Call and Response

I just went to watch a movie tonight. This was no ordinary movie. It was a terrible, horrific, and deeply disturbing movie. Not that the movie itself was bad, but the subject is all of that and more. The movie was actually very well done and I recommend that everyone watch it – especially if you like great, artistic, stirring music since the movie was made by a musician. It is called Call +Response and the subject is the modern day slave trade.

I remember first learning about this over five years ago when I heard Gary Haugen from the International Justice Mission speak at church. I bought his book, The Good News about Injustice, which I highly recommend because it opens your eyes to injustices worldwide as well as tying in what God calls us to do about it. Then, a few years back, I think it was on a Nightline that I saw a news story on the slave trade. Did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in history? That has stuck with me since. Tonight, the documentary stated there are over 2.2 million children sold into the sex slave trade every year. Human trafficking brings in 32 billion a year. It is the third largest lucrative criminal trade falling in place below the drug trade and the arms trade. Amazing. Disturbing. Pure evil.

Wow, the more I study history, the more I study current events, the more ugly and disturbing the world becomes. Of course, the more I study individual lives of people the more I am amazed at what people can do and overcome. It is the beauty that wipes away some of that ugliness. It makes me want to be like these people. They are my heroes. And yet, what can I do? Gary Haugen hits it on the head when he says we hear about these things and are so overwhelmed we become paralyzed. We don’t know what to do or how to help. I don’t know either. I often feel paralyzed. I want to do something, but I don’t know what. That paralysis turns to apathy. Apathy is what Satan loves. Less resistance makes it easier to carry out his evil.

So, what do I do with all this information I have? I wish I was a hundred different people so that I could help stop human trafficking, bring aid to those suffering in Sudan, help the indigenous groups worldwide that struggle to survive, work with the children who live in such dysfunction they can’t see a way out. I can’t do it all though. But I am not the only person living in this world. I have amazing people all around me who each take up their own causes and help fight evil in their own ways – through teaching, healing, foster care, raising children with love, sharing Jesus, and the list goes on. So, here I am, beginning a blog because I feel the need to spread the information I hear. If nothing else, I can at least be a voice – it might be a little voice, but if others become interested and start to talk about it, then it grows and becomes stronger.

Please watch the trailer and visit the website for Call + Response. It is showing again on October 10. Here’s a link to that as well as IJM.
http://callandresponse.com/trailer.html
http://www.ijm.org/