A Reminder to Pray for Persecutors

Chuck Colson, of Prison Fellowship Ministries, writes today of the persecution of Christians in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot and how more than 2,000 of his followers have since converted to Christianity, many after hearing stories from those who survived persecution and torture. Colson tells of one former Khmer Rouge official:

One of the major Cambodian officials cited for crimes against humanity is named Duch. He directed the “notorious S21 prison, where some 14,000 people are thought to have been tortured before being sent to their deaths in the killing fields outside Phnom Penh.” Unlike other former Cambodian leaders, Duch has actually admitted his part in the killings of nearly one-quarter of Cambodia’s population. He has spent the last eight years in a military prison.

“I have done very bad things in my life,” Duch told Religion Today back in 1999. “Now it is time to bear the consequences for my actions.” You see, before Duch surrendered to authorities, he surrendered to Christ. And he was not alone.

Ninety percent of Cambodia’s Christians may have been slaughtered during the reign of Pol Pot, but as human rights advocate Kristin Wright reported, more than 2,000 Khmer Rouge who once followed Pol Pot now follow Christ! Many of them converted after encountering the faith of those they murdered.

“It is a testimony,” says Wright, “to the courageous lives of Christians like [one Cambodian named] Haim, who used their final words to witness to Khmer Rouge soldiers before being dumped in a mass grave.” And now, years after nearly being exterminated, Christianity is growing in Cambodia, despite the new government’s clamp-down on non-Buddhist religious activities.

Jesus commands us to pray for our enemies. In Matthew 5:43-45, He tells us,

43 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Paul, echoing Christ, reminds us in Romans 12:14 to “[b]less those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” In Romans 12:20-21, he counsels us to repay evil with kindness:

20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

How can we possibly do this, in response to those who trangress daily against us, let alone in the face of the evil that the world is capable of? How many times have I repaid someone’s unkindness towards me in kind, rather than with love and kindness? And how many times have I rejected the kindness offered to me by someone I have treated unjustly?

John Piper, in a sermon on Palm Sunday in 2005, says that Paul is following Christ:

Paul’s call to us Christians to love our enemies (in Romans 12:20) and to overcome evil with good (in Romans 12:21) is based on what Christ did for us. Christ loved his enemies, and (in that way) he overcame evil with good. Not one of us would be a Christian if Christ had not loved his enemies and overcome our evil—our insubordination and willfulness and self-centeredness—with his great good—his death and resurrection.

So we are to love our enemies because Christ loved and loves us, who were and are at enmity with God; who were and are, indeed, enemies of God. And we are not to despair when our enemies fail to see the love of Christ in our love for them. Again, Piper:

This is the way God’s love works for his enemies, and it is the way our love works for our enemies. Our desire is that they would repent and come to a knowledge of the truth. But if they don’t, the very love that we are showing increases the weight of wrath on their head. The more of God’s mercy that people reject, the more wrath they heap up upon themselves.

It is likely that Duch, the former Khmer official, has repented and turned to Christ in part in response to the love of Christ he saw in his captives.