What Do You See?

When you look at this man what do you see? Do you see his white hair? His plaid wrap? His Smile? Does this image cause you to question his age? How someone his age can still have his muscle tone? How on earth does he have the flexibility to be able to sit on his heals? How can he smile while sitting on his heals?

I took this shot while I was in Cambodia. A couple of friends and brothers in Christ were in Cambodia with me trying to explore the possibilities of our church getting involved in spreading the gospel in a nation where only 2% of the population claim to know Christ and 71.4 % of the people groups in the nation have literally never heard the Gospel nor do they have access to it.

During our trip we were filming a documentary of sorts and traveling all over the country. This particular shot was taken one afternoon as we were traveling from Phnom Penh, the capital, on a six hour drive to Siem Reap. We had been driving for a while and had just come out of a typical afternoon rain shower which had cleaned the air and what was left of the clouds was filtering the light of the sun perfectly making it perfect for picture taking and right there was this small village off of the road.

We immediately asked the driver to stop the car and off we went just trying to catch a glimpse of real ordinary Cambodian life. After all that is what we had set out to do. We weren't as interested in the normal tourist spots as much as the real everyday life of the people. So off we went hiking down the small dirt path you see coming out of the right of the picture. Carrying our cameras and equipment along with some bread (a nice commodity we had brought with us to hand out as a gift.) I can only imagine the sight as these people who had most likely never seen Americans before watched as these two tall white men came walking down their path into there little village of seven huts built on stilts. This was definitely not on the tourist track and I'm sure they were as intrigued by us as we were of their living conditions. Indeed, for us it felt much like it would if you were with National Geographic out in the jungles filming some documentary of this people group discovering their way of life for the first time.

It was quite exhilarating! After asking if we could take some pictures and giving out the bread Chiv our Cambodian brother began sharing the gospel while Mark and I began taking shots. Soon after we began taking pictures the old man in the first pic of this post came to the threshold of his little one room hut. His was the biggest hut right in the middle of the little village.

I imagine that this village was an entire extended family and that this must have been the patriarch of the family. As we took pictures he just sat there on his heals in his door and watched us without saying a word. He quickly caught my eye and eventually the eye of Mark as well and before to long we were both taking pictures of him in his doorway as he smiled back at us. Usually the kids and people are tickled to see pictures of themselves after we take them and show them in the little LCD displays of our digital SLR's but this man was content to just sit there and let us take his picture for a good thirty minutes to an hour all the while just smiling. Which as we would discover later is not customary for Cambodian culture. In fact when most Cambodians are having a picture of them taken it is customary to look serious. While here in the U.S. we tend to smile, in Cambodia they do just the opposite. So for this man to smile for us most likely meant that he had never been photographed before.

So back to my original questions.

When you look at this man what do you see? Do you see his white hair? His plaid wrap? His Smile? Does this image cause you to question his age? How someone his age can still have his muscle tone? How on earth does he have the flexibility to be able to sit on his heals? How can he smile while sitting on his heals? Or do you see a precious loved one of God, who has never heard the name of Jesus. One who has never known the hope that only the true gospel of the Bible can bring. Do you see one of more than a billion people today who have yet to hear the gospel? Does he cause you to reflect on the gospel you believe in? Suddenly catch phrases like "You do your best and God will do the rest" or "just plant a seed and God will return it ten fold" don't seem to matter much. The color of our churches carpet seem to lose their meaning. What style of music is played and whether or not it is to our liking as we "worship" God seem to become petty.

No, when you look into the eyes of a man that survived the single largest genocide since the holocaust of WWII, a man whose next meal depends on how his crops did that year, a man who has never know electricity or plumbing, who most likely owns the single pair of pants he is wearing, the gospel that the American church has created just wont do. For this man one must return to the true gospel of the Bible. The gospel of Luke 9 or Mark 10 or Matthew 13.

I began this post with a series of questions and will end it with a few more.

Are you willing to risk it all for the gospel? For people like this man? For the sake of the more than one billion people today who have yet to hear the gospel? For the sake of the twenty-six thousand children who will die today of starvation or a preventable disease? For the sake of a church subculture that has trivialized and changed the gospel into one of their liking?

I would like to think that I am