i just watched this clip about real life Christians being tortured in India which Jane showed me.....
prepare yourself before watching this..
watching it, i remembered this conversation i had with Daniel Pak in Cambodia at the White House (which is a cafe we frequently visited in our break times from teaching the Cambodian students) where he was explaining some of the tortures the Cambodians went through in the mass genocide...
these are some of the things he told me:
- they'd whip people and hit them with wood and metal tools and do all sorts of other torture, and when the people being tortured looked like they were going to die, they'd call the doctors and nurses to come and treat them, so they wouldnt die... so that they could torture them again. and it'd be a cyclical process..
- in S-21, they tied the people up with the metal chains on those metal beds that we saw, and with those sharp axe things that you use to smack holes in the ground to plant the crops, they hit some people with that into their backs, and broke through their skin and ribs, and pulled the livers out of the body
with the liver pulling out thing, i thought that was intense but Dan said some of the tortures were even worse than that....
i can't even imagine...
its no wonder the Cambodians need real healing and love..
it just made me think.....
if Jesus died on the cross, whipped to death, splinters slicing through his back arms and legs with every breath he took, with every movement he made with his neck, the crown of thorns digging into his head deeper and deeper...a continual 6 hours of torture til death...
isn't the torture that happened among some of the Cambodians more intense? it made me really think about Jesus' death...
was Jesus' death actually that bad? worse than the Cambodian's deaths?
it made me ask, 'if God knows everything, and our future, he would've known that the Cambodians and probably other people around the world would be tortured in such a gory, disturbing, painful way...but then why did he only require Jesus to suffer a bit of torture and crucifixion, something that others went through also, to save us...?' Jesus' death suddenly seemed so weak, plain and un-heroic....
But i thought again, and its hitting me as i write this..
it doesnt matter about whether the pain Jesus went through was more intense or less intense than some of the Cambodians torture. Their torture, though they didn't deserve it and is unexplainable why it had to happen, happened.
but the difference with the Cambodians' tortures and Jesus' tortures is that Jesus CHOSE to die for us, knowing he was going to be tortured to his death. He didn't want to, but he chose to obey God, because he loved us that much.
Mark 14:34-36 says
34 “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.” 35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 “Abba,[f] Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
From Pastor Lee's sermon during dawn service today, (it was a sermon about obedience. to obey God is to love God. love is nothing without obedience) we see the act of complete utter obedience in Jesus' actions.
Jesus was the prime example of obedience because of His love for us.
wow. i'm starting to learn more and more of what Jesus' standards are, and start to understand his crucifixion just a little bit more.
I don't think I'll ever understand it completely...
all I know is that He loves us so much.
<3 <3 <3
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