War. The thunder of bombs, the wail of the wounded, the sharp smell of fear. “It’s something you never get used to,” muttered a U.S. Marine classmate returning from Vietnam; especially when the weight of responsibility falls directly on you.
I felt it years ago as a marine lieutenant, knowing that the lives of 50 men were in my hands. Later, in the White House, I never lost the brooding realization that every decision I influenced could mean life or death to soldiers fighting in the jungles of Vietnam.
But the most wrenching sense of responsibility hit one morning when I climbed into the back seat of the White House limousine, opened the newspaper, and saw a photo of a nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl running naked down the street, the jellied napalm searing her skin after a bomb attack ordered by a U.S. commander. The little girl’s arms were stretched out as though in supplication, her face contorted in a scream of pain and terror.
The image earned the photographer a Pulitzer Prize and helped turn the heart of a nation against the war. But for me, there was no escaping a sense of personal responsibility. The photo was scorched permanently into my memory, whispering the haunting question: Was I responsible for policies that led to this small child’s agony?
In the years that followed, my life and that of the little girl strangely converged. Her name was Phan Thi Kim Phuc, and she was rushed to the hospital by the photographer, where she was treated for third-degree burns. Her wounds were so severe that every time they were cleaned and dressed the pain caused her to lose consciousness.
Later, the Communist Vietnamese government discovered that she was the “girl in the picture” and paraded her endlessly in anti-American propaganda. She was forced to pull up her sleeves and exhibit the deeply ridged skin to visitors from around the globe.
Then, as an adult, her life changed dramatically: A group of believers introduced her to the joy of new life in Christ. Eventually she went to Cuba where she met a young Vietnamese man who shared her faith. They married, and on their honeymoon the young couple defected to Canada. Getting off the plane in a strange country, without money, without family, and without friends, Kim Phuc was buoyed up only by her intense faith. “God guided me. … I go by faith,” she told an NPR interviewer. Today the couple lives in Toronto with their small son.
Meanwhile, back in the White House, I too fell at the feet of God and discovered new life—a life that took me from the corridors of power to the walkways of prison cellblocks. But over the next two decades, the image of the little girl in the photo hovered in my memory, with its haunting question.
Then one day last fall, I opened the newspaper and a second photo jumped out at me: Kim Phuc, now 33 years old, laying a wreath of flowers at the Vietnam War Memorial. There she stood, slim and radiant before the black polished granite, with a remarkable message: She was extending forgiveness to those who had once bombed her family and countrymen. “I have suffered a lot from both physical and emotional pain,” Kim said. “Sometimes I thought I could not live, but God saved my life and gave me faith and hope.”
The sea of veterans in American uniforms spread out before her brought back terrifying memories of war and suffering, as Kim later told a reporter. Yet she prayed for strength to utter words of grace and hope: “Even if I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bomb,” she said, “I could tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace.”
When she finished her brief but poignant remarks, the veterans rose to their feet, exploding in applause. Several broke down and wept. “It’s important to us that she’s here,” one veteran said. “For her to forgive us personally means something.”
And it “means something” to that old Nixon hatchet man as well. The frail, South Vietnamese woman, once so powerless, reached out across the years, as it were, to the man who once held so much worldly power and spoke words of forgiveness and reconciliation.
It is a fitting image for Easter, when we celebrate the power of the Resurrection over the forces of death itself. A world of sin will never be free of war and destruction. Time and again we are promised that this is the “war to end all wars.” But time and again the promise proves empty, and conflict breaks out somewhere else in new forms. As G. K. Chesterton once quipped, original sin is the one doctrine empirically verified by 3,500 years of human history. The only power that conquers sin and evil is the Cross; the only power that provides real peace is the Resurrection.
From Kim Phuc’s first picture, the world learned the horrors of war; from the second picture, the only source of peace. Nor does her story end there. Kim and her husband have nursed a secret dream to attend Bible college someday. When I retold their story on my radio program, “BreakPoint,” several Bible colleges called to ask how they could help the couple’s dream come true.
The world will always be full of wars and rumors of war, but Christ’s resurrection brings peace—supernatural peace—to those who give their lives to him.
Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
