Slavery

So what should I write about on the topic of Slavery, hmm? I could debate the morality of it, show how it could be done biblically, or give a historical account of the right and wrong ways it has been done in the past. Or not. I just got back from a celebration of the Reformation held at our church. Since we watched Luther last year, our youth pastor decided to use Amazing Grace as the movie that we’d watch this year (I still don’t see the connection). This movie greatly disappoints me because it leaves upon the watcher that slavery does not exist, or only exists in the remotest parts of the earth.  This is a lie.

Sure, it’s a good movie, and I’ll probably enjoy it for many years. But it leads people to believe that slavery is dead, and that is a lie that I cannot and will not stand to see perpetrated in my church and environment. Sinful slavery is more rampant and more severe now than ever before. Yet Christians all around America and similar countries sit on our arses all day messing around with Facebook and wondering what flavor cake we want at our birthday party. How idiotic of us. There are 27 million slaves in the world today. Assuming there are 6 billion people on the earth, then that is .45% of the population in the entire earth. Meaning one out of almost every 200 people on earth is a slave. Yes, people like William Wilberforce made it illegal in any country with the slightest sense of morality. But that never actually stopped slavery, it simply made the people doing it to go into hiding and be harder to find and stop. Even if you live in America, consider the fact that within 20 miles of where you are right now, there is a real possibility that someone is being worked to death, whether that is in a marijuana field, or a sugar plantation, or a brothel. I’m not one to use words that make the reality sound more pleasant, so I’ll just come out and say it. A brothel is a whore house. Millions of young girls are being raped and abused every day in shops where their virginity is sold for a few coins. Women and children are worked to death making bricks and rugs and tobacco. This isn’t 1500, the time when Wilberforce was active, this is a reality today. As you go throughout your day tomorrow, try figuring out how many girls were raped and how many men, women, and children were killed in the half hour you spent catching up with your friends on Facebook. That should sober you.

Now that you’ve been awakened to the reality of the situation… what next? What are you going to do about it? Are we, armed with the knowledge that people are suffering and dying every day, going to continue to sit on our arses and check our Facebooks? NO! We need to get active. This isn’t something that we can’t fix. We CAN fix slavery. We can urge governments to enforce their own laws against it, and we can urge countries to step up to the defense of the tortured citizens in other countries and refuse to tolerate this kind of immorality. We need to do something to fight it. We’re not alone, either. Organizations such as LC2LC and Free The Slaves Inc are working towards this goal, but they need our help. Contact organizations such as these to see what you can do to spread the knowledge of this world-wide suffering and torture, and arm people with the means to help defeat it. It was amazing to me tonight to see one 15 year old’s entire worldview change when I showed him the truth about slavery in it’s modern form and how rampant it is. Our church is out in the countryside, so it was a legitimate possibility that someone is being worked to death maintaining a Marijuana field within 5 miles of the building. If you read police reports, you can see how rampant it is. I look at them sometimes in the local paper, and it is very often that I see some news about the breakup of a prostitution ring or marijuana production facility(I highly doubt that the teens selling the drugs spent hours working in the fields and maintaining the crops that make the drugs they sell, and I highly doubt they legally hired someone to work in it of their own free will, either.). We NEED to get active about this. I’ve seen footage and pictures of slaves, and I can tell you that the scenes you see in the movies are highly censored. It’s almost shameful to see how inaccurately they represent the actual conditions of slaves. I refuse to tolerate the culture’s willing ignorance on this matter, and I refuse to tolerate yours as well. Now that I’ve armed you with facts, what are you going to do about it? Can you continue to sit back and enjoy your nice pure refined sugar when you no longer know whether someone died making it? Can you continue to build houses not knowing whether the bricks were made by children starving to death? I can’t. I have to do something about it. SOLI DEO GLORIA!