Everybody knows you’re not supposed to bargain with God. It’s just a bad idea. God doesn’t answer prayers that begin, “Dear God, if you just give me this one thing I’ll do this other thing. For the rest of my life. I promise.”

Theologically speaking, we don’t give God our terms. He gives us His.

But today we have an essay from someone who actually did bargain with God. Trinity Klomparens is a journalism student at Patrick Henry College.



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When Gerald Groff took his job at the Post Office in 2012, taking Sundays off wasn’t an issue. USPS didn’t deliver on Sundays. Then about a decade ago Amazon decided people simply had to have their gadgets and groceries delivered on Sundays and hired USPS to help. Suddenly Groff had a choice: keep his job or his convictions. He decided to try for both–and the case is still not settled, exactly.

Today on Doubletake, a special legal episode about a mailman, his faith, and the byzantine legal rules that define religious liberty in this country.

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Hearing that his father was dead was very nearly the last straw for Radha Manickam. In two years he’d lost almost his entire family under the brutal regime of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. It seemed that God had abandoned him, and one night while lying on an anthill in the middle of a rice paddy, he decided to end it all. But then hope arrived–in a most unlikely place, and a most unexpected way.

This series is based on my recent interviews with Radha, along with my 2016 book about his experiences. The book, audiobook, and this series are titled Intended for Evil by Les Sillars.



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Intended for Evil available as a paperback and audio book at Amazon.com

After the communist Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia on April 17, 1975, they herded everybody out of the cities and into socialist “cooperatives.” Radha Manickam and family were sent to the country’s northwest, where they and 1.8 million others were dumped out of trains and told to start building villages.

It was Year Zero, supposedly the start of the agrarian utopia promised by their Marxist masters.

Instead, Radha watched the Khmer Rouge turn Cambodia into the realm of the dead.

This series tells a hard and brutal story, but it’s also a story of hope and, ultimately, redemption. 

It’s based on my recent interviews with Radha, along with my 2016 book about his experiences.

The book and this series are titled “Intended for Evil.”



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The communist Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on April 17, 1975. Radha Manickam, a new Christian, watched them arrive from the balcony of his parents’ apartment. 

It was Radha’s first exposure to the Khmer Rouge. The leader of the Khmer Rouge was Pol Pot, led the most violent and brutal government in modern history. In its doomed attempt to create an agrarian utopia, between 1975 and 1979 Pol Pot’s regime murdered over 1.7 million people. Many were beaten to death or executed. Others starved to death or died of fatigue or some wretched disease. Mao and Stalin’s Communist regimes killed far more people. But no other government has destroyed nearly a quarter of its own citizens.

Today Pol Pot is largely forgotten. But he and the Khmer Rouge are well worth remembering. Because the ideas that formed the Khmer Rouge are still with us today. Also worth remembering are the stories of those who survived. People like Radha Manickam. We’ll be telling his story over the next three episodes. It is in many ways a brutal story. One of loss and grief and terror. But it’s also a story of hope and grace. And ultimately, redemption.

This series is based on my recent interviews with Radha, along with my 2016 book about his experiences. The book and this series are titled “Intended for Evil” by Les Sillars.

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Last week we brought you the story of Hawler Sheikhe, a Syrian woman who returned in 2023 to one of the world’s most chaotic countries on unfinished family business. She went with a Christian humanitarian aid group called the Free Burma Rangers. WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde went with them.

This week, the story of the rest of that trip. They went a year before the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, overthrew the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria last month. But northeast Syria is still one of the most chaotic places in the world. And, as Caleb found out for himself, very dangerous.

Until Assad fell, the West had largely ignored the conflict in Syria. However this turns out, the people Caleb met there will likely remain right where they are now: stuck in a simmering conflict with no place to go.



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On December 8 the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, overthrew the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. There’s a new regime in Damascus, but in northeast Syria a lot remains the same. It’s still one of the most chaotic places in the world. WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde traveled around the region in November of 2023 with the Free Burma Rangers. That’s a Christian aid group working in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones.

This is the first of two episodes based on Caleb’s reporting last year. Today Caleb will tell us the story of a Syrian woman named Hawler Sheikhe. She was 13 years old when ISIS roared into Syria in 2014. But when ISIS forced her to flee her home, she found herself on a journey that would eventually lead her to Christ– and beatings, bombings, and death threats.

Audio from:

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Today, something a little different: it’s a series of letters Doubletake host Les Sillars wrote to his father last year. He never sent them. He doesn’t think he could.

This episode is about regret and loss. But also hope, and memory, and memories.



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Two women head to Hollywood just hoping to get on a game show and have some fun. They get on national TV and hobnob with Drew Carey. There they realize, in a most unlikely place, that everything they have is a gift.

Don’t forget to rate and review this program!



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Doubletake correspondent Alessandra Nash visits a Christian school in Idaho that’s encouraging parents to take the “Postman Pledge.” It has nothing to do with the Post Office. The Postman Pledge is a promise a small group of parents around the country are making to each other to not let their kids use social media–not at school, and not even at home.

As one parent told us, that’s like declaring war on an entire culture.

Audio Credits:

Damon Allen

MSNBC

C-SPAN

Reliant K.

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