Putting Faith Into Action

Putting Faith Into Action

Philip Castle (Brisbane)

I was very conscious of the war as I flew into Saigon, South Vietnam, that Saturday afternoon on May 17, 1969. But I wondered what it would be like as I looked down from the 727 window on the bomb marked Mekong Delta and could see the fire bombings in the distance.

What I didn't anticipate was how God would richly and powerfully bring me back into His will. I was 23 and heading for what I knew was one of the great adventures of my life. South Vietnam at that point was still in the grip of a complex and costly war.

When I landed at Tan Son Nhut airport I was told that the Viet Cong had just recently promised that they would deluge the tightly squeezed city of 5 million with 100 rockets for 100 nights just to show they could do it. These rockets were fired from the marshes about 4 to 5 klicks away and landed indiscriminately often blowing out entire houses killing quite large numbers.

I didn't realise how real that danger was until the following nights with the solid thumps waking me as the rockets exploded and the city's artillery defences tried, mostly in vain, to hit the launching sites.

While the danger was not great, compared to some other locations throughout Vietnam, but it did teach me a life-long lesson; to pray fervently and meaningfully to God. It has been my practice for most of my life to pray before going to bed. Mostly at my bedside. The prayers that I offered in May and onwards of my two years in Vietnam were from the heart and always sincere. I asked God for safety during my time in Vietnam. He did care for me even when one rocket landed two houses away. I learnt when we pray we should be conscious we are dealing with Almighty God.

However at that point my Christian life was pretty loose. I had been raised in a Christian home and attended an Open Brethren church as a teenager. I knew the scriptures well. I knew that my father always prayed faithfully for all of our family daily. He still does.

But life had got messed up a bit on the way and I was attracted to good times and fun. I had a disastrous broken engagement to a Christian girl which left me hurt and angry with God.

I had made a commitment of sorts about 12 when I realised what a great man and saviour Jesus was. But I turned my back on God and to this day I'm not sure whether my earlier commitment would have made much difference. I think I was very close to eternal damnation if I had died then. It's quite easy to pretend to be a Christian on the outside without really knowing God on the inside. For me it was pretty dark inside.

Being single I was asked at very short notice, 10 days in fact, to go to join the staff at the Australian Embassy Vietnam. This prompted a sudden revelation with my girlfriend at the time, Carole, that we should get engaged and see how the separation worked on our relationship.

Like many others the first few weeks in Vietnam were chaotic as was the war. It was a mess. This was shortly made worse by me getting the standard Saigon belly which meant spending hours vomiting and suffering until some white powder we nick-named "Saigon cement" settled me down.

But there was a war raging in my mind too. The temptations of what was previously own as the "Pearl of the Orient" were all too obvious. Brothels, bars, the black market and fast life styles were everywhere. For westerners money could be quickly made and anything could be bought. There were few grey areas in Saigon, you either went one way the other.

I believe it was the Holy Spirit's quiet warning voice that kept me safe but I found it hard to know what to do. I was either too busy or too ill and exhausted to find any Christian fellowship until after five weeks in desperation I rang a christian contact and they suggested church.

Praise God I somehow found myself in the International Protestant Church pastored by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. I could not help my tears of relief as we sang a hymn and I knew then how much I missed the fellowship of Christian people and God in my life. That was the start of a real turnaround for me. I sought forgiveness and renewal in my life which God granted.

It was the second important lesson about Christian living; we need real prayers and we need the close friendship of Christians. But there was more.

Saigon at that point was probably the world's most evil city. Sex, drugs, cruelty and violence was blatant, but to my surprise so was God's work and witness. Where evil abounded so did God's grace. I found through that church and the fire of the believers that many came into the Kingdom and broken lives were made worthwhile. Even the church's programs were staggering. I was on the church board for a year and we had the "problem' of distributing about $US20,000 each month from the giving and contributions sent in from other churches. That was in 1970 too.

Faith without action is dead and the Christians there were waging a very successful war against Satan. Those who attended church, and there were never less than 500, wanted to be there each Sunday. They wanted to see God working in their lives. Third lesson, when you meet together as Christians, mean to be there, want to be together and want to see God at work. I miss that church.

But I had another lesson to learn from God. I soon became involved in some orphanage visits. These tragic places were the sewer for the cast-offs of that bitter war. The maimed. lost, mixed blood children of prostitutes or just the abandoned, who had little hope of living beyond a few years. They were in places with less standards than a western zoo. They died like flies.

I got angry with God and blamed him for the poverty and misfortune of those innocents. I screamed at God on my way back from one visit and said "God if you continue to allow this to happen I don't want to know you. What sort of a God are You?"

I stayed away for a few months until a small voice spoke to me and told me that it was grieving God too. God was not to blame, this was the outward expression of man's fall and cruelty to their fellow man. No-one would escape, not even those who ignore the needs.

God showed that I could not ignore it either. I became convinced that while I could do very little for the hundreds of thousands of suffering children in Vietnam at that time, I could do something for one or two.

So I returned and in a simple way just fed a few kids often from a single can of fruit with one spoon lining them up to ensure they actually received the nutrition. If you left food there it was often stolen. More importantly a group of us showed these kids love and for some gave them almost their only adult hugs.

God taught me another principle which is best summed up in the famous statement made by the US President Roosevelt during the darkest hours of World War II; "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." We lit our single candles.

God granted me grace and I became the vice-president of my church. I extended my stay in Vietnam, but not before I returned to Australia and married my beautiful wife, Carob, and took her back for the second year of my posting.

We both grew in the Lord and cared individually for some orphan children using the principle of helping in very small ways. I'm sure our impact was not very great in the scheme of things, but today we have contact and visited two Vietnamese orphans who, without fanfare, have said that we saved their lives.

Once back in Australia I felt let down by the stagnation of the church and to some extent my own Christian life. God was gracious again and gave us three lovely children. But I wanted more and entered journalism, where my witness was that, along with secular material, I write Christian material, much of which is published.

But that is God's doing. I still find that it is a daily walk. I can't rest on my service to God in my life yesterday. I know I need his power every day and I seek that by proper prayer, fellowship, searching the word and putting faith into action.

I've also had to learn that pride has no place in God's scheme. The moment I think I am great, God stops me and almost immediately shows it is only in Christ Jesus that anything really counts. A test I have learnt from the scripture's description of the Mount of transfiguration story is 'Who is being glorified here?' That is the principle I try to apply to my life and sometimes at Christian gatherings.

Like the disciples when the going gets tough I say
'To who else would we go?'
Sometimes being a Christian is not easy because I know how it should be, but I try to keep faithful with the single little candle and I know, humbly, that somehow God blesses that too.

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