Ratana* was stolen away from her home in Southeast Asia and sent to live in a brothel at the age of ten. Even at her tender age and with her pre-pubescent body, she is forced to be with up to thirty men per day. Many of these men are Western tourists who travel far from home to rape underage slaves with impunity. She is severely beaten if she refuses to submit to the will of her customers. The beatings are worse to Ratana than having to give herself away to a new man every 30 minutes, of every day, of every week. This way of life, if one may call it that, can continue for years. Somewhere between one and four million women, girls, and sometimes boys are forced into such prostitution worldwide.  Some of the children are as young as five years old, the age most kids are playing and learning to read in kindergarten.  Many young girls are promised well-paying jobs as waitresses or housekeepers in foreign countries and agree to go to help support their families in extreme poverty. Yet, when they arrive at their new homes, they discover that they aren’t going to be waitresses or housekeepers, but instead are going to be sex slaves day after day, with no money sent to their families and little or no hope of escape. In many countries, law enforcement turns a blind eye or even protects the pimps, madams, traffickers, and patrons responsible for these horrific crimes.

Even though slavery is illegal throughout the world today, an estimated 27 million people are in bondage. Some of those are forced into prostitution while many are bonded laborers working to pay off debts with an exorbitant interest rate designed to make repayment impossible and the slave labor permanent. These slaves are often routinely beaten and threatened with the death of their family members if they try to escape.  Sometimes young children are sold into slavery by their own parents, who see no other choice in the face of destitution. Some victims of sex trafficking are enslaved within the borders of the United States.

When confronted with the reality of so much slavery in the 21^st Century, some may ask how God can let this happen. Where is He? Why doesn’t He stop it? But in Good News about Injustice, Gary Haugen says, “Over time I have come to see questions about suffering in the world not so much as questions of God’s character but as questions about the obedience and faith of God’s people…. Gradually it occurred to me that the problem may not be that God is so far off; the problem may be that God’s people are so far off” (Intervarsity, 1999, p. 100). Mr. Haugen’s organization, International Justice Mission, is working diligently to bring justice to captives like Ratana and the innumerable families enslaved for manual labor.

In Matthew 23:23-24, Jesus says, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (NIV). In Jesus’ rebuke, He tells them that they should indeed diligently obey tithing and other regulations, but they should not allow their diligence to such allow them to neglect the law’s more important matters, which are justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In the words of Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (NIV). May God find His people in the 21^st Century faithful to the weightier matters of the law – the matters of justice and mercy and faithfulness throughout His world.

* Ratana is a fictional representation of actual victims rescued by International Justice Mission. To learn more about this exceptional organization, visit their website at http://www.ijm.org.