Words Half Heard: freedom

“you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

He had a good time stringing out the possibilities

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

I see lots of people serving anger, pride, stupidity, selfishness, greed.

Ambition.

Arrogance.

Longing for power.

I see others serving a vision of unshackled identity lived in constant reaction to any hint of limits.

Serving a delusional vision of unencumbered selfhood.

There’s no limit to what we can serve.

No end to the arguments over rights.

But real freedom seems in short supply.

It’s interesting to see how topics near and dear to Paul, the apostle, in the decades after Christ’s death, are still just as relevant on the other side of the globe, two thousand years later.

Freedom: in the shadow of the Roman empire, the Jews longed to be free.

Slaves served their masters, women served men. Many served idols, gods of every description, paid taxes to prefects or procurators, tried on sexual or philosophical identities, reveled in uncensored pleasures.

In his letters to believers in Corinth, living in the shadow of the brothels of Aphrodite’s temple, Paul probed the meaning of the freedom Christ had promised:

Were they free to do what they wanted? Free of the law? Of guilt? Of sin?

Free to assert their own rights in every situation?

Free to seek rights at the expense of others?

I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others. I Corinthians 10:23

The freedom Paul described was not the freedom to do or eat or say what he wanted, not the freedom to put his own rights first, or to enjoy the pleasures of the pagan world around him.

It was the freedom to become fully what he was made to be:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

This Lent I’ve been trying to focus on things that will last: values that extend beyond this strange time we’re living in.

I find myself drawn to the freedom Paul wrote of, a freedom that comes not at the expense of others, but in service to others; not in opposition to God’s plan, but in deep obedience to his purposes.

Somehow our current culture has come to believe that freedom and discipline are in some way opposed, yet in the most basic, practical ways that idea is full of contradiction. When my children were small, I had to restrict their freedom to roam to keep them safe and make sure they didn’t wander into danger. As they became more reliably obedient, more willing to follow direction, I let them go further, then further. Their own self-discipline, then and in the decades since, has opened doors of opportunity and given them great freedom.

Tim Keller, well-loved pastor of Redeemer Church in New York, explains it like this:

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. Experimentation, risk, and making mistakes bring growth only if, over time, they show us our limits as well as our abilities. If we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints–why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth? Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? (The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism)

For too long we've naively celebrated lack of restraint as somehow akin to freedom, and now we are seeing the consequence as unrestrained enthusiasm for an unrestrained candidate stirs racial unrest, nativist fervor, and mounting, unrestrained anger.

I'm looking for leaders with a different kind of freedom: the freedom to say what needs to be said with dignity, grace, and gentle good humor. The freedom to put the needs of the weakest first, to stand firm for the common good in a way that unites rather than divides.

In Romans Paul wrote:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Romans 8:18-21

That passage is too big to get my head around: it suggests that the pain of the world is tied to human behavior, that the healing of the world is tied to liberating freedom demonstrated by God’s children.

I find myself wondering how to live in that glorious freedom now, today, and find that freedom is realized in small, incremental steps: small daily choices that ripple out.

Freedom from anxiety and anger, even if that means turning off the radio, limiting my exposure to sources of news that stir unrestrained emotion.

Freedom to say what needs to be said, or do what needs to be done, without second guessing, or wondering what others will think.

Freedom from too much stuff, too much spending, too much consumption.

Freedom from needing recognition, or safety, or comfort, or my own way.

Freedom to live as a much-loved child of God.

This is the fourth in a Lenten series.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Liberty and Constraint

The Synchroblog topic this month is "Liberty", a great word to savor on a sunny summer day. Kayaking on my nearby lake, I savor the word and revel in its possibilities: no schedule to answer to, no immediate needs demanding attention, water beckoning for a refreshing swim.

But even the water around my kayak reminds me of the challenges of balancing liberty and constraint.

Farmers and homeowners whose properties drain toward the lake are free to use whatever chemicals they like, in whatever quantities they like. In consequence, the lake is partially covered with algae bloom, and no doubt slightly toxic to swim in. The green heron I normally see seem to be missing; they like to fish from a branch over the water, but with the water surface green and cloudy, it appears at least some have traveled on in search of clearer waters.

Liberty is a word much in fashion in recent political discourse, with arguments for less regulation, unfettered markets, privatized goods and services.

What’s less often discussed is the way that attempts to protect one form of liberty often diminish other forms, in the same way the farmers’ freedom to fertilize at will darkens the lake, taints the local water supply, obstructs the herons’ search for food.

President Lincoln, in a speech given in 1864, acknowledged the deep divide between different views of liberty, and the tension when one person's freedom encroaches on another's:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty.

Nearly a century after Lincoln’s address, scholar Isaiah Berlin, responding to a different historical moment, offered his own analysis of types of liberty. His seminal essay of 1958, "Two Concepts of Liberty", defined "negative liberty" as freedom from constraint or coercion, and "positive liberty" as freedom to accomplish or move toward a greater goal or value.

His view of these was not in sync with the terms he used. Born in 1909 to Jewish parents near Petrograd, Russia, he had witnessed the revolutions of 1917, then moved with his parents to London to escape mounting anti-Semitism. In his experience, the idea of positive liberty was too easily linked to totalitarian rhetoric: communism and fascism both spoke of “freedom” and “liberty” while destroying individual rights.

Berlin’s warnings against positive liberty have been put to good use by Libertarians, who label government initiatives as socialism or communism, describe regulation as a blight on human liberty, and assert that “the free market . . . is the most just and humane economic system and the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known," to quote Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty.

Yet, if the language of positive liberty can be misused in the interest of oppressive regimes, the language of negative liberty can be equally misused. In a much quoted and discussed 2011 Guardian commentary, George Monbiot explored "How Freedom Became Tyranny":

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

As I consider these ideas of liberty, I find myself thinking about the Apostle Paul’s understanding of both “freedom from” and “freedom for.”

I Corinthians 9:19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

1 Corinthians 10: 23-24 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Romans 6: 16-18 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

“Freedom from” insists we can eat what we want, say what we want, shrug off every constraint like a angry teen slamming the door in the parent's face and speeding off, tires screeching. There's a part of us all that craves that kind of freedom.

Yet if liberty is defined only by throwing off constraints, we will never resolve the unyielding tension between conflicting freedoms: between the freedom to pollute or the freedom to enjoy clean air and water, the freedom to forgo taxes and the freedom to enjoy good schools, safe roads and bridges.

If liberty is defined by removal of constraints, we will never be fully free. As any addict can tell us, as we throw off one set of constraints, we become enslaved to another. We are slaves to sin or righteousness. Constrained by our own disciplines, or by the painful consequences of our lack of discipline.

"Freedom from" puts the individual in the center of a kingdom of one, fighting for rights with the kingdoms that surround us, and with our own exhausted selves.

“Freedom for” puts us in service to something greater, invites us to master internal conflicts and respect external constraints, so we are more available to accomplish the greater good.

Yes - there's a danger there. Wisdom, as always, is needed. And an aware and educated public.

"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." (Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805)

Ideas have consequences. Our ideas about liberty and constraint will shape our behavior, our beliefs, our politics.

Green Heron, George Tallman, Exton Park, 2014

My goal in this series is to offer practical applications. But in this, I find myself with questions. Maybe a start would be to think these through:

1. Am I committed to my own personal liberty to the detriment of others?

2. Do I see freedom as avoidance of constraint, or as opportunity to serve?

3. Is liberty a goal, or a tool?

4. Whose liberty am I willing to defend? From what constraint? For what end?

5. How do my views of liberty shape the way I vote?

This post is part of the July Synchroblog, "Liberty." Other posts are linked below:

Jerry Wirtley – Liberty …
Bobbi Ann Allen – My Allegiance Has Changed
Justin Steckbauer – The Topic Of Liberty
MinnowSpeaks – The Talk
Jeremy Myers – Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death?
K.W. Leslie – Why I Don’t Want Go To Church: No Freedom
Jesus Without Baggage – Where The Spirit of The Lord Is, There Is Liberty
Glenn Hager – Rebel
James Carter – The Law of Liberty
Mallory Pickering – Don’t Give Up
Leah Chang – Free To Be
Liz Dyer – Fighting For Freedom & Equality

This is also the second in a series exploring words that help or hinder our ability to serve our communities in love while helping to renew a web of compassionate engagement. Last week's post: Wisdom

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on __comments below to see the comment option.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Covering Shaven Heads

Standing outside the small museum in Corinth, looking up at the imposing Acrocorinth, I listened to our guide Costos Tsevas describing the context of social life in the period of the Apostle Paul’s visit.

Biblical Tours

While the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of the Acrocorinth was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, fertility rituals enacted with temple prostitutes continued in the main city, in and around the agora, the center of public life.

Costos described the sandals of prostitutes, engraved on the bottom to leave the word “ΑΚΟΛΟΥΘΕΙ AKOLOUTHEI” ("Follow me") imprinted in the dust.

That was one form of advertisement, Costos said softly.

Another was more visible from a distance: shaven heads.

Suddenly we were in a discussion of a passage translators have described as one of the most complex and opaque in scripture, one that has prompted endless controversy and discussion: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, the basis for centuries of rules about head coverings and women's hair length.

Think, Costos said.

If a woman was, or had been, a prostitute, with shaven head, how would she cover that?

It would take a long time for her hair to grow back, and in the meantime, she would be treated differently. If she hid her head, but others didn’t, everyone would know, and her shame would follow her.

What Paul is saying is that if a woman with shaven hair will be shamed, then all the women, shaven or not, should hide their heads, so no one can see which women have short hair and which don’t.

Not as a punishment, or rule, but out of love for the women with shaven heads.

I’m paraphrasing his argument – I have scribbled notes, and terrible handwriting.

But the idea was clear.

Paul was arguing for covered heads for all women to shield some of them from shame.

Voluntarily.

And out of love.

I’ve heard that passage argued endlessly: why women should wear hats in church. Or veils.

Why women should have long hair.

Or wear their hair up, or down.

Commentators argue that Paul was referring to the Greek traditions regarding male and female headcoverings.

Or Roman.

Or Hebrew.

None of those references would make much sense: male Jews wore coverings in services, not women.

So maybe Paul is talking about hairstyles, not head coverings?

Amazing – and sad – to track back and see the convoluted reasoning that has so often yielded an unshakeable rule someone else should live by.

No explanation I ever heard or read made reference to love.

I always wondered: why would Paul talk about freedom, about rights, unity, equality, about not being bound by the customs of those around us, then turn around and tell women to cover their heads?

Why would he say we’re one in Christ, neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free, then belabor the difference in a strange, convoluted way?

Costos’ explanation was the first I’d ever heard that put that troubling passage into context with the chapters that follow:

In chapter 12: “the parts we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty.”

And chapter 13: “love is not self-seeking. Always protects.”

I found myself wondering: how would a woman with beautiful long hair respond to the idea of covering her hair for the sake of a shaven former slave?

What would be a corresponding sacrifice, today?

The next day, on the steps of the Acropolis in Athens, I asked Costos about his interpretation. Did he have sources? Something further I could read?

No.

He smiled.

“If you know the scripture, and you know Corinth, and you speak Greek, it’s obvious.”

Since then, reading through commentaries, exegesis, translations, discussions, I’m struck by the difficulty of putting certain texts in context.

This one in particular.

The word translated “covering”, katakalu/ptomai, is only used three times in the New Testament: twice in verse 6 and once in verse 7. It means, literally, to cover completely, to hide. The word translated “covering” in v. 15 is something different: peribo/laion. Used only once in the Bible.

Words used so specifically are hard to translate.

So are words used metaphorically – as in the word “head”, kephale, used repeatedly in this chapter. Does “head” mean leader? Source? Or something else?

There’s also the problem of quotation: there were no quotation marks in koine Greek. Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul quotes opinions presented as fact, then dismantles them. In chapters 6, 7, 8, and 10 quotation marks have been added to show that Paul was addressing opinions expressed by members of the Corinthian church. Was he doing the same here?

And then there’s the problem of chiasm: ideas presented in inverted sequence, to emphasis similarity or difference.

If the passage itself is a chiasm,does that suggest Paul is offering the point of view of some in the Corinthian church, then shifting to an alternative view?

A   (2-3) Introduction
B       (4-7) 'woman,' 'uncovered,' 'to pray,' 'man,' 'glory'
C           (8a) not 'man from woman'
D               (8b) 'woman from man'
E                   (9a) not 'man on account of woman'
F                       (9b) 'woman on account of man'
x                           (10) For this reason, and because of the angels, the
                            woman ought to have liberty over her head.
F'                       (11a) 'Neither woman apart from man'
E'                   (11b) 'nor man apart from woman'
D'               (12a) "just as the woman is from the man'
C'           (12b) 'thus also the man is through the woman'
B'       (13-15) 'woman,' 'uncovered,' 'to pray,' 'man,' 'glory'
A'   (16) Conclusion

Margaret Mowczko, of Christians for Biblical Equality Australia, offers a readable summary of some of these difficulties, adding two more:

Some translations add a word “sign” in verse 10. There’s a big difference between

It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. (NIV) OR - for this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels. (ASV)

Another oddity in translation: the word “toioutos,” translated everywhere else in scripture as “such,” is translated in some versions of verse 16 as “other”:

If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God. (NIV)

Compare that to :

But if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. (ASV)

I confess, there are some passages in scripture I hold a bit at arm’s length: it’s not clear what they mean, various attempts at translation have introduced ideas not necessarily present in the original, and they’ve been used coercively in ways that I consider antithetical to the larger themes surrounding them.

Others, less committed to reading and understanding, see such passages as an excuse to jettison the whole enterprise. Why bother, if no one knows what it means, or it seems to contradict itself? Why bother, if the whole thing is just an excuse to add on rules?

I'd argue that most of the Bible is very clear, and that it's worth wrestling with these passages, while not making them the center of our daily faith and practice.

Costos’ interpretation here, to me, is as plausible as any other I’ve read, and harmonizes far more with the themes Paul explores elsewhere: unity, freedom, grace, sacrificial love.

So – I’m back to wondering. Who are the members of my own congregation who sit on the margins, and what changes could we make that would dissolve the difference, protect the weaker member, and bring us into greater unity?

This is the fourth in a series, Texts in Context, revisiting two weeks spent in Greece.
Earlier posts:

Texts in Context: Yassas!

Mysteries

Proclaim Freedom

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on __comments below to see the comment option.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Proclaim Freedom

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Decades ago, at our previous church, a new parish priest invited the congregation to join him in memorizing the passage above, Luke 4:18-19.

It was his way of announcing that our role, as Christains, was to follow Christ in enacting that anointing: proclaiming good news to the poor and freedom for prisoners, aiding in recovery of sight, actively, courageously, setting the oppressed free.

Freedom is mentioned twice there: freedom for prisoner. Freedom for the oppressed.

As we give thanks this Memorial Day weekend for those who have sacrificed to further the cause of freedom, I find myself wondering: what does it mean, now, today, to proclaim freedom for prisoners, to set the oppressed free?

During our travels to Greece, we spent a day in Corinth, one of the wealthiest commercial cities during the time of Christ.

We visited the the diolkos, the paved passageway that allowed a five mile portage of ships across the Isthmian strait from the Aegean to Ionian Sea, and we stopped by the ruins at Kenchreai , the Corinthian port that served the trade routes heading west to Rome and other European ports.

Periodic earthquakes (most recently in 1858) prompted a population shift to an area several miles northeast of the original city, allowing more extensive archaeological investigation of ancient site than in cities like Thessaloniki, or even Athens, where new building has continually taken place on top of old.

Our group walked through the agora, often translated “marketplace” in the New Testament but, as our guide Costos Tsevas explained, more accurately “assembly” or “gathering place,” the center of political, philosophical, civil discourse.

We gathered on the bema, the stone platform where citizens came to receive awards, face punishment, or take their allotted three minutes to present their point of view.

We saw the broken stone pillar, strangely worn and etched, reputed to be the post where prisoners, including the Apostle Paul, were beaten.

And we stared up at the Acrocorinth, the imposing castle high on the monolithic rock where the wealthy of the city lived in the shadow of the temple of Aphrodite.

Ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth

Costos described the role of the pornai and heterais who plied their trade through the city streets, offering mystical union with the goddess through sexual encounter, and wearily carrying their profits up the steep road to the Acrocorinth.

The pornai were among the lowest tier of slaves, sent out by their owners to collect what they could of the currency flowing through the city. The heterai were more elite sex workers, in Corinth most often owned by the temple of Aprhrodite. Around 2 BC, an observer, Strabo, wrote:

“The temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it employed more than a thousand hetairas, whom both men and women had given to the goddess. Many people visited the town on account of them, and thus these hetairas contributed to the riches of the town: for the ship captains frivolously spent their money there, hence the saying: ‘The voyage to Corinth is not for every man’.

Standing among the rocky ruins of Corinth, I could feel the weight of oppression: worship of a goddess who ensnared both men and women, physical enslavement enforced through force, sex used to further commerce, a sharp divide between wealthy owners and the miserable underclass, living only to serve the whim of the rich.

Paul, and those who joined him, proclaimed freedom: freedom from bondage to gods and goddesses who offered nothing and demanded constant sacrifice of wealth, wine, animals, captives, slaves, maybe even children (as when King Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia).

Freedom, as well, from a culture that used sex as currency and considered trade a value far higher than compassion or human dignity.

Freedom from participation in evil and the resulting condemnation.

Freedom from unrestrained self-indulgence.

Freedom for slaves?

Paul didn’t advocate immediate freeing of every slave, an impossibility in an economy where more than half the population was held in slavery and a large percent of non-slaves lived on the edge of starvation. He did, though, hold up a vision in which slave and free would be treated as equal, where generosity and kindness took priority over profit. In the short book of Philemon, he asked that the runaway slave Onesimus be treated as his own son, embraced as slave-owner Philemon’s brother, be given whatever privilege or hospitality Paul himself would receive.

Costos led our group to an inscription set in stone near the ancient theater of Corinth:

"Erastus in return for his aedileship laid the pavement at his own expense.”

The tradition was for wealthy citizens in prominent political positions to underwrite capital improvements during their time in office. This Erastus, as an “aedile,” would have been responsible for public buildings, festivals, and enforcement of public order, and the pavement would have been evidence of his time in office, his commitment to Corinth, as well as of his wealth.

Was he the same Erastus mentioned by Paul as a city treasurer (Romans 16:23), then coworker in the early church? (Actrs 19:22, 2 Timoty 4:20). Costos quietly pointed out that if some of the church in Corinth were former temple prostitutes, now set free to pursue a new life, someone must have provided the funds to free them. Erastus, as a prominent citizen, would be a likely candidate to make that happen.

Certainly, the evidence trail on that possibility iscontested, yet it raises the question: in a society so deeply divided, with wealthy merchants living like kings, and others crowded into hovels, this good news Paul proclaimed would demand a radical shift on the part of the wealthy: to open their homes to the poor and enslaved, to sit beside those they had been trained to consider “andrapodon,” “one with the feet of a man,” as opposed to “tetrapodon” or "quadruped", the term used to designate animal livestock.

In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul made clear that a genuine understanding of the new "way" Jesus offered would require followers of Christ to become servants of each other, putting the needs of others first, choosing to do what would ensure the health and growth of the weakest, poorest member. Paul repeatedly asked the Corinthians to consider themselves slaves to each other: even to the least shonored. The one of no reputation.

As I track through the history of the church and of slavery, it seems to me that one gauge of the church’s health and witness is it’s willingness to embrace the cause of the slave and to stand against whatabolitionist William Wilberforce called “the mortal disease of all political communities”: the innate self-centeredness “that clouds our moral vision and blunts our moral sensitivity.”

This week’s Time magazine (May 26, 2014) carries an article titled “Bring Back All Girls: What the 276 Girls Abducted from a Nigerian School Tell Us about Human Trafficking.”

What the article tells us: nearly 30 million people worldwide are exploited and treated like property.

4.5 million of those are subject to sexual exploitation.

A thriving market in prostitution and forced marriage enjoys enormous profits from the misery of uneducated, unprotected girls.

Human trafficking is now the second largest global criminal activity, second only to the drug trade.

I’ve written before about modern day slavery: Chocolate Dreams, Freedom is Indivisible, Seeking Justice.

And yes, I buy fair trade chocolate, sign petitions, look for ways to support a more equitable economy.

But I’m haunted by a scene I watched in a rest stop outside New York City one evening. I was traveling home on I-95, the road that connects the northeastern cities, and saw a young teen girl and woman in the rest room.

Something didn’t seem right: the girl’s clothes not quite what a girl traveling with her family would wear on a Saturday night, the woman watching a little too closely. As I headed out toward my parked car, they exited in the opposite direction, toward the lines and lines of trucks.

Sometimes we see but don’t see.

Know but choose not to know.

Double-guess ourselves.

Explain it away.

The Polaris Project, a national non-profit committed to ending human trafficking in the United States, offers a 24-7 hotline, for anonymous tips, calls for help, questions about how to spot traffickers.

Polaris Project Hotline Map

I’ve put the number on my cell phone: 1-888-373-7888.

The project publishes an interactive map showing trafficking hotspots.

That rest area?

In the heart of the biggest US hotspot.

It’s easy to grieve the slavery of Corinth, lament the evil of the cross-Atlantic slave trade.

Harder to acknowledge that more people are in slavery today that at any previous time in history. Some not far from my home, along the routes I travel.

Jesus said “proclaim freedom.”

I still wonder: How?

for more about the US hotline and anti-trafficking networks

for international trafficking information

This is the third in a series, Texts in Context, revisiting two weeks spent in Greece.
Earlier posts:

Texts in Context: Yassas!

Mysteries

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on __comments below to see the comment option.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Freedom is Indivisible

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal...”

Reading through the Declaration of Sentiments, signed in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, by 68 women and 32 men, I find myself wondering why I never encountered that document in any history class, or heard it mentioned, even once, in connection to its obvious model, the Declaration of Independence.

Or why I never heard, until very recently, of the Justice Bell, funded a century ago by Katharine Wentworth Ruschenberger here in Chester County as a way to call attention to the battle for women's suffrage. She commissioned a duplicate of the Liberty Bell, with an inscription of "Establish Justice", and arranged for a three month tour around Pennsylvania in the summer of 1915..

I find myself wondering how the men of Philadelphia, living in the shadow of Independence Hall, challenged by the sight of that Justice Bell, could vote, by overwhelming majority, against the 1915 Pennsylvania Referendum on Women’s Suffrage.

And I marvel at those who, looking back, find suffragettes amusing, or wish, even now, that women would “know their place”.

Last week I posted an article "what do teenage girls need.” The weeks before I wrote about time spent with women who have encouraged and challenged me, or spurred me on in important ways.

Girl in well - Water Mission International

But in the back of my mind is a knowledge of other women, other girls: girls who will never learn to read. Women who will never enjoy a weekend away with friends. Millions who live on less than a dollar a day, who walk miles in search of water, who spend their days in fear of violence, disease,

starvation. What do those girls need? Who encourages those women to be all they were made to be?

For a century and a half, the men who fought for their own right to vote, the men who enjoyed that right and the attendant rights of employment, property, assembly, self-direction, gave little thought to the women around them who had no opportunity to share in those rights.I object, even now, to their blindness. And to the blindness of any group that will fight or advocate for rights for themselves they refuse to grant to others.

But what of my own blindness?

Nelson Mandela, hero of the South African anti-apartheid movement, wrote in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom:

“Freedom is indivisible . . . To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Freedom is indivisible. As Mandela explained,

“the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me.”

But carry this a step further, as Martin Luther King did in his letter from Birmingham jail:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, called violence against women, "perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. And it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development, and peace.”

According to Amnesty International:

Gender-based violence stems from the failure of governments and societies to recognize the human rights of women. It is rooted in a global culture of discrimination which denies women equal rights with men and which legitimizes the appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. Everyday, all over the world, women face gender-specific persecution including genital mutilation, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and domestic violence. At least one out of every three women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.

Violence against women feeds off discrimination and serves to reinforce it. When women are abused in custody, raped by armed forces as "spoils of war," or terrorized by violence in the home, unequal power relations between men and women are both manifested and enforced.

What a staggering statistic - according to many observers, a conservative estimate: At least one in three women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused. 30 percent have experienced physical violence or sexual abuse by a partner. And more than 600 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.

The tragic pattern of violence against women is part of a larger story of dependence and poverty that deprives women of freedom and limits healthy choices:

Of all the primary-school age girls globally, 20 percent are not in school.

One in every six adults still cannot read or write; two thirds of those are women.

End Child Marriage

One in seven girls in the developing world is married before turning 15; in low and middle-income countries, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19.

Of the 1.5 billion people worldwide who live on less than 1 dollar a day, 70 percent are female.

Women are 80% of all refugees and displaced persons.

Women and children constitute 80% of trafficking victims globally. 98% of those trafficked for sexual purposes are female.

The list could go on: low wages, lack of representation in governing bodies, inequitable property rights and inheritance laws.

So much of what I take for granted is unavailable, even unimaginable, to millions of women around the world.

So what can I do about any of this?

Why even think about it?

Friends tell me I think too much. Which may be true.

But if freedom is indivisible, if it’s true that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere, if I'm called to love my neighbor as myself, even the neighbor I can’t see, can’t hear – what then?

I know lots of people who choose to sponsor a child through an organization like World Vision or Compassion. $35 or $38 dollars a month, and one child will receive school fees and supplies, clothes, minimal health care, supplemental food. So sponsor a girl and make a difference. Done!

But some might say that model is cumbersome and expensive, designed more to massage the conscience of the donor than provide real change where change is needed. According to Sri Lankan Vinoth Ramachandra,

“It has little to do with real costs on the ground. It’s also a very expensive process to manage, which means a large fraction of the money raised is swallowed up in the bureaucracy of the organization.”

Some large international ministries are turning attention to education and training for women and girls. World Vison now invites gift donations for girls and women. Tearfund and Oxfam don’t promote targeted donations, but are actively involved in empowering and educating women and working toward the welfare and rights of women and girls.

Class in India, Compassion Beyond Borders

I’m intrigued by the model of Compassion Beyond Borders, a small organization with very low overhead. The board raises its own administrative costs and works with grass-roots organizations to educate girls in regions where few girls go to school, including parts of Guatemala, Mexico, Uganda, Kenya, and India.

So, yes, there are ways to directly impact and help educate and encourage women and girls.

But beyond that: is it possible to advocate for change in places where change is needed?

There are organizations at work in human trafficking: International Justice Mission works around the world to find and rescue women held against their will, and to strengthen legal supports for women’s rights.

But on a larger level?

Maybe a start is to look around.

To give thanks for the freedoms I enjoy, to give thanks for the women and men who believed women were created equal and were willing to advocate for women’s rights.

And to become more informed about those who are still living under the weight of oppressive inequality, and more informed about avenues to speak on their behalf.

The prophet Isaiah challenged God's people:

Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
(Isaiah 1:17)

I don’t know how to do any of that, but as Isaiah said, I can “learn to do right.” I welcome your insights, assistance, and friendship along the way.