Tonight my family and I went to see, “The Help.” (If you have not watched the movie or read the book please take caution in reading this post, I don’t want to spoil anything for you.) I really enjoy stories that revolve around social conflict or injustice. Not that I like the con-
flict and injustice, I am a fan of the heros and heroines who stand up for the oppressed and speak out for justice. I am inspired by their courage and optimism of changing the situation. Those are the kinds of stories that we can learn from and are worth being told.
Often I wish I could enter various times in history and join the battle against injustice. I wish I could go back to world war II and be the person that hid Jews in her basement and opposed the Nazis. I wish I could go back to 1968
and speak out against racism, the absurd lie that white skin is better than black skin. There are so many instances in our human history where humans try and dominate other humans. They use violence and evil to try and strip value from each other. This all comes from Satan…and humans believing untruth. He wants us to believe his lies; such as the Arian race are the valuable ones. He wants us to think that a certain skin color is better than another. That a certain country is better than its neighbor. He wants us to believe that a certain gender is superior or more valuable than the opposite. Every act of injustice comes from a lie that came from the pit of hell. We have to make war against those lies.
I talked about how I wish I could go back in time, make a difference and stand up against injustice. Well that opportunity has come, now in 2011. We live
in an age where there are more slaves than there were in the peak of the trans Atlantic slave trade. Women and children are being sold for sex. Boys are being dressed as girls and prostituted out to men. Every day they are being stripped of their value and this makes Satan very happy. Please take this as a challenge to open your eyes and see what is going on in our world. We must do something and not just stand by and watch.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a clergyman who stood up to Hitler, and he made a very insightful comment. "The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ." God can use anything to bring his people to him and to spread the gospel. He can use evil and injustice in the world to gain the upper hand and still help and redeem. (What a powerful God we serve!!) That quote hit me because God can use the sex trade to bring people to him. But it takes people standing up against it and battling the lie that these women and children do not have any value to make any kind of a difference.
At the end of “The Help,” one of the main characters, Aibileen quotes,
“No one asked me what it was like to be me. When they did, I became
free.” I am so excited to get to Cambodia and sit down with women and listen to their stories. But they need more than just a listening ear, they need their stories to be known by the world and ultimately they need to know how valuable they are. That message, the one that beats all ofSatan’s lies, comes from Christ alone. So let us not be silent and passively watch from the side lines. We have an opportunity now, today, in 2011 to make a difference. Please…join the fight.
