Gospel Prism

A story that Brian shared that struck me is the continuous rape and torture of a young girl name New (or Nou). She was chained up and brutally raped by a man. As a forensics investigator into sex crimes, Brian had to watch the video frame by frame of this girl being tortured and raped for 3 months in order to build a case against this Canadian pedophile.

So of course, I had to ask him, “Brian, after doing this, how were you able to walk out of those three months without ‘losing it.’� And he shared with me a most Gospel-compelling thought. He said, “What kept me going was the fact that I knew that except for the grace of God, I could be the same as that man.� And I sat there praising God because I knew that he was right on. He shared how his co-workers were dealing with this through their anger or crude humor in order to deflect the obvious trauma of watching such horrific things over and over again. But for Brian, knowing that in his heart, he was a sinner too, allowed him the peace to deal with such horrific people, and not lose control over his own anger and sanity. Also, he has seen Jesus take broken children, people the world considers trash, and consider them precious and beautiful. When you have that picture of hope, and the love of Christ, and the glory of the Gospel, you can endure things that most cannot endure.

Here is what Time Magazine reported this month interestingly enough, it quotes a Canadian pedophile investigator. But as bad as these cases are, the gory details are left out and the myriads of other unreported cases are nothing less than Satanic:

- In April, a German national was charged with sexually abusing young homeless boys in the coastal resort town of Sihanoukville; the man has strongly denied the charges. The same month, a Belgian national, who claims he is innocent, was arrested at his Phnom Penh guesthouse with a 13-year-old boy; according to Cambodian police, he had previously been jailed in Belgium on sex abuse charges.

- U.S. citizen Michael Joseph Pepe, 53, was arrested in June and charged with sexually abusing girls ranging in age from eight to 13 years. Pepe, who has remained silent since his arrest, is still in a Cambodian prison awaiting deportation to the U.S.

- Most recently, U.S. national Terry Darrell Smith, 55, was arrested in Phnom Penh on Sept. 20. He had been charged by Cambodian police with sexually abusing (and filming 10 hours of footage of the abuse) two girls, 13 and 14, at his “Tramp’s Palace” bar in Sihanoukville. The girls had been allegedly held as sex slaves for five months by Smith and his 26-year-old Cambodian girlfriend before they were rescued by police, who were tipped-off by the low-key but highly effective U.S.-based anti-pedophile organization International Justice Mission. Smith’s Cambodian lawyer has denied the charges against his client.

So I walked away from this weekend thinking, “We cannot remain silent on this issue.� Yesterday, I was reading Psalm 94 and the Lord spoke to me through these words:

1O LORD, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
2Rise up, O judge of the earth;
repay to the proud what they deserve!
3O LORD, how long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked exult?
4They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers boast.
5They crush your people, O LORD,
and afflict your heritage.
6They kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
7and they say, “The LORD does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”

There is a world out there where the wicked exult over the killing of the widow and the murder of the fatherless. This is exactly what is going on in places like Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Surely, if God is angry of such things, the Church must be as well. We must not remain silent as Gospel-centered people.