Four years ago we took a bike ride to Washington DC.
We had a great time but I’m still, in many ways, haunted by what I learned during that trip. At the conclusion I visited the MLK Memorial and wrote a post titled I Can’t Un-Know.
I’ve heard individual stories from victims of human trafficking, slavery, and forced sexual bondage. I’ve heard the names, seen the faces. I’ve seen a child-sized mannequin ripped by 400 holes to represent the number of times a child sex slave might be raped in a single month.
I know.
And once you know those things, you can’t “un-know” them.
Becky and I attend a number of events focused on the issues of human trafficking and sex trafficking. I’m always struck by the predominance of women at these events. If one judged by the speakers and attendance, you’d easily conclude that these are woman’s issues.
They’re not. They’re human issues.
So how do I participate? Am I supposed to become the cave man, grab a club and guard the woman and children? If so, the guy in the wheelchair can’t contribute much.
But women don’t need us to protect them. They need us to stand up for justice. They need us to stop being “predators, enablers, and bystanders.” (Jim Wallis)
The images haunt me as they did four years ago. How do I stand for justice? Even if I’m not a predator…am I an enabler? A passive bystander? When I hear the words, see the images, and dismiss them…or do nothing…am I complicit?
On that summer day four years ago, in the shadow of Dr. King’s statue, I stared for a long time at this quote from Letter From A Birmingham Jail:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
I can’t un-know that human beings, including small children, are oppressed, abused, raped, and sold as property. And I can’t un-know that those people live in the same world, were created by the same God, as me. I can’t un-know that we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.
I can’t un-know that He’s given me the ability to do what I can, where I am, with what I have.
That’s why we do the FREEDOM TOUR. We believe in the power of a community that trusts God and works together as servant leaders. We believe God does a lot with our small stone tossed into a very large pond.
Dr. King’s statue gazes across a beautiful tidal basin at the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the U.S. Declaration Of Independence and owner of more than 300 slaves.
What do you think they’d say to each other?
