In a recent post, I spoke about my burden for modern day slavery and human trafficking,
with an emphasis on the need for awareness and action.
Since then, I have continued educating myself on these issues
and have honestly been broken over my findings.
One book that has greatly opened my eyes is Half The Sky
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
I highly encourage you to take the time to read it for yourself,
but I want to share a view portions that have furthered my zeal for action.
Below you will find a few facts extracted from Half The Sky:
39,000 baby girls die annually in China because parents don't give them the same medical care and attention that boys receive - and that is just in the first year of life.
In India, a "bride burning" - to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry - takes place approximately once every two hours, but rarely is found to be news worthy.
In Pakistan, Isalamabad, and Rawalpindi, 5,000 women and girls
have been doused in kerosine and set alight by family members or in-laws - or perhaps worse, been seared with acid - for
perceived disobedience just in the last nine yeas.
Amartya Sen, the ebullient Nobel Prize - winning economist, has developed a gauge of gender inequality that is a striking reminder of the stakes involved.
"More than 100 million women are missing."
Did you catch that?
100 million women are missing.
Think about the profound impact that your
mother, wife, sister, daughter, and so on have had on your life.
Now consider your life without them,
as if they had just completely vanished from the face of this Earth,
because that is what has happened to 100 million women.
100 million world changers.
100 million nurturing mothers.
100 million loving sisters.
100 million wise grandmothers.
GONE.
You see, women statistically have a longer lifespan than males,
so in much of the world there are more females in males.
However, in places where girls have a deeply unequal status, they vanish.
2 million women disappear every single year as a result of gender discrimination.
Successive research on gender discrimination has proven that in India,
a little girl dies from discrimination every four minutes.
How is this so? When a little boy in India is in need of medical care, He is taken to the hospital. When a young girl is in the same situation, her parents often times choose to wait it out, eventually resulting in the child dying a preventable death.
More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century.
This is the reality of the world that we live in today.
Prior to reading Half the Sky,
the weight of gender discrimination did not resonate with me at all.
In America, gender discrimination is typically confined to issues such as
unequal pay and a crude gesture here and there in the workplace.
I acknowledge that these are problems,
but America will have truly reached the pinnacle of a nation without virtue
if we are at the point where we would rather spend time
fighting for equal pay amongst men and women,
rather than working to end maternal mortality, sex trafficking, and gender violence,
which are direct results of gender discrimination.
Better yet, where is the Church in terms of these issues?
We serve a God who came to this Earth to proclaim a radical message of
freedom and liberty for those held captive,
a message that swam greatly against the tide of society,
by proclaiming that
"In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female."
We must get out of the pews, out of our million dollar sanctuaries,
out of our state of comfortable Christianity,
and do something.
Better yet, where is the Church in terms of these issues?
We serve a God who came to this Earth to proclaim a radical message of
freedom and liberty for those held captive,
a message that swam greatly against the tide of society,
by proclaiming that
"In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female."
We must get out of the pews, out of our million dollar sanctuaries,
out of our state of comfortable Christianity,
and do something.
Please hear me out,
the 50 cents less that women in America earn in comparison with men
is a form of discrimination,
but this is not a life or death issue.
To women in China, Pakistan, Istanbul, and countless other foreign countries,
gender discrimination demands their life.
In fact, every year, gender discrimination will claim 2 million female lives.
Women's ministry has been my passion for some time now,
but I never understood the weight of this call until I opened my eyes to the plight of women today.
Satan is after women, and I firmly believe that He is
fighting with the full force and fury of hell to see to it that
gender discrimination continues on the path which it is currently taking.
John 10:10 says that "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy,"
but Christ has come that "they may have life, and have it to the full."
Modern day slavery and the extinction of millions of women
marks the success of Satan's goal and desire:
to steal, kill and destroy.
May we embody the will of Christ as we act out of
His strength and for His glory to
bring the abundant life in Christ
to the modern day slaves who are begging for you and I to speak and act on their behalf.
