Nicholas Kristoff's Op-Ed piece in yesterday's NY Times was the heart-breaking story of M. Her plight elicited a deep rage in me. She's a smart 10 year old girl in Kolkata, India who is about to be sold into prostitution by her impoverished family.
He writes, "Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. ... 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes. M. seemed poised to escape this fate with the help of one of my heroes, Urmi Basu, a social worker who in 2000 started the New Light shelter program for prostitutes and their children. M., with her winning personality and keen mind, began to bloom with the help of New Light. Both her parents are illiterate, but she learned English and earned excellent grades in an English-language school for middle-class children outside the red-light district."
Now she is being sent back to her village where her fate is some dinghy brothel in a city, where she'll be alone, a candidate for HIV, a sex slave in a life without hope!
(read more http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&hp)
Sex slavery is one of those things you just don't think ought to still exist in the 21st century, do you? But, we're a sex-crazed world it seems. Right after reading about M.'s plight, I saw promotion on Facebook of a new "ha, ha, laugh out loud because we're so sophisticated" movie that is entitled "A Good, Old-Fashioned Orgy." The movie's website says that it's a comedy (?) about a rich kid (read delayed adolescent, irresponsible 30 year-old man, living on Daddy's money) in the Hampton's who decides to close out his summer by convincing his friends to join a drunken orgy. Critics say it's a riot.
So our kids (they will see it in spite of the "R" rating) will learn that having an orgy is real funny. If it happens on the movie screen it must be normal, they think. Of course, the missing part is the regret that the participants feel when they sober up the next day. Do we get to see the the humiliation of the girls who get pushed into sex they don't want? And, nobody's talking about herpes. Those things would be real downers, taking away from the hilarity.
I watched American Idol (a family program right?) a couple of times this season. One featured Lady Gaga in leather underwear. While she played the piano she stood up on the bench, backside in the air! Another night during a rendition of "Fat Bottom Girls" a bevy of shapely women shook their barely concealed behinds at the crowd. That was followed by J. Lo joining her husband on stage. She wore very little clothing and shook it all (use your imagination) to titillate the crowd.
Some of you are smiling at the preacher who's old, offended, and out of touch. "Poor Jerry," you're thinking, "Such a prude." Perhaps I am. But, I do not really think so. I believe human sexuality is a wonderful gift from God that makes our lives rich, that provides immense pleasure, and creates strong bonds with our love. Beauty is nothing to hide!
However, when we make sex a free for all, when we celebrate lewd behavior in movies and feature near-nakedness on family TV, we ought not be surprised when our 12 year daughter comes down in the morning looking like she's going out to turn a trick or that our son thinks that treating all women like sex objects made to be used for his pleasure is normal male behavior.
Stories about men out of control in hotels (just been in the news), about teachers having sex with students (becoming so common it's not even making the front page), about sex assaults happening in our small towns, are the fruit of the sexual revolution. A half-century ago we decided to throw away the guidelines, discard modesty, and worship blatant sensuality. Now, we have record rates of infidelity, broken marriages, and pedophilia. Is there a connection? Internet porn is one of the richest businesses online. And ... yes, most tragically - in this filthy, broken world pretty little girls are sold into sex slavery.
Kristoff concluded his article with this provocative call to action: "What I do know is that it is surreal that these scenes are unfolding in the 21st century. The peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the 1780s, when just under 80,000 slaves a year were transported from Africa to the New World. These days, UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million children a year enter the commercial sex trade. Multiply M. by 1.8 million, and you understand the need for a new abolitionist movement."
The word from the Word -
"When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too-the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.
And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God.
It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better.
But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk. Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete." (Colossians 3:4-10, The Message)
Are you cleaned up in Christ or filthy still in your sin?
Are you part of the solution (building the Kingdom of Christ) or part of the problem, feeding the market for sin?
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