If Only I Would Be the Light

I'm angry. Not maliciously, uncontrollably, nor negatively angry. But I'm angry like I think God's angry.

I watched TV while I made myself lunch, and I watched a show on the sex trafficking of underaged girls in our nation's capitol. The information was not new to me: freshman year at Pepperdine, the idea that "slavery still exists" shocked me. It can't be true, as my mother said. Someone would have done something about it. Who would allow this to be happening? Our International Justice Mission (IJM) club, convocations, speakers, books, documentaries, volunteering with anti-human trafficking organizations, and an internship with the OC Human Trafficking Task Force have educated me since. I know that the average age of entry into the sex industry in America is 12-14. I know that many pimps are mind-control masters, and that words couldn't do justice to the incredible manipulation that I've seen footage of. I know that there are hundreds upon hundreds of brothels in the city of Los Angeles alone. The darkness is not just "there", it's here.

So the information was not new, and it's not the point of this entry. I would love to talk sometime, about the facts and what I've learned and what I've seen and what we should do... Because I want to know where we go from here. Sometimes I feel like it's easy for me to say, I'm passionate about human trafficking, I'm passionate about justice, I'm passionate about the poor, the helpless, the oppressed, the marginalized... and for it to sound like I'm talking about a hobby or a resumé item. But it's so much more than that. It's got to be...

Because I understand why God is a God of wrath, and a jealous God. How could the God of Love not be? Lives are being stolen. Freedom is denied. People are held in so many kinds of shackles, so many kinds of darkness, and as we are memorizing in the Sermon on the Mount, we are the light of the world. God is angry and God is heartbroken and there is darkness but the light has come and the light is coming and the darkness cannot overcome it. This is more than an "interest", this is my life. Because I've seen darkness: I've seen a girl escorted out of a brothel, thrown into the trunk of a car, and violently driven around as a form of intimidation and punishment on a school night in Los Angeles. But I've also seen that there's no darkness so deep that it's beyond the reach of Christ:

"How was India?" They would ask. "What did you learn?"

Even given hours I didn't know how to put words to what I'd experienced: what its like to look into the smiling eyes of a grateful leper and know it's you who should be thanking them, to have five orphan girls holding onto your hands and waist and feel like your heart might burst of love, to clap hands in worship with elderly widows who'd been thrown away to die and now knew the love of Christ... So I'd say this:

"If there's one thing in India, I think that it's how unbelievably good and bright Jesus is. Because I saw more poverty and darkness than I'd ever witnessed before. I prayed for girls in the redlight district, and I saw the deadness and the shame in their eyes, I felt the hopelessness as we stood outside the Hindu temple that the prostitutes visited. We had a woman ask us to pray that she would get pregnant, and we later found out it was because she hoped for a girl to raise as a prostitute to take care of her when she could no longer work.

And I also visited Ashraya: a home at Harvest India for girls who are rescued out of the redlight district, shown the love of Christ, and taught to sew and support themselves. Many of these girls were sold at age 10, 11, 12, and forced so service an average of 20 men a night. I know how traumatic and life-stealing one episode of sexual assault can be, the fear and shame of being molested, seen the brokenness after rape. Those things are so very real. So I thought, even if you rescued these girls after a few years, isn't the best you could hope for to be to get them out of their environment and let them exist without being harmed? To have experienced that much darkness...

And then I met the girls. And we sat on the floor in our punjabis in a room with "She is clothed in strength and dignity..." painted on the walls in two languages, and I was blown away: somehow, they were quite possibly the most pure, innocent girls I'd ever met. We couldn't speak each other's language, but we grasped each others hands and touched each others faces and we smiled and we laughed. They blushed and giggled in delight at attention and we prayed and we cried... so much of India felt like I was watching it happen to someone else, but that is one of the most real moments of my life. To know about and fight against human trafficking, to see and feel the darkness firsthand, to expect to meet the victims and encounter Jesus...

Because there is no other explanation for that. No other possibility, no answer. Even if they had been "rescued" from their lives, you would expect to find broken, empty shells with empty eyes. But to see them restored, clothed in strength and dignity, shining, laughing, loving; full of grace and hope, redeemed... That is Jesus. That is Christ. There is darkness, and He shines all the brighter.

Is my heart breaking for what breaks God's? Am I angry when I should be angry? Am I following Jesus and bringing that hope to this world in desperate need? If Christ is in me, if I am to act as His body and there is still so much darkness but He is radiant and He touched people and loved tangibly and He is hope and my life is the Lord's, I must ask... Am I touching, am I loving, am I shining? Because I want to see some darkness shattered and blown away.

"The Light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness can never overcome it."

-John 1:5