slavery

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Sex Trafficking-the Ugly Truth We Need to Know

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This post will be difficult-difficult to write without tears and surely difficult to read without compassion and conviction. The sex trafficking and exploitation of young children and teens in our country is a harsh and relevant reality. The numbers are staggering, the stories heart breaking and the victims often unheard. It is easier for us to turn a blind eye to the crisis or throw a buck or two in the direction of organizations on the front line of this war than to take the time to ponder the dark facts and undeniable truths associated with the sexual exploitation of child-sex for profit. The best of bloggers can not come up with the right vernacular to adequately describe the horrors these kids face on a daily basis. But we can no longer turn the other way.  We can’t choose the safer arguments of worship styles, denominational differences or Biblical prosperity theology and ignore the victims of these heinous crimes, those which our Savior eluded to in his description of “true” religion. We need to endure the pain of knowledge and the sting of disclosure so we can respond with compassion and tearful prayers for the rescue of these precious souls.

A good friend of mine, Mike Bartel, and his wife operate an organization called F.R.E.E. International–Find, Rescue, Embrace, Empower.  This week he and his team are in Phoenix working in conjunction with the local F.B.I. to locate and recover young girls who have been reported missing and are expected to be “working” the Super Bowl. The miraculous and yet tragic truth is each year many of those they fear will be on hand are indeed found and rescued. F.R.E.E. actively engages the local High Schools by educating them on the issue through Say Something assemblies.  Their street teams are working the surrounding areas and hotel districts handing out cards with missing girls pictures on the front and their bios on the back, hoping someone will recognize them. I have worked with F.R.E.E international and wholeheartedly endorse their work and their efforts. They are one of several organizations who have seriously taken up the call and subsequent challenges of finding these kids and making a difference in their lives through their rescue and their restoration.

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The stats above need no explanation. Upwards of 300,000 young people and kids are sexually exploited each year for profit, just in the U.S.  It is 2nd only to drug trafficking in illegal profits, a whopping $32,000,000,000.00 industry-yes, that’s billions. The average age of girls forced into prostitution slavery is 14, and they have been rescued through sting operations at the age of just five years old! Imagine for just a minute that this isn’t some impoverished girl taken from a run down city park on the wrong side of the tracks, but this is your daughter or granddaughter, your flesh and blood, kidnapped on her way to school or church. The tendency is to believe these girls and this issue is a foreign crisis, choosing to ignore that this is happening in our backyards, under our noses to parents and grandparents we may actually know or worship with each week. Cities where children are routinely kidnapped and put into sexploitation include Miami, Las Vegas, L.A., Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Dallas and others.  If you think your children are safe, you are deceived.

So why am I writing this article now?  There is a big game coming up this weekend.  Major sporting events are proven to be hubs for the trafficking of minors.  Read this excerpt from an article put out by Global Centurian regarding the Super Bowl:

“From scantily clad cheerleaders to groupies to VIP parties, sex and sports are linked in contemporary society.   With no wives or girlfriends in sight, the adrenaline and alcohol fueled fans has the potential to create a concentrated demand for commercial sex. Unfortunately, this demand is sometimes being met by trafficked persons. Some of these victims will be underage — as young as 11 — who have been trafficked into prostitution, as well as other young women who have become ensnared in sexual servitude for a variety of reasons. A case in point: earlier this year in Florida, a number of arrests were made on charges of sex trafficking. In one case a Hawaiian man was caught trafficking an 11 year old child. As more cases are uncovered, the correlation between commercial sex trafficking and major sporting events is being documented.”

It is estimated that solicitations for sex will be equal to the number of tickets sold for the game, with many involving under aged children. Many of these kids have been kidnapped and forced into prostitution against their wills. Many were kicked out of their homes or ran away and left homeless with no resources to rely on but the offering of their bodies just to be able to eat.  Some ran away and were befriended by those who at first provided them with basic needs and then guilted them into paying back the “kindness” shown by working the streets. Don’t be naive enough to believe they have chosen this lifestyle, at least not initially.  Do many remain after being forced into it?  With no family support, with no formal education, many with no high school diploma or G.E.D. and having known no other life, the sad answer is yes. They are slaves to their condition as much as anyone can be.  The thought of one of my granddaughters existing in this manner tears at every fiber within me and should tear at you as well if you have a heart. Books could be written describing the facts, the statistics, the horror stories of those fortunate enough to be rescued, and sadly the staggering number of our kids taken from our country and solicited abroad never to be seen or heard from again. Our hearts cry out, God have mercy!

So now that we are aware of the evils of this industry from both the supply and demand side, let’s choose to be active in aiding and supporting the efforts to find our kids and restore them to normalcy through rescue and empowerment campaigns, through donations of time and money, and through keeping them in our daily prayers.  If you want to be involved, find an organization in your city where you can volunteer.  If you know of none, let me recommend F.R.E.E. International.  You can find them at

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http://www.freeinternational.org

God, help us to be aware and active and diligent in aiding the children you love so much.  May the things that tear at your heart tear at ours as well and spur us to activism in your name.

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Oh Holy Night-an Unlikely Composition Makes History

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All who know me know that Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. Being a native of the snowy mid-western state of Indiana I cherish the memories and traditions of Christmas past and have tried my best to create similar memories for our family in Las Vegas, sans the snow and cold temps. For me Christmas was always ushered in by the seasonal carols-I knew the holiday was close when the radio began playing Joy to the World, White Christmas, Silver Bells, Silent Night, and all the carols that have survived through the decades.  But no carol moves me to this day more so than Oh Holy Night. Of all the carols this song does more to transport me back to what must have been a magical night all over the earth as God the Son and Creator became flesh to dwell among us. This carol has been covered by the best voices in the world, each adding their own touch, from Celine to Groban to Crosby, and my favorite, Transiberian Orchestra.  There is no carol that sets the mood for Christmas among believers more than Oh Holy Night.

What many people don’t know is how God orchestrated the most unlikely characters and unusual circumstances in the composition of this song.  The lyrics were written by a man who would later walk away from the church to join the socialist party, and the music by a Jewish man who did not believe in Jesus the Messiah.  I was fascinated when I first read this story.

Placide Cappeau was a well known poet and commissioner of wines in France but not so well known as a church attender.  It was in 1847 that the priest of his parish asked him to compose a poem of religious origin that would be appropriate for Christmas Mass. Cappeau relied on texts from the Gospel of Luke and his imagination of what that blessed night must have been like and penned the words to Cantique de Noel on a stage coach ride to Paris. Upon its completion, Cappeau was so moved by his own composition that he decided these words should be put to music but music was not his strength.  So he called upon his good friend Adolphe Charles Adam, equally well known for his musical compositions.  Adolphe was Jewish. It was miraculous how the words to Cappeau’s poem moved Adam so much that he composed perhaps the most beloved and recognizable hymn about an event he did’t celebrate and personally didn’t believe in. Oh Holy Night, words by a socialist and music by a Jew!

The score was performed for Mass just three weeks later and quickly accepted across France.  However its fame was short lived as Cappeau joined the Socialist Party and the Catholic Church discovered that a Jew composed the music.  Oh Holy Night was banned for lack of content and musical taste for decades after, that is until John Sullivan Dwight, a struggling Unitarian minister and publisher of Dwight’s Journal of Music found the words and was moved by the composition.  You see, Dwight was an abolitionist and when he saw the lyrics, “for the slave is our brother”, he was inspired. It was Dwight who translated the lyrics into English and first introduced it to America.  But wait, there’s more!

In 1906, six decades after the song was composed by the most unlikely sources, another miracle was about to take place. The alternator-trasmitter had recently been developed allowing voice to be transmitted to ships and newspaper publishers by radio waves produced as a result of the high spinning alternator. Radio pioneer Reginald Fessenden, a former employee for Thomas Edison, first tested this new radio device by reading the first few verses from the Christmas story as recorded in the Gospel of Luke chapter two. Fessenden, also a musician, then picked up his violin and played Cantique de Noel, Oh Holy Night!  This beloved Christmas carol made history and is acknowledged as the very first song ever broadcast over radio, and all at the hands of a socialist, a Jew, a failed Unitarian minister and an Anglican through the orchestration of events by an all inclusive God!  Awe inspiring and yet, not at all surprising-He is after all, God!

Christmas is all about inclusion, and in light of recent events revolving around police actions and injustices, what a better time to reflect on the commonalities of our races and status and not the differences. Dwight, being a witness to the evils of slavery, fell in love with the lyric “change shall He bring for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease“. Paul would write in Galatians that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ”.  You see, if you read the story carefully you will see that the young are represented by Mary, thought to be no more than fourteen years old when she gave birth, and the old are represented by Simeon, who would die shortly after seeing his Messiah. The rich are represented by the Wise men from the east bearing gifts for the Savior, and the poor by Jesus own parents who could barely afford doves for their sacrifice at the temple. The women are represented by the Theotokos, Mary, the bearer of God and her cousin Elizabeth who bore John the Baptist, while the men are represented by Joseph, a hard working everyday man chosen by God to be the earthly father of Jesus. And the outcast are represented by the shepherds, the lowest of the low deemed indispensable enough to guard the flocks against bears and other predators. This was God’s plan all along-unity through love and a common hope and equal inheritance.  We are to blame for creating the racial, societal and even the religious divisions among us. God’s gift of His son was to unite us and reconcile all of us, each different but all the same in Christ, to Him.

So this Christmas season, when you hear or sing this beautiful and beloved hymn Oh Holy Night, I want to challenge you to consider each other as you sing, the poor, the homeless, the black or the white, the Republican or Democrat, the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Atheist, the immigrant-those who would never come to mind normally, and imagine a time and a place two thousand years ago when the world for one night was at peace and as one as they ushered in with great celebration and Holy awe the creator of us all, the Christ child Jesus.  Surely, it must have been one holy night!  When you do, I can promise you that the spirit of Christmas past present and to come will dwell richly within you and the world around you will seem just a little less hostile, and each other a little less different.  God Bless you and Merry Christmas.