K.R. Dial's Blog, page 2

A Shotgun Wedding and Child Prostitution

In Exodus 22 we read, If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife.

Taking the Law as our schoolmaster, we can learn something of God’s heart for a girl’s innocence. He who has sex with this young girl, must provide for and protect her for the rest of her life.

This idea became what was called in America as a “shotgun” wedding. At one time is our society a woman’s father could force her seducer to marry her. But what of today? Because sex exists outside of marriage in the majority of the American culture, girls have lost the expectation of marriage and fathers have lost the will to insist upon it for their daughters.

In Exodus, it was clear that our God has the young woman’s best interest in mind. He is the original feminist, in that only He can protect the female. And His law was intended to do just that.

So, what would He say of our multiple sex partners before marriage? And to my original point, what would He say of the growing industry of child prostitution?

It is true to say that God hates sexual immorality. But, combine it with profit and the rape of children, and I can envision the flairing nostrils and clenched fists of a wrathful God. Yes, He is long-suffering with us. But, He is not forever-suffering.

Have mercy. 

Just the Facts of Child Prostitution

The beginning of my compassion for children trapped in the sex trade was encountering The International Justice Mission. I could go into great detail of how they continue to impress me with their unwavering committment to these victims around the world, but that will have to be, will most certainly be, another post.

For today…just the facts, lifted right off their website www.ijm.org

*  After drug dealing, human trafficking (both sex trafficking and trafficking for forced labor) is tied with the illegal arms industry at the second largest criminal industry in the world today, and it is the fastest growing. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

*  Worldwide, there are nearly two million children in the commercial sex trade. (UNICEF)

*  There are an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 children, women and men trafficked across international borders annually. (U.S. Department of State)

*  Approximately 80 percent of human trafficking victims are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors. (U.S. Department of State)

*  The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be in excess of $32 billion. (U.N.)

*  Sex trafficking is an engine of the global AIDS epidemic. (U.S. Department of State)

Don’t let the numbers numb you. They can’t count the number of nightmares, shattered dreams, and broken hearts.

 

Is Child Prostitution an Issue Just for Developing Nations?

In my research I came upon an article in U.S. News & World Report 10/24/2005, Vol. 139 by author Bay Fang, that is worth quoting here.

The trafficking in children for sex was once thought to be a problem beyond America’s borders. But the FBI and the Justice Department have now started focusing intently on the issue–and what they’ve found is shocking. Thousands of young girls and boys are falling victim to violent pimps, who move them from state to state, which makes it a federal matter. The younger they are, the more they’re worth on the street. “There is a greater and greater demand for younger and younger kids,” says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “America doesn’t look. People are shocked and horrified when they hear these girls’ stories. They say, ‘That doesn’t happen here. It happens in Thailand. Or the Philippines.’ But once you start shining a light on it, you find it everywhere.”

This is exactly what many Christians are doing…shining a light (the Light) on it. Many churches became involved in the global trafficking of children through the work and message of the International Justice Mission. I was forever changed by IJM’s Gary Haugen with the words of his book, The Good News About Injustice, and began to research and write about global child prostitution. But, during these years of writing, something began to surface in my own Atlanta, Georgia. Our Southern city of hospitality had become one of the top five American destinations for wicked men to purchase a child for sex.

So, no longer can we say that the issue was for the developing nations. We now must slay the beast on our own soil.

Child Prostitution in America Begins at Home

Child rape by a family member is often the first step on the road to child prostitution for many American girls. This crime in the home has to be the most unreported felony in the nation. The young victim is voiceless and clueless, not even knowing that men go to prison for such things. And in the Old Testament, men are forbidden from approaching any close relative.

Leviticus 18:6 No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.

If we are to use Levitical law as our schoolmaster (as described in Galatians 3:24), we are sure to understand the anger our God has for sexual immorality broadly, and burning wrath for sexual crimes against children more specifically.

We as a nation are developing an outrage toward the selling of teens on America’s streets. This is long overdue. But, to ignore the growing abomination of child rape at the hands of one’s own father, stepfather, mother’s boyfriend, uncle and the like, is to ignore the root cause of America’s child prostitution epidemic.

Simply put, children are not sexually protected in the home by loving fathers. Where are their Daddy’s? This need is of such significance, it will be the main objective of the prophet Elijah as told in Malachi 4.

“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

Bad girls on the streets of our cities were very often once litte girls that were sexually abused in their own homes.

The Church and Child Prostitution

If the Church is to ever have an impact on fighting child prostitution, we must examine the sexual practices within our own families. We must understand the wide-reaching effects of sexual perversion.

Paul says in Romans 6, “Clearly, you once offered all the parts of your body as slaves to sexual perversion and disobedience. This led you to live disobedient lives.”

I believe Paul has accurately described the state of a large number of church goers. We carelessly downplay our wretched perversions as “struggles”. Our pornography and masturbation, our defiled marriage beds, our “massage parlor” visits, and our growing acceptance of bisexuality in the high school.

You may say this is our culture, this is not the Church. But, the cessation of holiness teaching in our churches has made the church look just like the world. Clearly it is not just the neglect of scripture from the pulpit that makes the Church impure, it is the welcoming of sexual sin by God’s people. We are a flesh-led generation, ever comfortable with the easy forgiveness of God.