of fathering[7] involves building relationships. In the very broadest sense of the word, to be a father is to be a builder; fathers build marriages, families, households, corporations and nations. The issue of trauma is deeply connected with fathering and clearly illustrated in the case of the man who initiated a revolution to transform the whole future destiny of Cambodian society.

When Pol Pot’s forces invaded Phnom Penh in 1975 they declared it to be Year Zero. Within three days a city of 2 million people was forcefully (sic) [forcibly] moved to the countryside and a reign of terror began to destroy all existing culture (e.g. traditional dancers were all killed), and to build a perfect communist society. At the heart of the all abusive and traumatising authority, from parents to priests to dictators, is the use of force to model others in a way that pleases the wielder of power. Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao…were like “plastic surgeons” taking the scalpel of state power to remodel society in their own image and excising people like cancers who stood in the way of their vision of perfection. In seeking God about the trauma carried by Cambodians, Vietnam Veterans, and victims of sexual, family, work or spiritual abuse Lord impressed a certain scripture on my heart, Jesus is speaking about his own experience, “‘They hated me without a cause.’” (John 15:25). The tour guide at the Genocide Museum[8], the site of the S21 Security Prison where out of 17,000 prisoners 12 survived, kept talking about what happened there as “crazy”[9]. Inflicting pain on others without a clear reason has about it an intensity of brute, raw and primitive wrongfulness/evil that messes with the mind. This was highlighted in a conversation I had with a local at the War Museum in Siem Reap.

This dear man lost his family in the early days of the civil war; he entered the government army at [age] 13 then a land mine blew off half a leg, left him blinded in one eye, and with ball bearings in his body[10]. His wife had recently died of TB and his three daughters had never been to school. This precious man was filled with a sense of uselessness at his unemployability; he felt completely undesirable.

Cambodia is a great place to recognise the terrible truth of one of the darkest images of the book of Revelation, the vision of ““Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”” (Rev 17:3-5 ESV). We may be scandalised by the thought that Cambodian mothers routinely sell their daughters into prostitution without pangs of conscience but our society is increasingly sexualised at all levels and in its very character is a whore. The entire world economic system with its sweat shops, tariffs, manipulation of foreign aid [etc.], is based on the supreme ungodliness of the commoditisation of souls.  Humans are traded across the world today in their millions (Rev 18:13)[11]. Whoever does not feel unconditionally desired for who they are rather than what they can do exists in a state of trauma. God’s surprising solution to this global crisis came to me in a totally unexpected way.

A Jealous God

I was praying near the jungle early one morning when I was overcome with a tremendously intense experience of the jealousy of God. The jealousy of God is like a fire that cannot be quenched and an anger that cannot be compensated[12].  At the very beginning of Israel’s history the LORD proclaimed, ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image…You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”” (Exodus 20:4-6 ESV).

The one occasion in the Old Testament where the spontaneous act of a human being stills the wrath of God comes when the priest Phinehas slaughters an Israelite and a Moabite woman having “sacred sex” as an act of idol worship. “[T]he LORD said…, “Phinehas …has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace…because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’”(Numbers 25:10-13 ESV)[13]. This zeal to destroy all false worship was also possessed Jesus. His impassioned cleansing of the abominations of the Jerusalem temple provoked his disciples to recall the prophetic word, ““Zeal for your house will consume me.”” (John 2:17).  Paul too was inflamed by this godly passion and explains to the immature Corinthian church, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” (2 Cor 11:2).

From the very beginning God has desired us to share his own totally jealous love for our relationship with him. Anyone who has been filled with the holy jealousy of God knows with unmistakeable clarity that they are a part of a relationship in which they are absolutely desired (SoS 8:6) . To experience God’s infinite jealousy for your affections unavoidably communicates that you are wanted.

God is a Father jealous that his Son have a Bride fitting for his own worth and glory. Such a fiery jealousy constantly outworks itself on humanity in wrath, for wrath is jealousy turned outward to destroy the idolatry that would destroy our share in the glory of God (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). For those with eyes to see it the world is one vast Beauty centre where the infinite jealousy of God outworks itself in holy passion measured only by the trauma of the cross.

Seeing the Unseen

It is impossible for human beings to understand the nature of God’s passionate vengeful love without personal revelation. The word of the LORD came to Zechariah saying “I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath.” (Zechariah 8:1-2 ESV cf. 1:14); it is by the energy of jealous wrath that Jerusalem will be restored and glorified. Such wrath is humanly unapproachable, except through the cross. Only in Jesus’ death is the jealous wrath of God convincingly revealed as a forgiving love whose purpose is to destroy sin in all its power to separate us from our Father. It is the wrath of God in the cross that destroys evil’s trauma of undesirability.

It was said of the crucified Lord, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isa 53:2). The terrible cry from the cross; ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34 ESV) is the cry of a man who feels abandoned by God without cause. Jesus takes into himself all the experiences of humanity in its trauma and desolation under the power of raw evil separated from the glorious presence of God[14]. There is one central thing that Jesus does not experience on the cross- for the first time in his life he is stripped of all consciousness of the jealousy of a God who will go to any lengths to return humanity to himself.  This leaves him immersed in the agony of undesirability. Jesus’ response to the trauma of apparent divine indifference to unjust suffering is however totally different to ours.

On the walls of the Genocide Museum are the photos of hundreds of prisoners of all ages taken in the days before they were exterminated; some were only children[15]. Their faces show fear, grief, anger, terror and hopelessness but not one face radiates love and forgiveness for their torturers. The impossible truth, impossible for anyone except Jesus, is that the traumatising effects of hate without a cause can only be overcome by love without a cause.  “And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”” (Luke 23:34 ESV). Jesus victory over the power of evil is not found in some mere physical rising from the dead. The victory and glory of Jesus is that he has always fully revealed the Father. “And when the centurion [the man immediately responsible for the torture, abuse and death of Jesus]…saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”” (Mark 15:39 ESV).

Meditating upon these things in Cambodia I was forced to ask this question of myself, “If I was being tortured without a cause could I love and forgive the torturers?”  The answer given by the martyrs and witnesses to Jesus throughout the centuries is a resounding “Yes!” This “Yes” is the final victory of God over all the trauma inducing experiences of this world. As a Christian thinks back on their life through the lens of the cross we must sense that God’s final purpose in all our abuse, suffering and trauma is that his invincible power of forgiveness be released to the world. This is the revelation of the Beauty of Christ for which everything was created (cf. Col 1:15).  God is supremely jealous today that the Church recaptures the witness that in Christ any evil can be forgiven. This is a reality unimaginable for the ordinary human mind and requires specific personal revelation[16].

In the End

Cambodia is 95% Buddhist and if you asked a local whether the traumas of this life make human existence worthwhile the best answer you get would be some form of placid resignation. Buddhism has no vision of the End but we have a vision of an eternal city full of the light of the radiant love between a Bride and a Bridegroom that is indestructible and eternal. This city of light is totally transparent because it is built out of the pure desire of the Lamb for his people[17]. This Bridal city stands in sharp contrast with the impure desires of all the cities of this world; I had an unusual dream about this in Cambodia. The dream involved ascending a hill moving past a crowd stuck in the memories of sadness, grief, conflict, war and death, at the pinnacle of the hill I looked over a vast river scene flanked by two wedding couples[18]. This was a picture of the vision of the Father as the ultimate match-maker who brings together Jesus and the Church in the beauty of his happiness. Such a vision will be dismissed by the sceptical human conscience as hopelessly idealistic unless we see that the glory of heaven and the glory of the cross are one (Rev 21:11, 23 cf. Col 1:27).

As I was praying in my filthy street in Phnom Penh it was if I could see in the Spirit what the Father saw when he looked at the cross, I could see that he did not look at the cross so much as look through the cross, through the absolute purity of heart (cf. Matt 5:8) of the sacrificial Son dying for the world, and what he saw was himself, he saw the fullness of his own glory perfectly imaged without any defect, distortion, corruption or stain (Col 1:15)[19]. The glory of the Lamb slain for us is the glory that fills the eternal city (Rev 21:22ff.)

Even more amazingly, this glory of the Father through the Son is also the vision of the glory of the Church. For in Christ the Father sees the Church presented to Jesus in “splendour, without spot or wrinkle … holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:27 ESV). The mystery of the eternal plan of God for the world is that in the End we will see God as God sees himself (1 Cor 13:12; 1 John 3:2). What do such exalted things mean for us today?

Transparent Today

Western culture is in the midst of a crisis of its own making; for when God is marginalised everything becomes hollow or “weightless”[20].  Our society has long cut the link between sex and covenant love, but tragically over one-third of all children are now born outside the depth of the glory of marriage[21]. Life has been reduced to maximising enjoyment while we can. Much of the responsibility for this superficiality must be laid at the door of the Church. Human beings cannot possibly know the weightiness of sin, righteousness and judgement (John 16:8-11) unless they are presented with an image of a Father whose Jealousy burns against their all destructive idolatries (Rev 11:18). The almost total absence of the sense of the wrath of God in Australian culture leaves people with a sense of indifference about eternal things (cf. Rom 1:18ff.).

This raises a question for each Christian of the sharpest kind; “Can men and women see the glory of God through me?” Am I filled with the Spirit of the heavenly witnesses who “follow the Lamb wherever he goes…and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.” (Revelation 14:4-5 ESV). It is this uncompromising pure virginal spirit of utter transparency that will break the compromising spirit of the age and enable men and women to see the glory of God in the face of Christ in us (2 Cor 4:6).

I was walking along my dirty street in Cambodia and came across a bridal boutique being opened for the day, straight away my gaze was drawn to a white wedding gown in the window bejewelled with imitation diamonds and pearls[22] , but the dominant decoration that stood out was in the shape of a cross. The Spirit spoke to me most forcefully through this image: the church has obscured the cross by coveting the more obviously attractive gifts of God in Christ e.g., health, prosperity, stability, peace of mind. In casting away the blood of the cross the Bride has been stripped of her purest glory. This state of affairs cannot remain (1 Pet 4:17). The day however is coming soon when our holy and impassioned Father will cast a cross-connected net of the bridal gown of Christ across the earth (cf. John 21) beautifying all things in the days of his Coming. On that Day even our comfortable affluent cultures will see that Jesus’ Bride is alive and glorious!

Conclusion

I mentioned in the introduction standing in a street next to an open drain running with the greyest water I have ever seen. Since from our hearts flow the springs of life this messy flow speaks of the impurities issuing from our own lives (Prov 4:23). The all-forgiving blood of Christ however has the power to transform our polluted fountains into the transparent life giving water of God flowing out of our inner being bringing healing wherever it goes (Ezek 47:9-12; John 7:37-39).The crystal clear river of the water of life that flows down the streets of heaven can pour out of us (Rev 22:1).

Today, some Christians want to be seen, some want to be unseen, but very few desire to be seen through. Jesus desired to be seen through that is why he died on the cross and that is how he revealed our Father (cf. John 14:8-11). The vocation of the Church is to be seen through so that all the glory may go to God[23]. My filthy Cambodian street impressed this scripture indelibly on my mind, “When people abuse us, we bless them; when persecuted, we suffer patiently; when slandered, we answer kindly. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the rubbish of all things.” (1 Corinthians 4:12-13). To be treated in this way, to be treated like Jesus and to forgive, this is the remedy for our traumas, the revelation of the beauty of the love of Christ and the true foundation upon which God will certainly build his eternal kingdom.

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