Putting an end to sex trafficking

A Christian Science perspective: How the saving power of prayer can help stop enslavement through sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking enslaves millions worldwide – usually children and women – and is the fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide. While numerous noble humanitarian efforts have resulted in increased awareness, more arrests, and the freeing of many people, still more work is needed, and my heart yearns to help.

I learned long ago about the saving power of prayer that Isaiah prophesied, adequate to meet every need: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; ... he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;... to comfort all that mourn” (Isaiah 61:1, 2). This saving power is Christ, Truth, which Christ Jesus embodied and utilized.

Studying Jesus’ healings as recorded in the Bible indicates to me that he rejected the surface view of life as a false, unjust parody of man’s true nature as God’s image and likeness. He perceived the perfect, spiritual identity of God’s sons and daughters. This view healed sin and sickness, freeing humanity from every bondage of the flesh. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, explained it in this way: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” pp. 476-477).

God does not restrain evil only on occasion; God and evil do not coexist. Because God is All-in-all, evil has no place. God makes man and woman whole and upright, free from evil, lack, or limitation. The harmonious facts of spiritual being are present facts. Understanding this destroys fear, ignorance, and sin and reveals God’s perfect will for His children to live in harmony.

Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Slavery is not the legitimate state of man. God made man free. Paul said, ‘I was free born.’ All men should be free. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ Love and Truth make free, but evil and error lead into captivity.

“Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: ‘Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!’ Jesus marked out the way” (Science and Health, p. 227).

Jesus overcame every bondage of sin, as well as disease and death, proving Life to be the law of man’s being. Although his friend Lazarus had been buried four days, Jesus recognized the supremacy of this transforming Spirit and commanded that the stone be removed from the tomb and that Lazarus come out and be loosed from the grave wrappings. And so it was (see John 11:1-44).

My prayers assert the divine right of everyone against the hopelessness of helplessness. I offer honest protests of truth against the hideousness of slave trafficking and its suggested inevitability. I pray that no lawlessness can resist God’s government, the omnipotent power of God’s pure love for all His creation. Because sensualism is a counterfeit of God’s creation, I pray that both the traffickers and buyers motivated by greed and lust can be stopped, and even reformed, by the same transforming Spirit that Jesus proved.

Seeing God’s children as spiritual representatives of Life, Truth, and Love gives me hope that the deep wounds of abuse can be healed and that broken lives can be made whole, “[F]or with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Putting an end to sex trafficking
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2013/0207/Putting-an-end-to-sex-trafficking
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe