Solomon said, "The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern" {Pro. 29:7}. Don’t let the world, and especially not the Church, domesticate your Faith, rob you of passion and holy desire ...numb your consciousness of sin and righteous indignation. I fear far too many of us modernized, Westernized, comfort-conscious Consumers, for far too long, have been lulled into complacency by a pseudo-Christianity, a false Faith that has no relation to the Bible. None. A Faith where we worship in order to get, not in order to give, when the truth is as Jesus told us, it's more "blessed to give than to receive," {Acts 20:35}, to serve than to be served, to become the least and the last in the eyes of the world in order to be the first and the greatest in the Kingdom of God, to live in humility and not arrogance toward others, to believe with all your heart that compassion is better than cruelty, love can conquer hate, the Kingdom is not brought to bear on the lives of others with violence, and our mercy can do more than our anger ever dreamed of {Jms. 1:20}. To follow in the footsteps of Jesus means that for us the sign of the Cross holds greater allegiance than the sign of the dollar.
The Facts: “The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be in excess of $32 billion {U.N.}. Human trafficking is the world’s third largest criminal enterprise, after drugs and weapons {US State Dept.}. Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of $12 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. Worldwide, there are nearly 2 million children in the commercial sex trade {UNICEF}. In many countries around the world, pedophiles find that they can sexually violate children with impunity. Sex trafficking is an engine of the global AIDS epidemic {US State Dept.}. Approximately 80 percent of human trafficking victims are women and girls, and 50 percent are minors {US State Dept.}. 1 in 5 women is a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime {UN Development Fund for Women}. Around the world, women suffer the double indignity of rape and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences for crimes of sexual violence”— figures and quotes taken from the International Justice Mission website {www.ijm.org}.
What can we do about the evil we see all around us, and the evil we can’t see and would like to turn away from? My personal policy is that something is always better than nothing. So, here’s what we can do. We can pray, we can give, and we can engage; we can raise, like my brother Bary and my nephew Nick are doing, both money and awareness; we can be the Voice that will not quit for the voiceless of the Earth {some of whom are right next door}. If you knew your neighbor or co-worker was selling her children for sex, would you do nothing, just let it go on? “Well, there’s really nothing I can do. I’ll just leave it in God's hands.” No way, you'd do everything in your power to get the authorities involved, to rescue that little boy, that little girl. What if it was your daughter, your son? My point exactly. By our willingness to go to battle in this righteous Cause, armored up in the “full Armor of God" {Eph. 6:10-18}, we can open the eyes of the slumbering Body of Christ in the self-satisfied West. It’s time, and we know it... time to take a stand. “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers,” Proverbs 21:15. Amen.
