Human trafficking: the value of a human life

When you follow the world news, it can seem that there is no end to the perversity of mankind, and the lack of respect for one’s fellow man.

I recently read an article on BBC news about human trafficking in Thailand. To say it is sickening is putting it mildly. To read about the conditions that human beings have been forced into by people who don’t understand the value of life is heartbreaking. These evil people have no idea that each one of us has the same worth in God’s eyes as the next one. That God doesn’t have a class system. That the poverty-stricken sleeping in the gutter is just as valuable to Him as the royalty sleeping on the most comfortable mattress money can buy.

I saw pictures of people in acute distress, people sleeping on the floor of the jungle where they are being held captive, people locked up in tiny, filthy prison cells. People buried in unmarked graves, dead at the hands of their captors. Not one of these people is any longer in control of their own life. They are at the mercy of those who wield some kind of sick, self-prescribed power over them. And the people that they would look to for help are just as corrupt. The police and government officials. Many of them involved at some level. These people are hopeless, and without help.

The hairs on our heads

I’m reminded of something that I heard recently. “The world has no filler people.” Billions of people, and  God has a personal love and care for each one. He wants to see each one prosper and flourish. (Jeremiah 29:11) Any Christian can tell you that the very hairs on each head are numbered. (Matthew 10:30) The hairs on my head are not more closely monitored than those on the head of a migrant worker snatched away to captivity

I myself have been born into a world where I feel safe and loved. I don’t know why, and I sometimes feel guilty when I see the suffering that people have to endure. But if there is anything I know for sure it’s that God is love. (1 John 4:8) And God is righteous (Genesis 18:25) I can’t doubt that anymore than I can doubt my own existence.

It is sin that causes suffering

But the question remains, why does God allows misery and suffering all over the world? When I see things like this situation in Thailand, I know that it is not God – it is sin. People driven by lust for power and money. People who treat others like animals. God will not control any human being; each one of our actions is according to our own free will. People give their own lusts and desires free reign, and that means that very often the innocent suffer. They are being controlled by Satan, and they are making it painfully obvious how immeasurably evil and destructive sin is.

I’m sure God is more heartbroken than any of us when He sees the things going on in this world. I’m sure He’d like to reach out His hand and make it all right. And we know for sure that He will not allow this state of affairs to continue forever.

He has given us His Word, and His own Son Jesus, to show us the way to live without sinning. Through Him sin will be absolutely defeated and in the final reckoning Satan will be proved utterly and thoroughly wrong. So that no one can try to rise up against God in the same way that Satan did again. His campaign that people should follow their own will instead of doing God’s will, will be disproved once and for all.

And then God will destroy this old earth and create a brand new one, entirely without sin. Without all of the wretchedness that those who are controlled by sin have brought to this one. I can’t wait until that time comes. Because in a world without sin, no one would even think of oppressing another soul, and misery and suffering won’t even be remembered.