Sacrificial Lamb Syndrome

Tonight I had the privilege of listening to the founder of a non-profit organization called Urban Light share about the work that she is doing in Thailand with boys victimized by the sex-trafficking industry. When Alezandra Russell first learned about the problem of human trafficking, she was told that

"Slavery is not legal anywhere but happens everywhere"

That is a hard truth to learn. It compelled her to act, to help, to try to protect one person who was preyed on by sexual predators. Her list of things that she is up against are many (after all, many people are shareholders in this billion dollar industry)--they include the Thai mafia, affluent men from powerful countries, gangs, pimps, etc. These perpetrators don't fear the law because the countries that are supposed to be upholding these laws that prohibit prostitution are invested in the financial stability of their countries and if sex tourism is what is propping up their economies, rule of law goes out the window.

Three years ago, Alezandra visited Thailand and was shocked, angered and disgusted by the blatancy of prostitution. In taking a shortcut through a section of the Red Light District in Chiang Mai, she encountered the place where "the boys" work. She asked the person escorting her why she had never seen this aspect of the sex-trafficking trade before and why no resources were being spent on helping them. Her escort told her that "all those boys are going to get HIV and die anyways so it's a waste of NGO resources." Translation: "those boys are worthless."

Though Alezandra never professed to be a Christian, there's something to be said about how the work she is doing parallels the work of Christ. Jesus' fundamental mission on earth was to seek and save the lost. She certainly has sought out this discarded group but apart from English lessons, self-esteem seminars and condoms, she has no ability to save them.

A lot of the boys who work in the bars are "Akah"--or ethnic Thai (from tribes around cities) and are discriminated against because of their darker skin. That means that with their broken English, their job opportunities are limited to hotels, restaurants, other tourist venues and prostitution. A lot of the boys come from small villages in northern Thailand and in an effort to provide for their parents, they leave their villages to go into the cities to sell their bodies for money. They sacrifice themselves in order to bring money and status to the families they left behind. Alezandra called it "sacrificial lamb syndrome." They enter cities like Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket and are indeed slaughtered, their innocence stripped away.

What these boys really need is hope--awareness that Christ, the Lamb of God, shed His blood in their place. We, the Church, need to be the light for these victims of an industry that displays the perversion of the world. I don't know exactly how God is going to use me in my time in Thailand but I pray that He gives me a supernatural awareness of the needs that manifest themselves so when I can encounter boys who are dressed like women, young girls wearing fishnet stockings and dark red lipstick, women who left their villages looking for hope in the cities, I can be a vessel through which that hope shines, shines brighter than any weak flame our earthly abilities can ignite.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome. John 1:5