I forgot [part 1]

I went into the theater the other night excited to learn more from another documentary.  I’m not one who likes small talk or fiction. I like to be challenged by what I read and the conversations I have I want them to have a purpose, for there to be intentionality… this life is too short to waste time.

How could I forget the 27 million? Their bondage physically, emotionally, and psychologically gripped me so hard almost three years ago I couldn’t escape it. It seemed these once hidden chains showed up in all my conversations, in classes, every day places I had seen so many times before, even the new books in my schools library told stories of those chains. So instead of run and hide, though it would have been easier, I grabbed a flash light and went in for the discoveries. I wasn’t prepared for what I read in, Siddharth Kara’s Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery or the stories Nicholas Kristof and Love146 had to share but how does one know that slavery exist and turn a blind eye? We have a history that shows us we did it once but thanks to abolitionists such as William Wilberforce the trans-atlantic slave trade was stopped. Though the stories haunted me even to the point of dreaming of it at times, I had a responsibility as Christ’s ambassador (2 Cor. 5:14-20) to know more. I heard a former prostitute share her story. I watched documentaries educating and mobilizing. I had conversations with local abolitionists. But there were times when I had to look away as I watched documentaries, I had to stop reading, and I cringed holding my stomach as I listened because of the horror. Those close to me thought I was annoying with how much I talked about it and how I would try to encourage them to buy fair trade. The horror and the words of those close to me drove me slowly to stop reading and talking and searching to know more and speak out. Eventually I forgot.

No of course not fully. You can’t. But I wasn’t doing anything it was just dead knowledge in my head.

Two nights ago as I sat in my cushioned theater seat, God moved.  Nefarious (adjective): extremely wicked or villainous; iniquitous. This is the name of the documentary I saw tonight. It is a documentary on the sex industry. I went in excited then the first ten minutes finished and the air was knocked out of my chest. God was beginning to remind me, who I had forgotten.

I had forgotten His children.


http://nefariousdocumentary.com/