Cambodia Today
Jesus said “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than having two hand, and two feet, to be cast into eternal hell”
Matthew 18:8-9
Today Cambodia is in the midst of rebuilding itself, socially, economically and psychologically. The scar of the past, however, will take decades to heal.
The people of Cambodia are among the poorest in the world, trying to rebuild a country where most of the governmental and social structures were destroyed. The fact that most of the educated people, especially men in the country, were killed in the Red Communist purge makes the rebuilding an overwhelming task.
Sixty-five percent of the total adult population between the age of 35 and 40 are women. They head 30% of households of which 41% are widows. Women also constitute 74% of the total labor force. They dominate small-scale businesses and work mostly in the factories and the service sector. In the rural areas, women comprise of more than 60 percent of the agricultural labor force. Women in both rural and urban areas work more than 12 hours a day because of double workloads inside and outside of the home.
Some of the worst problems facing Cambodian women are health condition, illiteracy and violence, both in domestic and public places. The United Nation Development Fund for Women point out that the lack of educational opportunities for Cambodian women is the greatest obstacle to their advancement in society. In many poor families, daughters are forced to discontinue school to help with farm work or housework. Only 20% of high school students are female! The saddest thing of all, is when girls are over 13 years old, many are lured and sold to brothels and become trapped in the world of prostitution. Some girls allow themselves to be sold for as little as $500 to assist their families in paying for medical treatments.
Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy. A democratically elected prime minister with a National Assembly composed of 120 representatives and 60 senate members’ heads the government. The reigning monarch is King Norodom Sihamoni, but his duties are mainly ceremonial. The current prime minister is Hun Sen.
Over 90% of Cambodians are Buddhists and less than 1% are Christians. Only 3 pastors survived the Khmer Rouge purges and in 1993 Christianity was finally legalized again. Most Cambodians still have not heard the true gospel of Jesus.
Many Cambodian Christians ask this question: “Will a person who has never heard about Jesus go to hell?”. Some people answer “No”, believing that people who never hear about Christ and His gospel are going to heaven. They believe only those who have heard the gospel and have rejected it will go to hell. If what they believe is true, and Jesus allows people to go to Heaven because of their ignorance, Jesus would not have commanded His disciples and Christians to fulfill the Great Commission. If it is so, churches have no need to send out missionaries to preach the gospel in all nations. Pastors do not need to challenge their congregations to share their faith within their communities. Why give people an opportunity to hear the Gospel then reject it and end up in Hell? Why don’t all the apostles and Christians stay silent about Jesus so everyone can go to Heaven?
Roman 1:18-25 teaches that general revelation can reveal many things about God. If a person lives up to the light that he has from general revelation, if he seeks and worships the creator rather than creation, God will ensure he receives more light by sending missionaries to share the gospel with him. That is why one can explain how a person born and raised in a different part of the world, suddenly has a tremendous burden to go to a remote tribe in Africa or Cambodia etc.
The truth is a person has no excuse if he dies without hearing about Jesus Christ. What that means is that he would not have believed even if he had heard the gospel; although the majority of Cambodians are dominated by Satan and they die without hearing the gospel, because of hardships and sufferings that God allows in Cambodia, thousands of hopeless are seeking the one true living God. We who have died with Christ and have received eternal life need to proclaim the good news and be messengers of hope to the tremendous number of lost souls in Cambodia.
Today, the non-Christian Cambodians consider the Christian church to be foreign, since the church culture and institutional structure are unfamiliar to most people. For a Cambodian, to become a Christian is not a easy thing. He/she experiences not only a spiritual transformation, but faces rejection and isolation from their friends and relatives. They also struggle to adapt to church culture. For this reason, most of the churches have a difficult time to disciple new converts, as they tend to return to Buddhism after a brief sojourn in Christianity.
Also, most missionaries and Cambodian church leaders notice that evangelizing to the Khmer people is easier, but keeping them faithful to Christian living is hard. This is due to the fact that it is a slow process in renewing their mind. That is why it is difficult for new believers to live as Christians in Khmer society, since the whole church structure is alien to Cambodians. We think that New Life in Christ Church, as well as other churches, should not neglect the importance of contextualization. We believe that indigenization without contextualization is ineffective. For this reason it is important to reconsider the form of Christianity in our church (eg: how we dress, the songs we sing, our conduct etc.), so that the church of Christ may have a local look, rather than a French or American face.
It is important for missionaries to understand the Cambodian social structure. Cambodian society is organized according to a corporate social environment. Hierarchy is very important to Cambodians. For instance, when missionaries start to learn the Khmer language they soon realize that it is built upon a hierarchical system. Thus there are at least four levels of vocabulary. One cannot talk to God, to the king, to monks, teachers, parents, or friends, using the same vocabulary. Each set of vocabulary is used for each specific level of society.
In the traditional structure, hierarchy is based not only on the role that one may play in society but also on seniority. Wisdom is often associated with age. Normally a young man is not in a good position to teach elderly people. Missions have a tendency to focus their effort on training young people, because of their ability to learn the western way. The elderly people are often neglected. We believe that we should not underestimate the importantance in reaching out and discipling the elderly in a society like Cambodia’s.
