Barnabas Mam’s journey to faith

From Buddhist to communist spy to Christian leader

Traffic moving as the monsoon rain falls on Phnom Penh. Cambodia. Photo: UBS/Susanna Burton (CBA98T-67)

“I was born into a very devout Buddhist family, and, in my late teens, was sent by my father to live in the Buddhist temple in Phnom Penh city in the care of my uncle, who was one of the senior monks,” recalls Barnabas Mam, now one of Cambodia’s best known and most influential church leaders.

“Then I joined the communists for two years. I was hoping that they would be the solution to Cambodia’s problems at the time. They sent me to spy at an evangelistic crusade in April 1972, where the speaker was the late Dr Stanley Mooneyham, the World Vision President. My job was to find out how many Cambodians were employed by the Americans.”

There, he heard the story of the Prodigal Son for the first time.

Sinking

“I saw myself as the Prodigal Son, a man separated from his father, living a life of extravagance, with his life sinking low,” says Mr Mam. “My own life was sinking low and I was not happy working for the communists. In my heart I did not think they could help lift Cambodia out of its problems.”

That day, Mr Mam decided to become a Christian, and was particularly inspired by the example of Son Sonne, the Bible Society representative in Cambodia at that time, who served as Dr Mooneyham’s interpreter. Mr Sonne was one of the many thousands of Christians who died only a few years later at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Mr Mam’s decision to become a Christian was difficult for his family to accept.
“My father was not happy. For him, for me to become a Christian was to betray our tradition and culture and to hate my own parents. There is a verse in the Bible [Luke 14:26], which talks about hating your parents, and my father knew that verse very well! But God helped me to explain that the Bible says that I should honour my father and mother.

“But even in the very first six weeks of following Jesus I suffered persecution – my uncle, whose care I was under at that time, stopped giving me food to eat every Sunday when I went to church. He said, ‘Now you are a follower of Jesus, let Jesus feed you.’

“But at my church I found a hundred mentors. One of them was Chhirc Taing, a major in the Khmer navy, who later died a martyr during the killing fields. He spent two years shaping my life as a new believer.”

Mr Mam remembers how he was too poor to buy his own Bible when he became a Christian.

“I had no money – I was only a temple boy, working in the Buddhist temple with my uncle,” he explains. “But Son Sonne said I could become a Bible distributor, taking a small percentage of the sales. In this way, I saved enough money to buy a copy of the Bible.”

He eventually had three copies, in French, English and Khmer. He lost all three when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh.

Today, as Chairman of the Bible Society of Cambodia, Mr Mam takes a great interest in ensuring that as many Cambodians as possible have access to the Scriptures. He is currently working on the recording of the dramatised Khmer New Testament, for which he has composed the music. He is also very enthusiastic about the Bible Society’s other projects that are designed to reach people who cannot read.

A Buddhist monk: as a teenager, Barnabas Mas was sent to serve in the Buddhist temple at Phnom Penh. Cambodia. Photo: UBS/Susanna Burton (CBA98T-14).

“The Bible Society has completed a project to record 15-minute Bible readings for the radio. Good progress has also been made on producing books for use in literacy classes. The Bible Society needs more support for this work because this is addressing a real need in the country.

“Ordinary schools cannot meet this need: teachers are badly paid and they teach for only two or three hours a day. The children are not receiving a good education.