For a season of my life I traveled the world with an international human rights agency, based out of Washington D.C. I posed as a customer in brothels where girls as young as 12 years old are forced to be sex slaves, providing sex to "customers" 4-6 times a day, six days a week.
I also visited a slave labor camp, under the guise of being an investor, where boys that same age are chained to poles and work around the clock rolling cigarettes to meet their quota or get beaten with electrical cords.
The theology that says ultimately God’s justice and all human suffering will work out in the end falls empty in the face of their daily torment. There is no later resolution as a theological rationale for their current reality. "God's permissive will" doesn't help either.
There is only one cause of suffering in this world – what we do to each other directly and allow to be done complicitly. The end of suffering is not something God does at some later point. This idea is appealing because it lets us off the hook of taking responsibility.
I sat in brothel lounges, looking into the eyes of young girls on a catwalk, forced to offer themselves to the highest bidder for sex. I saw the scars and burns left on the bodies of young boys who did not meet their quota of rolled cigarettes.
Little Johnny doesn't say at 8 years old, "I hope I grow up to rape young girls in Thailand and India." But it happens.
Something we can all do is not condone the objectification of women.
Female sexual objectification by a male involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person. We need to teach little Johnny at a young age to view women differently.
The "boys will be boys" mentality is not legit and could lead to little Johnny growing up and becoming a brothel customer on his travels abroad.

Jim Palmer #exvangelical #ExChristian
You can follow @jimpalmer.
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