I have received a number of comments regarding my last post: “Human Trafficking? What if I’m pro-choice?” And, I will add, no one wrote to tell me what a great writer I am.
But that isn’t why I write.
Rather than addressing each comment individually, I felt I might be able to address them in the context of a follow-up post. I will attempt to do that now.
First of all, I am very sorry for the pain people have endured, and are still enduring, because of human trafficking. I was in no way trying to minimize the pain, or treat it lightly. I don’t believe it’s a joking matter.
Even though it may be hard to believe, there is a God in Heaven who cares about each of us here on earth. He saves, delivers, and heals. He restores the years stolen from us; for whatever reason. He is able to make us brand new on the inside. Our thoughts, our memories, our horrors; all washed clean with His love.
My comments about abortion, pro-choice, and advertising executives were not meant to diminish the evils of human trafficking. I was attempting to drill down to the root of the issue. Lust.
I believe the stories told by victims of human trafficking are horrifying. And again, I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they went through. To speak of it now must be very painful, like hell on earth!
Though it is extremely painful, the voice of those who have escaped can now be heard! They now have an opportunity to enlighten society of the hell they’ve gone through, and maybe give some ideas on how it can be stopped. And I hope they do.
But the unborn baby has no voice. They are victims with no rights and no voice. They feel unimaginable pain as they’re ripped from what should have been a safe place to grow. That’s what I was attempting to say when comparing the one with the other. Sorry if it wasn’t very clear. Maybe it still isn’t.
Yes, there are a number of reasons why a woman may choose to abort. And, I’m sure, there are some legitimate ones, even in God’s eyes. But since I don’t have the job title of Spokesman for God, I’ll move on.
I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion, as I am. And that’s my opinion; what I believe.
I stand on my belief that the answer to our world’s problems is Jesus.
The world NEEDS Jesus!
And I believe the world’s problems can be traced to the devil. I’m sorry for being so black and white. But when man’s “lease” on this world finally runs out, and God wraps up His plan for the ages, the devil will be completely removed from the scene. Forever. And the evils he’s responsible for will be removed as well.
Some have asked me how I can say the world is getting worse. Simple. I look around. I read of the way things were. I’ve also 60 years of life to use as a reference point. That doesn’t make me an expert, nor does it validate my opinion over others. But from my vantage point, that’s what I see. Not because I’m negative, or even narrow minded. Of course, you may not be convinced.
I also believe things are getting worse because it is prophesied in the Word of God. People may choose to not believe the Bible, for whatever reason. There was a time I didn’t believe the Word. But, things change and so do people. At least they can.
I am not holier than you or anyone else. If I don’t walk with God I am capable of doing hellish things. The same is true for everyone who names the Name of Christ. But even though Christians don’t always do things correctly, and even though we don’t always say the right things or show the right amount of compassion, doesn’t mean our message is wrong or outdated. It just means we haven’t “arrived” and God still has more work to do.
Again, I’m sorry for anyone’s pain.
I still believe the root of the problem needs to be dealt with. The lust in people’s hearts. Do I think it will happen? Can someone wave their magic wand and end all sin, all evil, all greed and selfishness? No. People have a choice.
Adam and Eve had a choice. We have a choice. Our choices won’t necessarily stop all kinds of evil from happening, or even happening to us. But our situations and circumstances do not annul the promises of God.
Jesus came for each one of us. He came to undo the devil’s works. And eventually, all of God’s promises will be fulfilled. Believe it or not.
Someday every person will stand before God and have to answer a question or two. I will. You will.
We’ll give an account of all the things we’ve done while here on earth. Good or evil. Or just so-so. But the question of our lifetime isn’t about whether we are pro-choice or pro-life. It isn’t about how many sex partners we’ve had, or did we remain a virgin all our life. If we fail to answer THE question correctly, nothing else will matter.
The question? What have we done with God’s Son, Jesus Christ? Receive Him or reject Him? As for human trafficking, I will help stop it in whatever way I can. And I’ll encourage victims to find new life, forgiveness and healing in Jesus.
Because, as I mentioned before, I am convinced the answer to all of our problems is Jesus.
“For I am not ashamed of the good news of Jesus. It is the power God uses to restore, remake, and reclaim a life from the hellish grip of the evil one.” Romans 1:16 (loosely paraphrased)
Jan Grace 
15 responses to “Human Trafficking, Abortion, and Jesus”
I agree with you! Thank you for sharing your beliefs and being bold in how you present them. The world needs Jesus!!!
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Thank you, Delaine!
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“And I’ll encourage victims to find new life, forgiveness and healing in Jesus.”
The trafficking survivors who have been trafficked by Christians, raped by Christians, and been forced to hear Bible verses as justification for their pain thank you in advance for reminding them of the worst times in their life. They thank you for triggering them and making them suicidal.
I am begging you as a survivor to keep religion out of any interaction with a trafficking victim unless they ask or bring it up first. Not out of any hatred I may have for your religion, but because you will do genuine psychological harm. You will (and have) hurt people with your words. How can you claim to care for us survivors if you are not listening to us?
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Evember, I write these things not to help bring healing. While I agree that there’s so very much I don’t know about the trafficking issue, I DO know what Jesus can and wants to do. What He has promised to do. He still goes “about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil…”
Because at the end of the day, the bottom line is Jesus wants to give EVERYONE new life.
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I wasn’t oppressed by the devil, I was oppressed by a man who freely made decisions to oppress me and invited others to do so, others who freely accepted. Blaming the devil excuses them.
I also am not going to wait until I’m dead to get better, the idea that I have to wait until after the day of Judgment to have a decent life honestly makes me want to end this one because why keep suffering for however many years until the last days? You need to be careful with your phrasing of that.
And if you want to backpedal and say “no I meant you start a new life after you join the Church and take Jesus as your savior”, again I have done those things. Both of them. My life is no different, I was even pulled back into the trafficking situation for a year, last year, after I was baptized a second time. The scarring on and in my body is not gone, the damage to my jaw isn’t gone, the problems brought by what I endured are not gone, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the constant unending fear that I will be found and taken again, the dissociation, losing time…none of that is gone simply because I believed in God. My grief over the people I knew dying and over my son dying did not end.
Because of people like you using the Bible to say how much Christ would magic away my problems, saying things like I’ve been bought by Christ, saying things like my soul is impure because of my experiences, or using it to justify why no one was there. Why no one cared or cares what happened and why there are no resources to help me. Why what they did is okay. Excusing man by blaming the devil. Being delusional enough to believe if a pedophile or a trafficker accept Jesus their entire being will change, when it won’t.
Things like let go and let God, it all happens for a reason, God couldn’t do anything because of free will. My pastor would tell stories like people in the middle east are having visions of Christ and coming to the church and can’t say why God didn’t give a vision to my parents to change their ways, notice what was going on, and save me. Because of things like that I left the church, because of people doing what you are doing I left. I still read the Bible, I still believe in it at this time, but that has fluctuated back and forth greatly. Because of people like you doing what you are doing. You aren’t saving people you are shoving them away.
I didn’t get a new life when I was baptized the first time at age 8, I didn’t get a new life 10 years later when I was baptized again at 18. I don’t have a new life, I have the same life I had before I accepted Jesus back into my life. The same experiences, the same problems, the same abusive family, the same struggles, nothing in my life changed except my belief that someone loved me even if they could do nothing to help me.
And honestly, claiming to know what Jesus wants is also arrogant. If I came up to you and claimed to know the mind of Christ you would call me out so quickly. No one can know the mind of God, not even you.
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Blaming the devil excuses no one. Ultimately it is the oppressive spirits that influence man’s behavior, but man is still responsible for their actions.
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From the bottom of my heart I am truly sorry for the hurt and anguish that consumes you. NO ONE should have to endure what you have suffered…and no one should tell you that your feelings are invalid. The people who have attacked you and taken away your rights are sinners and guilty of their crime.
When you accept Jesus into your heart there is no “magic” life, free from pain. Accepting Christ Jesus into your heart may cause you more hurt and oppression because others do not accept your new identity in Christ. But, the whole purpose of living a life for Christ is that the suffering isn’t in vain. You have a purpose! Something to live for. Something that adds meaning and hope to our brief existence. Although I am young, I have suffered my fair share of pain and sorrow in this life. As a follower of Christ I have hit rock bottom…not knowing if I could live another day in this cruel world. Thankfully, Jesus has sustained me and given me the strength to carry on. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live life without my savior; my heavenly father; my one true love. He is the reason that I live and breathe. He is my everything. Because he loves me and cares about me, I can find the strength in him to live day by day. He loves you so very much and wants to hold you in his arms and take away all the pain. I will not even pretend to know what you have suffered but I know that the God who created every living being, knows what you have endured. Not only was he hated, betrayed, beaten, scorned and crucified on the cross for our salvation; he was with you through all of your suffering. Mourning for your and the things that were lost; wanting you to draw near to him…
Please don’t let the cruelty of others deprive you of a priceless relationship with our maker. The wonderful thing about Jesus is that our relationship with him is personal and unique. Feel His love in your heart and soul. Follow Him and Him alone.
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” -Romans 5:3-5
You are HIS PRECIOUS child. He VALUES you; He LOVES you!
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So if a trafficking survivor wants absolutely nothing to do with Jesus or religion period, would you still help them? Would you still help them WITHOUT telling them about Jesus or the salvation YOUR belief system ‘promises’?
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I would still help them, but if they really want to know what freedom is, they need to know Jesus.
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I had Jesus, I was raised with Jesus, I was baptized, read the Bible cover to cover twice so far, went to service every Sunday for years. What’s made new for me? If you want to claim God will solve all of my problems, where was He? Your go to argument will be “He can’t interfere with free will”…oh..wait..doesn’t that mean people having Jesus can’t actually solve things? Because God can’t get between a man and his choices and only try to nudge him in the right direction? Under threat of hell-fire and brimstone and disappointment from God? The man who began this with me, who molested me from age 6 on, was a Christian too. He did those same things I had done, he was even in for a degree in theology. Why wasn’t he cleansed and brand new? You’ll say “oh he didn’t truly accept Jesus into his heart”, but he did, he just viewed the Bible through his own lens. He cherry-picked and warped verses just like humans have been doing to justify things like genocide and slavery and killing people before it was even put onto paper.
The man he turned me over to, who trafficked me, he was into the Bible too. Though he wasn’t Christian he believed in the Christian God, he was very into darker aspects mentioned in the Bible not in worshiping God. If he was baptized today and said the prayer and started going to church it wouldn’t make him a different person because he is a sadist who likes raping and torturing people. The structure of his brain is wrong, the chemicals in his brain are wrong, he is a sociopath and that will not change. The idea that if I just proselytized my faith the right way I could cure that monster is ridiculous.
The idea that if I just believed hard enough my C-PTSD and dissociative disorder would just go away, the scars would go away, the fact that I was brain washed into believing I am literally worth nothing more than the price paid for me (if that) will not go away, hearing the yells and screams won’t go away, watching that regular client make the sign of the cross and pray aloud for God to save my soul because I was an unrepentant harlot will not go away. My son will not come out of fetal distress and be okay, he will always be gone and hearing his heart race and then stop will always feature in my nightmares. Years of therapy might, MIGHT, help that if I can afford it. Religion hasn’t. Religion tells me it all happened for a reason, some purpose and reason that couldn’t be met by a limitless God had to be met with unlimited pain and suffering. Religion tells me that I should either go back and kill them all in vengeance or wait for the day of Judgment depending on if you want to follow the Old or New Testament. Paul tells me that a slave should go back to their master. The ten commandments say I should respect my father and my mother, the people whose neglect showed my molester they wouldn’t notice and whose emotional abuse gave him a fertile foundation to build on. My pastor tells me that I should let go and let God, when I waited for 12 years for God to save me, for him to get someone to walk one footstep closer to my bedroom door every night for 3 years, look over my shoulder at the computer screen just once, run a tiny bit faster, for the authorities to do something when they were called in, if anything..save my baby sister. My sister wasn’t trafficked but was molested by him, I didn’t tell my parents because they wouldn’t believe me and he would harm my sister, and he hurt her anyway. I didn’t tell to save her, I prayed every night to keep her safe. Letting go and letting God didn’t do anything for that situation and it wouldn’t better my mental health. Taking action to help myself has helped me, taking action to help other people (and actually listen when they say I’m messing something up) has helped. Waiting for God to fix it didn’t, because He can’t, because of free will. The catch phrases of current church society conflict terribly, to be honest.
Logic tells me that God wouldn’t want that, even if He could do nothing about it. The way the Bible is used currently is illogical. Logic tells me that saying a prayer and dunking your head under water in a glorified hot tub doesn’t change who you are, what you have been through, or give you any resources to fix it. You’re wet and cold sitting through the rest of service, but the rest of the congregation is happy. Your friends and your child are still dead, when you get home your father will still have a reason to scream at you or smack you around, your house will still be crawling in bugs and ammonia from animal urine, and next Saturday you’ll still have to cater to at least 20 clients and possibly record a video clip or do a streaming session. Even now, now that I have gotten out of that situation and now that I’m living in more sanitary conditions, dunking my head under water a second time 5 years ago didn’t change the massive toll this has taken on my life and will continue to take.
I’m not going to wait for the world to end to get better, I’m not going to just sit back and say “oh the devil made them do it:, and I will never ever forgive those men and women of what they knowingly did to me. Forgiving them would be telling myself it was okay. It was okay for Tommy and Madison to die, it was okay for my son Benjamin to die, it was okay. It is okay that they are doing God only knows what right now. It’s not okay, it never will be okay. They made choices, they knew what they were doing, they were thrilled to do it, they have no remorse and never will. Jesus hasn’t healed me because God can only nudge me in the right direction to healing myself, I have severe mental illnesses as a result of this, I have severe physical complications. All that has kept me a decent human being is my character and choosing to make decisions and take actions that do as little harm as possible. To listen to good teachings and not run around acting like I know best.
You have never been trafficked and I hope that at 60 you don’t get trafficked, but know that it is no guarantee. What I went through, the way I was treated, the things I saw, if you think there is no trafficking market for you then you’re wrong. You are just as at risk as anyone else and that is something you ought to acknowledge. You have never been trafficked and yet you’re presuming to say what we need, you are presuming to say if we just prayed each day all of our pain would go away like magic. And as a male you are going to dare declare you know what is best for a female to do with their body. You have never been pregnant, you have never been in the position that women who are forced to make that decision are in. You’re just like most stereotypical males who think that everyone getting an abortion was just sleeping around and didn’t want to deal with the consequences. I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t happen, but I’m not going to erase the MAJORITY of women undergoing that procedure. The majority of abortions are to save the mother, or because the potential child died in the womb and preventing sepsis is important, or because of horrific congenital defects, because our social services are abominable and a person who cannot afford to support a child doesn’t want to put the kid in the foster care system knowing there’s a 70% chance their child would be molested and abused, or because the mother was raped or is in an abusive situation they don’t want the child introduced to, or because if the father found out he’d end it himself.
You do not understand, you never will understand, and you never can understand. Do not decide what trafficking victims need and do not make choices for women who more frequently die at the hands of men than of heart attacks. No that unborn child didn’t have a voice, but you need to realize that no matter how naive your world view, sometimes life is worse than death. I get that you have pet causes, but slamming them all into one mix didn’t work and harmed a LOT of people and the best you have to say is “I stand by what I said, sorry about the pain, yolo the world is gonna end it’s ok”. The level of terrible you are at pretending to care is almost laughable.
There is nothing happening today that hasn’t for hundreds of years. Genocide, war, rape, murder, trafficking, theft, and society condoning those things has all been going on for ages. If anything our society at least doesn’t condone many of those things. If you’re going by those markers the world should have ended during the Roman conquests, or during the 1300-1600’s when all of those wars were breaking out over shiny metal and entire cultures were purposefully slaughtered just for standing in the way. Or during the rampages of Genghis Khan. If you want to wait for the world to end and just chat about all the things wrong that is just sad. You have a good 20 more years on this planet and all you want to do is sit in your office going “there but for the grace of God go I” while doing nothing REAL to change it besides putting words on the internet, words that only hurt the people they talk about that you are pretending to care about, words that cause pain and suffering. I would understand if you didn’t know those things hurt but people you injured have told you, you have no excuse for the pain you are causing. You simply refuse to learn. You waste your last 20 years spreading false information and causing pain, I’m going to spend the next 20 years actually doing something. At least as a presumably white male in a first world country and without mental illness you will almost definitely get those 20 years excluding traffic accidents and crime, or if you don’t take medical care of yourself. I don’t know if I’ll be alive 20 more years simply because what has happened is too heavy and I can’t guarantee sticking around for worse to happen is worth it. At least I can say I actually help people and make a tangible difference. If you were to be 100% honest you couldn’t if this site or bits of pamphlets and manuscripts are all you do.
I honestly think you are only picking the unborn in this argument because they don’t have a voice to refute you with, while victims of trafficking do. I can honestly say I have wished for 18 years, at least, that my mother had aborted me when she knew she couldn’t afford to support me, when she knew my father was a barely recovering alcoholic who never dealt with his issues. Without even mentioning the molestation and trafficking I went through I wish I had never been born. The molestation and trafficking and helplessly listening to my son die inside of me only support that wish. And I can also honestly say that if my traffickers plans had gone the way he wanted and my son had been born, he would wish he hadn’t either. He would be nameless, maybe some other part-time kid being trained would give him a nickname like I did with Tommy, and he would know nothing but pain and torment and the warped theology of his biological father. My son is better off gone than in that situation, I only wish I had made that choice. Given what the last few years of my life have been like, he was also better off gone than with me. If I had made the choice I would’ve done it in a less painful way and sooner, before he could feel that, but as mentally ill as I was for two of the last three years, the dark pits I still fall in, my inability to support myself and still having to rely on abusive family, he is better off.
If you would rather a child suffer, but at least get to tell you “hey I wish I was dead”, than spare them that suffering. If a mother KNOWS their child would suffer immeasurably and spares them that and you want to say “nope”, you’re not a good person. You’re just someone stuck in his comfortable dogma. If you would rather have multiple survivors tell you “hey, no, what you’re doing is harming people” and all you can say is “well see YOU just don’t get it, YOU don’t know what would help you, YOU don’t know you are in pain from my words, and hey the world is gonna end soon cus chaos and strife anyway so why are you picking on me? why aren’t you telling me how great I am?” than actually LEARN and REALLY HELP people and better the world, fine. Have fun in the rut you have dug for yourself.
You’re by-line is perfect, you are salty, you’re well preserved in dogma of your own making and you refuse to hear anything about it. You cause pain when put against wounds. You’re part of tears, you’ve certainly caused enough. I would rather be a more loving seasoning, like chamomile or rosemary. I would rather better the world than make it more unpalatable. I hope your rut is warm this winter.
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I am sorry for your pain, and what you’ve gone through. I don’t pretend to know what you are feeling. I will only say in response, Jesus is not dogma. HE KNOWS and has experienced the depth of degradation and shame you are talking about. And He is trustworthy and faithful.
No pat answer. Reality.
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Your views are dogma, you continue to insinuate that I don’t already believe in Jesus and that is not the case. Your own flailing to cling and prove why you’re right despite the evidence is dogma. Your refusal to learn. Your interpreting the Bible to support views you already hold. That is dogma. And He may know, but you do not, in this conversation Jesus knowing what I have gone through doesn’t affect the commentary. You are not Jesus and I know you don’t presume to be, however bringing up that He knows what I’ve gone through insinuates that just because He knows then you are right and that IS NOT the case.
You are not right about this, throwing religion into the faces of trafficking victims and focusing more on converting them and making them believe what you do (which if you’re a victim of any form of abuse sounds REALLY familiar because that’s what abusers do too) than on actually helping them is not the right path. Providing resources for recovery, physical and psychological, helps. Not trying to force them into yet another mold. If they come to Christ through your example of caring (not you throwing it at them) then that is fine. Making your willingness to help depend on whether you can throw your beliefs in their face and use triggering language and focus on converting them, that doesn’t help. That is the opposite of help. A lot of Bible verses are used by abusers, a lot. A lot of the language the church uses is triggering, especially buy and sell language, things like “bought with the blood of Christ” are triggering, for example. Telling a survivor that the situation they were in has made their soul filthy and disgusting and in need of a clean doesn’t help either, even if you believe all souls are sinful and need that, you don’t phrase it that way with a survivor because it’s damaging. And language like that is often used in proselytizing to survivors. Having someone say those things to me drove me into immediate flashbacks, it didn’t push me closer to God but farther away. Having someone throw God in your face when you’re drowning, when you have barely survived a horrendous situation, when you need medical and psychiatric assistance rather desperately, it doesn’t help. No matter how much you insist it is the right thing to do, I know from experience that it isn’t.
Trying to smash all your special pet projects into one horrendous article was not the right thing to do. And your views on abortion being as terrible as trafficking aren’t right either. Your understanding of why abortion is a path some women have to take is incorrect, women don’t want abortions they go in for them like a bear gnawing it’s leg off because it’s stuck in a trap. They know the consequences, they do grieve, but they know they made the right choice for the child. Jesus knowing my pain does not make me want to have been born, in the situation my parents were in at the time of my mother’s pregnancy with me was not conducive to raising a child, it was not good for me, the way they raised me because of the issues and lack of stability in their lives was horrible. If they had truly loved me and not just cared about how much they wanted a baby and thought it’d solve their issues as a couple, then they wouldn’t have tried to get pregnant or they would’ve had an abortion. Jesus knowing what it is like to be raised as I was raised doesn’t make it better, doesn’t erase what happened, and the kids being born into situations they shouldn’t be feel no comfort hearing someone else is suffering with them.
I didn’t say Jesus was nothing but dogma. I said you assuming you are right, that you are unapproachable, that no matter someone’s experiences you are still right no matter what is dogmatic. That you are arrogant and dogmatic.
Jesus knowing what happened to me and understanding doesn’t change anything at all. Doesn’t affect what happened. A lot of people understand what I went through, most of them just don’t survive to talk about it. Throwing around random tidbits that have nothing to do with things doesn’t change my argument and it doesn’t make you right.
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Call it dogma if you wish. If that’s the case, every one lives by their dogma. Because everyone would have it according to your definitions. Everyone lives by what they believe. We also die by what we believe. What we truly believe will be revealed by our actions and our words.
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I mentioned the development spectrum before, which I would still like to discuss. But I thought of something else I wanted to ask about why you think abortion is bad.
What happens to the soul of the unborn if they are aborted. Do they have a soul? If no, who cares if they are aborted? If yes, do they go to hell? If no, who cares if they are aborted? When is the soul joined with the body?
It’s my understanding that evangelical pro-lifers believe that the “babies” go to heaven if they are aborted. That seems to me like it would be a good thing since they won’t have to deal with any of the suffering that comes with mortal coil and get to go straight to the heavenly payoff.
If the unborn do indeed go straight to heaven, it seems to me rather cruel to insist that every pregnancy result in live birth, doesn’t it? Even if only one isn’t “born again” in their life, wouldn’t they go to hell? If 100 out of 100 abortions result in 100 souls going to heaven, why would anyone want to risk a lesser soul-to-heaven ratio?
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It’s not just about going to Heaven. It’s about knowing God and fulfilling the plans and purposes He has for each of us. God isn’t just trying to populate Heaven; otherwise as soon as someone gave their heart to Jesus, He’d someone have them killed.
Of course, some may wish that had happened when their life is over. Because the Bible says for those who return to their old life and way of reasoning, it would have been better for them not to have been born.
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