Sex Slavery Flowers in Our Toxic Hyper-Sexual Culture

Recently, several hundred in our city attended a hard-hitting session on combatting sex trafficking.  We learned that dozens of girls have been trafficked from our community alone in recent years, and sex slavery is on the rise in America and around the world.  No family is safe from the impacts of trafficking.

After watching the short film Chosen, Benjamin Nolot, founder of the non-profit foundation Exodus Cry, spoke to the group.  Exodus Cry produced the sex trafficking documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. (See below)

This image of "GIRLS" deeply troubles me because it
demeans my daughters, my sisters and my granddaughters.
It makes them "meat". How many of the girls in the establishment
that this points toward are sex slaves? I am asking
myself.....why are we allowing these signs on public streets???

Nolot said demand for illicit sex is rising because of our hyper-sexual culture and its impacts on young men who have learned about sex from entertainment.  The same hyper-sexual culture can lead vulnerable young women to believe that their sexuality is the basis for their worth.

Pimps enslave girls and young women by preying on their vulnerabilities.  They may shower them with affection, expensive gifts, and meals to gain their trust.  Once they have sex, the girls are captured.  Using promises of big money and threats of removal of affection, threats of violence against family members, or threats agains the girls themselves, they remove them from their family and social connections and move them into larger towns.  There the girls are sold repeatedly for sex.

Sex slavery pays.  Pimps can make more than $300,000 from a single girl, a Los Angeles study found.  Making trafficking too risky to operate is one way of fighting back, Nolot says.  Our county now has two staff in the District Attorney’s office assigned full time to sex slavery cases.  The D.A.’s office reported life sentences have recently been handed down for sex trafficking convictions.

Education is another way of pushing back.  Teaching girls in age-appropriate ways to detect lies in the culture and in entertainment is a first levels protection.  Later we can teach them to detect the moves of pimps is important.

Dealing with the demand side is something we must manage as a wider society, he believes.  If we abandon our young men's masculine education to the culture we are abandoning them to the pornographic culture…..and the pornographic culture feeds the social cancer of sex slavery.  Pornography contributes to sex trafficking and the ruin of lives of young women.   And.....prostitution is NOT a "victimless crime". 

We must begin to see prostitutes as victims — no woman on the planet ever really wanted to be a sex slave.  As long as we believe somehow in our hearts that prostitutes have thoughtfully chosen this lifestyle or that they are part of some lower class of humanity, they will continue to be bought and sold.

No one is safe from sex trafficking, Nolot said. Our daughters and the daughters of our families and friends are not safe as long as there is a demand for illicit sex and unscrupulous individuals are willing to prey on them for profit.  Slavers prey on girls from good homes, not-so-good homes, rich homes, and poor homes.  No one is immune.

We need a paradigm shift.  Now more than ever our culture is increasingly toxic in the area of sexuality.  Tens of thousands of young girls are enslaved because of our failure to confront these evils in our culture. 

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. ― William Wilberforce

Having Life Abundantly

I have often touched in my heart on Jesus' words about abundant life in John's Gospel, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (Jn 10:10b ESV)

In this message, Jesus spoke about how He is the Good Shepherd.  The job of the shepherd, of course, is to protect the sheep, but also to bring them to good pasture and water.  No shepherd brings sheep to dry places with no grass.  Even human shepherds go to the trouble of finding places where there is water and grass....abundant water and grass.

Here's the revelation: people.....the sheep of His pasture.....can find abundant life in the Church, which is His body.

When I see the sometimes broken lives of those around me, I am reminded how great is the blessing of being cared for by the Shepherd.  For those without the Shepherd, there is often drama, and pain, and behaviors that seems fun at first, but in the long term rob people of their joy, their health and even years from their lives.  Matthew (9:36 ESV) recorded about Jesus that "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."  People are still harassed and helpless today.

The Church, on the other hand, is designed by God to care for the souls of people.  There is within the church: leadership, healing, teaching, care and love; the great needs of our souls.  Many church families provide even more elements of good human pasturage: help with relationships, teaching about good financial practice, parenting skills classes, help with moving, meals when people are sick or bereaved....and the list goes on and on.

Does this mean that every church family provides great care for these needs?  Clearly, no church is perfect in this regard.  But it is a place where the Church can bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth for those around us.

We who comprise the Church can receive Jesus' promise of abundant life simply by being actively involved in the life of the church.  We can then add our own spiritual and physical gifts, and our time and treasure to the work of our local church so that others are blessed. While Jesus can and still does touch lives in miraculous ways, I believe that He mostly expects us to be the miracle in the lives of our brothers and sisters in faith.

Can only Christ followers be blessed by this abundance?  No!  Those of us who follow the shepherd should purposely and willingly shower the blessings of abundant life out on to those around us....whether they ever become Christ followers or not. God is love, and He loves all of His creation.

Jesus' words about the abundant life have always resonated with me....and today I see one of the ways that He has accomplished that for us: the Church!  What an amazing gift!