God's Love

I just watched a documentary on sex trafficking.  I know that we all know the issues on sex trafficking and some have probably gotten sick of the subject being a topic of conversation so often.  Trust me, I know how you feel because this is what I thought when I sat down with most of my team tonight to watch a documentary called Nefarious. 

I’ve never really cried while watching a movie before but tonight seemed different.  I was welling up with tears almost at the very beginning of the documentary and those tears were constantly there throughout the 2 hour movie.  But these tears weren’t for myself or even as a form of sadness for the situation, but for the girls on the screen that felt worthless in this world.  I don’t like seeing people that worthless and hopeless and full of despair but that was the similarity in every story that was shared.  It makes me want to share with the people around me, “We have value and that God loves you.”  I wish I could add, “and how much Christians love them.”  Sadly this isn’t the case because most of us pretend that the people on the streets don’t exist.  I know because I’m guilty of this in my everyday life.  If I’m doing ministry with the homeless and the prostitutes in downtown Vancouver then I treat them like any other person.  When I’m not “on duty” to serve God, however, I often ignore these people completely.

Who am I to say that I can choose when to love others?  That I can pick and choose the most convenient time to serve God?  Because Christ died on the cross for all people, not just Christians or the victims in situations like prostitution.  He died for those corrupt people too.  Even those people so involved in sin and evil.  Christ dies for them just as much as he died for me.  Therefore, we are called to love ALL, not just those that are easy to love but ALL people. 

            In reality, we have zero ability to truly love anyone without God living in us and moving through us.  He is the very definition of love.  Not only is He love himself, but he gave us as human beings the perfect example of what love looks like here on earth thought the example of Jesus.  I believe that it is only through God living in us that we can love those involved in the sex trafficking industry.  This doesn’t mean that we only love the prostitutes, those who we can easily give our sympathies to, but the pimps and the Johns as well.  And beyond that, we cannot love those in government held positions that have the ability to stop this human trafficking but choose to turn a blind eye.  It’s only with the power of God’s love in us that we can love the parents that sell their own daughters into prostitution to make some extra cash for a nicer television or cell phone.  It’s only with God’s love in us that we can love those that have sexually abused these girls when they were younger.  Without God’s love in us, we will never be able to love any of these people.

            I don’t pretend that I’m any closer then you at loving any of these people to that capacity.  It’s so easy to build up hatred for those that are involved in the human trafficking industry.  Hatred and bitterness go hand-in-hand and the Bible is constantly commanding us to stay away from bitterness.  We cannot hate the corrupt but we can hate the corruption.  There is a big distinction between the two.  This is something that I need to remember for myself.  I need to separate the people that Christ died for and loves abundantly with the sin that they are involved in.  I think instead of hating those people we need to replace it with how God feels for them.  I can imagine God takes on a pain that we cannot fathom for those people because of his great love for them.