nailing scandals

It took until 2004 for me to realize that trafficking was a Thing. It was devastating to grasp that humans could actually do this, one to another. I still can’t grasp it fully.

Then a network bloomed and the encouragement of others who fought this evil gave hope and courage to envision a world where laws can change, people can experience repentance and have their lives turned around, so that children can live in a safer world.

Baby steps. Sometimes one needs to walk in baby steps. My soul couldn’t cope with the next step of reality: to find out that there are entire regions of the world where trafficking is “needed” for either religious or for culturally condoned reasons. This clobbered me. It was bad enough that this existed. But at least, where I’m from, it was sin and evil and wrong, and everyone knew it.

As God would plan it, we ended up right in the center of one of the major arteries that trafficked girls in the heart of the region where both religion and culture encouraged and condoned it. When a society has most of its children being sexually molested from within the extended family, yet pretends to punish sin, by punishing every other kind of potential vice, something is deeply sick with that culture. Breaking the code is seriously only possible when God shows up.

Which He does.

But there are reasons that ISIS and Book Haram thrive. Clerics have long encouraged them to proactively continue what their leader started. Adhering to the tenants, women and children of both genders are meant to be ‘available’, but should be captured from amongst the infidel populations. Which is why Christians and other minorities are so persecuted.

But now, this year, we are seeing trafficking at a whole new level. When a man ran for office in Virginia, claiming that being a pediophile was just a gender persuasion, it was evident that we had crossed a certain line that must go one of two ways. Then, this week we are finding the top blown off of trafficking at some of the highest levels of society.

I would like to believe that there is a Fresh Wind Blowing. That Honesty is being given a chance and a certain shaking is happening, from the Vatican to the boarding schools; from the seats of government to the many men who knew better. I would like to believe that we, as a people, GLOBALLY, each in our own society and culture, are being given one last chance to repent.

But let’s not be unaware. IF people choose to tolerate this, accept this, explain this away. If people justify this, accommodate this, and normalize it we will have gone the one other way we can go at this junction. This is season is a gift. It’s a grace. It’s a chance to call for justice, restitution, and the putting of certain people behind bars. It’s an opportunity to set moral standards back where they should be. But lets do it collectively, humbly, and with grief. Let’s ask ourselves when we laughed or complied; when we said ‘boys will be boys’ instead of setting standards and expecting men to rise up and be the good men they were created to be. We all have our own dirt to dig up and repent of. Lets set the standard back up high, where it should be, without becoming prigs and prudes or judgemental snobs.

There truly has never been a better time to bring all this filth into the Light and deal with it.

Every scandal can be nailed … and Jesus, who was nailed to the cross to take the weight, pain, searing loss, disease, stolen childhoods, grief, and sorrow this has caused … can empower us to leave this evil nailed to the Cross - IF we let this season on earth take us to the Repentance and Revival we so need.

And lets remember that all of society, everywhere, needs us to do this. Girls in countries where temple prostituion is still viable need there to be a place on earth where every child, girl and boy, is viewed as a treasure, and the very thought of touching them inappropriately is a horror at every level. Rape victims of ISIS and Boko Haram need there to be places on earth where the laws of the land WILL lock away men who do evil. Period.

And so does your daughter. And so does your son.