Human Trafficking...Here?

    It’s hard for me to believe this is still going on.
    I’m writing this during a break while attending a conference in Chicago on human trafficking and forced labor/sex slavery in Cook County. I knew it was happening in other parts of the world, and I’d heard that it is here in the states, but I’m shocked as to the degree of the problem right here in our backyard. It’s quite an eye-opening experience to hear an African American speak passionately about the problem of slavery world-wide declaring that there are more people enslaved against their will today, internationally, than at any time during the mass slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries. That’s quite a statement.
    I assumed this was largely an international issue...a problem in places like Thailand and eastern Europe and the third world. And it is a problem around the world.
    But human trafficking is huge right here in Cook County….a lot of it to service people who live in the suburbs. And most of it is domestic, involving American kids held captive for prostitution and the like. This is happening under our noses.
    There are those girls promised lucrative employment in the US and given passage into the country, only to find themselves held captive in a dark cellar for months, before permitted to “go to work” in a strip club or on a street corner. Some are stashed away in a sweat shop, forced to work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, for no pay. They don’t speak the language and come from such a dramatically different culture that they are reticent to escape even when afforded the opportunity. But many others are young American teenage and even preteen girls from broken homes and very difficult family situations who are wooed, raped, drugged and beaten, until they are put out on the street to make money for their pimp.
    We’ve all heard things on the news here and there. With the movie, “Taken,” a couple of years ago, human sex trafficking became a topic of conversation in a lot of circles. But is this something we should be talking about in church? Isn’t this something that should be left to politicians and law enforcement officials?
    I’m glad William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison didn’t think so. If it were not for the efforts of these Christian leaders and the church then, the legal African slave trade of 200 years ago may still be going on. God’s people have always taken seriously our call to defend the defenseless and protect the vulnerable and the innocent. There are children in extreme jeopardy who desperately need our attention.
    On the weekend of September 15-16, The Bridge will be focusing on the problem of Human Trafficking in our weekend services as an example for our series on Spiritual Warfare (“Armor”). We will have the special agent overseeing human trafficking for Homeland Security in Cook County, with us that day, as well as the National Directory of “Promise,” a ministry of The Salvation Army that assists victims of sex trafficking after they are rescued. I really hope you are with us that weekend and I really hope you get the word out into the community to come and join us to learn what we can do about this major problem in our day.
    After all, Paul said that we are in a spiritual war. Ultimately, I believe these battles are fought in the spiritual arena. The rest of the world may apply bandages and splints, but the only permanent solution to the horrendous social issues of our day are produced when victories are won against “the spiritual forces” of “this present darkness” (Ephesians 6:12). People are being destroyed because the schemes of the evil one are accomplished almost uncontested.
    But we are The Church. And Jesus said, “...the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” September 15-16 at The Bridge is about planning our attack on those gates.