Things To Know If You Pray To End Trafficking

I geared this piece for Christians, but the information is secular and relevant to everyone:

If we are going to bring light to this world it is important that we not accept things as inevitable outside of heaven that are not actually so. It is important not to be deceived about how good or how much better things can be. If we do not believe for something or if we resist it without believing the battle can be won, we will not receive it and then neither will the rest of the world.
As Ive been doing some research on the problem of trafficking for the sex trade lately, it concerns me that so many men in the church have bought into the lie that prostitution is "the oldest profession in the world" and that it is just part of life in a fallen world, across the board. It is actually not a natural temptation. The oldest profession in the world is more likely farming, and in some places it is gambling. As of the early 1990's there was one relatively "developed" culture, meaning they have school and higher eduction and police and jails and banks and etc, that still did not view sex as a commodity at all, or have a concept of sex just for its own sake. I looked it up, and they are not a Christian tribe. there are lots of people's in the world who are similar to that. The enemy has not been able to bring perversions we accept as inevitable everywhere as yet, and hopefully he won't. I have attached an article by anthropologist Peggy-Reeves Sanday, and have copied below two excerpts from this piece work comparing at least some elements of our society with the ways and views of their society. Note that none of these people are Christians. The rather developed Sumatran culture examined toward the end is an unreached people-group:

"Getting their information about women and sex from pornography, some brothers don't see anything wrong with forcing a woman, especially if she's drunk. After the l983 case of alleged gang rape I describe in the book one of the participants, a virgin at the time, told a news reporter:
' We have this Select TV in the house, and there's soft porn on every midnight. All the guys watch it and talk about it and stuff, and [gang banging] didn't seem that odd because it's something that you see and hear about all the time. I've heard stories from other fraternities about group sex and trains and stuff like that. It was just like, you know, so this is what I've heard about, this is what it's like....' (Sanday l990:34). "

"Since l981 when this research was published, I spent approximately twenty- four months (extended over a period of fourteen years) doing ethnographic research among the Minangkabau, a rape free Indonesian society. . . . Missing from the Minangkabau conception of sexuality is any show of interest in sex for the sake of sex alone. Sex is neither a commodity nor a notch in the male belt in this society. A man's sense of himself is not predicated by his sexual functioning. Although aggression is present, it is not linked to sex nor is it deemed a manly trait. The Minangkabau have yet to discover sex as a commodity or turn it into a fetish."

Click here to read the full article.

Pornography, Prostitution,and the Economy

Regarding the argument that pornography creates jobs for people who would other wise not have them:


The economy is going down the drain worldwide, but the sex trade is booming.
Porn is addictive, where many other forms of media are far less so, or are not addictive at all.
People are hooked on porn, and they get an arousal addiction. They spend money on that, and don't have it to spend on other forms of entertainment or other luxuries or, in severe cases, even on necessities.

How does that benefit it the economy?
If the money that was going into the porn industry were used for about anything else, it would go a lot farther. If it were invested, it could start thousands of businesses and create jobs that people might choose freely and not out of extreme desperation.
NO ONE chooses to work in the sex trade freely,trafficked or not. If the other option is dying for lack of basic resources, that is not freedom of choice being exercised.
Put the money into building the economy, not into exploitation.

I met a young lady once, in her early twenties. She lived in horrible poverty growing up and suffered considerable abuse and willful neglect (not a lack of resources causing her mom not to meet her needs, but deliberate neglect even when resources were available). Her mom had actually stolen her identity, ran up several thousands of dollars in bills, and then left it like that so when she came of age it impacted her employability and her ability to get an apartment and etc. She had to get her apartments in someone else's name,usually a man who put her bills and such in his name in exchange for you-can-guess-what, and then she paid the bills out of her disability check. Off and on, from her adolescence, she had sold her body. In her late teens, she had worked for an escort service, which brings me to my point in telling his story:
She told me of a a time when a man paid her $7,000 to do something very disgusting, which I wish she had never told me about.... Most of it went for drugs to try to survive the emotional damage that this lifestyle, I guess especially that incident, caused her,and from which she never really recovered. She saidit generates an amazing amount of money but is not worth it. She took huge amounts of prescription anti-depressants and street drugs to keep from resorting to suicide. Several years after leaving that behind her, she still needed a lot of anti-depressants for severe suicidal depression, and endless counseling.
If a person has $7,000 to spend on a night out, how many concert tickets,t-shirts, and EPs might that buy them? There are so many things a person can get that can be enjoyed for many years, that cost less than that. There are numerous ways a person can amuse themselves on a weekend, making memories worth having with those they care about. Addiction of the sort that man almost certainly had robs people of the ability to enjoy those things, and this does a lot of damage to the economy. The music and film industries are both suffering now, along with many others. Yet this addictive and damaging industry is thriving, Its not that there is no money, but little money is going into productive things. Buying band T-shirts supports the band, the silk-screeners, the makers of the t-shirt, those involved with growing the cotton, the makers of the dye, the makers of the equipment used to make the dye, grow the cotton, weave the shirt, and silkscreen it, and all the transportation businesses involved in getting these various products to the next phase in the process. Buying CDs affects bands, and everybody in any way connected to producing the CD or the equipment used in making and recording the music.
When that young woman gave in to that man'swishes, she, her pimp, and drug dealers benefited financially, no one else. She also suffered tremendous psychological damage from these activities, in addition to the circumstances that pushed her into those activities in the first place.

The sex and illicit drug industries are worse about hogging profits then mega corporations are, and do not improve the economic conditions in the areas where they thrive.
If you care about people having jobs, don't support, or tolerate, the sex trade. 
Unless you want an economy that runs solely on hard drugs and various forms of prostitution, don't support,or tolerate, the sex trade.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA: What Pope Francis' Recent Message Said

Today, in our church bulletin, there was a message from Pope Francis. It is mostly a prayer, and one which I fully agree with. It made me realize what a job it is to be the pope of Rome.

There are Catholic churches and members of religious orders working in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. all over Africa, China, and even in North and South Korea, as well as in more affluent nations. Feedback from all these places funnels up the various chains of command to the Vatican. Senior pastors have so much crap come across their desks, but imagine if your desk was just full of wars, plagues, trafficking, international controversies, and gross sin, with all its consequences, on a large scale? The job is harder than being president of the U. S. Nobody asks to be Pope either; they can only accept or decline the task. If someone seems to want the job, it rules them as a candidate; there's no campaigning to be Pope.
 While surfing youtube fairly recently, I have seen footage from the same events, shared by various anti-Catholics, claiming that Pope Francis was bad because he supposedly said at these events that he favors abortion (he doesn't) AND that he was bad because he was saying, at the same events,  that he is against abortion. Some of the same images alleged to be pics of him saying to kill gay people or some such (he doesn't say that) AND that he was pro-gay (he's not). 
Today I did a search in youtube for "pope francis." Scrolling the results, it mostly read like a list of headlines from Weekly World News, (that's a defunct, faux newspaper with headlines like "Bat-Child Found in Cave," "World to End in Two Weeks," "Aliens Steal Family Dog, Leave Life-Changing Messages," "80-Foot Tall Two Year Old Wreaks Havoc in India." One of those actually was a Weekly World News front-page headline when I was kid!), I can't believe the stuff people come up with - and believe! So, before any of this gets distorted beyond recognition by whoever and by whatever means, here is a synopsis of the "Urbi et Orbi, Message of Pope Francis", that I got today in my church bulletin. Exact quotes will be in "" marks:

"Thursday, December 25th, 2014
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Happy Christmas!
Jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour of the World, is born for us, born in Bethlehem of a Virgin, fulfilling ancient prophecies. The Virgin's name was Mary, the wife of Joseph." (That is both the first, of the only two, brief mentions of Mary in the whole thing) 
"Humble people, full of hope in the goodness of God, are those who welcome Jesus and recognize Him." The Holy Spirit enlightened the shepherds of Bethlehem, and they rushed to adore Him. The Spirit led Simeon and Anna to Jerusalem, and they recognized Him as Messiah. "'My eyes have seen your salvation,' Simeon Exclaimed, 'the salvation prepared by God in the sight of all peoples' (Luke 2:30)."
"Yes, brothers and sisters, Jesus is the salvation for every person and for every people!"
Today, I ask Jesus to help our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria, who for too long have suffered brutal persecution, along with other ethnic and religious groups. May Christmas bring to them, and the other refugees and displaced persons of all ages from this region, hope. "May indifference be changed closeness and rejection into hospitality, so that all who are now suffering may receive the necessary humanitarian help to overcome the rigours of winter, return to their countries and live with dignity. May the Lord open hearts to trust" and may he bring his peace to the whole middle east, beginning in the place of his birth.
"May Jesus, the Saviour of the world, protect all who suffer in Ukraine," and help them overcome tensions and violence and begin a healing journey of reconciliation.
"May Christ the Saviour bring peace to Nigeria, where even in these hours more blood is being shed and too many people are being unjustly deprived of their possessions, held as hostages, or killed." I contend for peace in other parts of Africa. "I beseech all who have political responsibility to commit themselves through dialogue to overcoming differences and to build a lasting, fraternal coexistence."
May Jesus save all the trafficked and enslaved children. "Children, so many abused children. May he give comfort to the families of the children killed in Pakistan last week." May he be with all who are ill, especially victims of Ebola (This makes sense, as many of those people are on their deathbed now, sadly). I thank all those dedicated to helping the sick, and their family members, and I make another urgent appeal that the necessary help be provided.
"The Child Jesus. My thoughts turn to all those children today who are killed and ill-treated, be they infants killed in the womb, deprived of that generous love of their parents and then buried in the egoism of a culture that does not love life; be they children displaced due to war and persecution, abused and taken advantage of before our very eyes and our complicit silence. I think of those infants massacred in bomb attacks, also those where the Son of God was born. Even today, their impotent silence cries out under the sword of so many Herods. In their blood stands the shadow of contemporary Herods. Truly there are so many tears this Christmas, together with the tears of the infant Jesus."
May the Holy Spirit enlighten our hearts now, to recognize in the Infant Jesus the salvation God has given to each of us, and to all the peoples of the earth. May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by atrocity. "May this divine power, by its meekness, take away the hardness of heart of so many men and women immersed in worldliness and indifference, the globalization of indifference." May his grace transform weapons to ploughshares, destruction to creativity, and hatred to love, that we may cry out with joy, "'Our eyes have seen your salvation"

I wish you a Happy Christmas!

"Francis"

Now, I agree that wars, plagues, and abounding evil are signs of the times, but they are still the work of the Christians' sole enemy. We are to resist those things passionately, with prayer and other means when possible. We are soldiers of peace and light, don't forget it. 
I see nothing unscriptural, dangerous, or unglodly in this prayer. I see a believer whose heart is broken for the heaps of reports about hideous atrocity, and equally atrocious selfishness and indifference, accumulating in his office daily. I see someone sending out his prayer for us all to read and to agree with. I for one will say "Amen!"

By the way, "Urbi et Orbi"means "City and World" in Latin, according to google translate. I had to put it in one word at a time to get it to translate it, but that is what those words mean.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star