Call + Response

“I don’t want to wear someone else’s despair.”-Ashley Judd

This past Thursday I went to a screening of the film “Call + Response.” It promoted awareness on the issue of human slavery and encouraged people to do more than just watch; it encouraged people to respond through action. Through musical expression and real world clips, the film addressed several issues, including child prostitution, sex trafficking, forced labor, and the enslavement of child soldiers.

I could go on and on about the many layers of the film, but to some extent I’ll let the film speak for itself. Instead I’ll provide some thoughts…

As I watched the film, I kept reminding myself that the clips shown were from real situations, real people, in the present world. It was jarring when I thought about this fact. I tried to put myself into the shoes of women in the film who were being sexually oppressed, often kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery, or tricked into thinking they were getting a factory job and then swept up into a world where a woman’s capacity to have sex becomes her livelihood. The words I write are difficult to even develop, because the message of the film is a tough one. But, the message is a real one. There are people around the world living in absolutely horrific conditions, and we as Americans have often become so detached that we can see images of these situations briefly on the news and then go back to our down comforters and bottled water and forget.

A friend of mine once said that she did not want to hear about issues such as world hunger and poverty because once she heard about them she became responsible for them. In honest reflection, she shared that often she would rather live in naiveté than have to live with the hard truth of other people’s oppression. I think that her humble admission speaks to the reality in most of our hearts and lives. As African activist and professor Cornel West stated in the film, “reality can be too much.” We can bite off such a big piece of the pain and suffering in the world that we can fall into misery and despair. However, we can empathize with those who are suffering, feel their hurt and pain deep in our hearts, but we cannot fall into despair. There is a hope and we must communicate this message to others, for their sake and our own.

If we really love our neighbors, then how can we not care about putting food on their tables, providing clean water and medicine, or keeping them from terrible atrocious crimes and oppression? I want to take the little girls featured in this film and give them big, enveloping hugs. I want to take them far away from their place of enslavement and give them new lives. I want to take them home with me and prepare a feast for them, wash their hair, and give them beautiful new clothes. But pulling them away from the sharp reality of sexual slavery is not enough; the cutting ache in their hearts will still remain and their bodies may even bear scars from abuse until they die. Every day, they must wake up and live with the fact that they have been used, enslaved, as a sexual commodity. It simply is not enough for me to take them out of slavery and say, here’s a better life…I have to show them that there is hope for a mended heart, that there is hope for a better tomorrow that the world we live in today will never truly provide. There is a God who loves them and thinks that they are all beautiful, altogether lovely. And he loves them in the midst of their brokenness. He sent his son to lift them up from their brokenness and tell them that he alone can wash away their sorrows and mend their broken hearts. If we fail to communicate this message, then all we have done is put a band-aid onto a hemmoraging wound.

All of this is not to say that freeing those in oppression is a bad idea; it is just to say that true healing can only come when the heart is engaged, and only God can enable such healing. There are many ways that we can act-through our purchasing decisions, through political advocacy, through visits to other parts of the world to help these people-but our action must start with deciding why we care about such problems. Why is it a tragedy that the father of a woman in India sold her into sexual slavery so he could have a dowry for one of his other daughters to get married? Why is it a tragedy that the family of a man who owed five dollars is forced to labor for generations paying off his debt? Because we as human beings were created for something better…we were created for whole, full lives. We were created to live in a world without such things as war, hunger, and oppression. But, we must realize that this world, broken as it is, is the one in which we now live…and we must not simply embrace the brokenness, we must live the change we want to see in the world. We must live as agents of restoration, hope and redemption…because there is a great hope, and it is Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and to bring us into the hope of redemption, bringing us into the glory of new birth and one day resurrection. If I do not share these words, I have just reminded people of the problem, instead of telling them that there is a real solution.

If there is no right and wrong, no up or down, then there is no reason for us to care about these problems, plain and simple; there is no reason for us to cry as we ourselves are lashed with a whip of oppression, or beaten into sexual submission…but saying such things does not even make sense [and we know it]. We were created in a way that we can plainly see that there is a better way...

The following verses come from one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Revelation 21:4-5 says “’He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who is seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”

This is the hope that I cling to, and this is why I care…because there is a promise of something better to come and an offer of peace and reconciliation through Jesus Christ. We must remember that there is no promise that earthly slaves will be freed in this life, and we will all continue to hurt and suffer in some form or another until the day when Jesus returns. But we can have great hope in affliction by placing our faith and trust in Christ, who has promised something better for his children. And we can model this hope by promoting the release of prisoners around the world and helping them live restored lives. Listen and act, because there is a reason to care.

Go see the film this fall.