Slavery: What Can I Do … Besides Pray?

content

Slavery: What Can I Do ... Besides Pray?

By Bethany Hanke Hoang

“What can I DO?”

It’s a question I’ve heard more times than I can count in my time working with International Justice Mission. Compelled by the biblical call to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17), IJM works for those who suffer violent injustice such as slavery, forced prostitution, and illegal detention. For us, being obedient to God’s clear call to justice looks something like this: identify areas of the world where the poor are most vulnerable to being oppressed; locate victims of violent oppression and document evidence about their situation; work with local authorities to rescue these victims one by one; help each rescued person find a new life and healing through an aftercare program; work with local officials to secure the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators; and allow the one-by-one rescues to infiltrate an entire system, bringing transformation to whole communities, even nations.

God has called His people to the work of justice. But understanding how that call plays into our lives isn’t always easy. Not everyone will work on the frontlines like IJM’s lawyers, investigators and social workers. But everyone has a role, and increasingly, people with a wide variety of gifts and skills want to know, “what can I do?”

From the first time I fielded this question, I began to notice that it – more often than not – comes wrapped in a very particularly caveated package. Time and again comes this version of the “what can I do” question:

“What can I do … besides pray and give money?”
“Tell me anything – ANY thing you want me to do … besides just praying and giving money.”

This is an important question with myriad good answers. But despite my appreciation of the question, I cannot help but feel a nagging concern whenever I consider its premise.

Tabling the issue of why financial support of justice work matters, what concerns me most in this “what can I do besides pray and give money” question is the implied idea that prayer is either exhaustible or less effective than the more “tangible”-feeling ways of confronting injustice.

Even more so, I can’t help but wonder if the question, “what can I do besides pray” is being asked not because the asker has a particularly consistent commitment to praying about issues of injustice. I suspect (including myself in this critique) that the asker asks not from a point of satiation, i.e., “I have committed my heart to daily asking God to move against injustice in our world – what else can I do?” but rather from a point of exasperation, i.e., “I hardly even know where to begin and I’m not so sure how it can possibly be as effective as doing something.”

Perhaps the question arises from suspicions that prayer is too often used as an excuse to remain on the sidelines. Isn’t the real (and perhaps more gratifying) work done in person, on the ground, literally pulling our neighbors out from under the hand of violent oppressors?

Maybe.
Maybe not.
Or perhaps both/and

Being obedient to God’s commands to do justice is certainly a daily, on-the-ground, person-by-person work of physical rescue.

However, being obedient to God’s commands to do justice is just as much a daily, on-the-ground, person-by-person work of prayer.

But even if we want to believe this is true, that prayer is completely inextricable from the physical rescue work itself, it just does not always feel true. Sometimes we just do not know where to begin with prayer when the need is simply so great. When you hear that Shivaraj’s whole family has been in slavery for years, and that Venus’ children are growing crippled after having their property stolen when their father died of AIDS, and that little Chanda is being injected with narcotics so she won’t cry when she is being raped – how do you begin to pray?

As I think back on the many mornings of prayer we have had together at IJM, interceding for those who are suffering in places of deep darkness, and as I think about some of our nearly 15,000 prayer partners and the ways that I have heard these friends seek the Lord on behalf of those who suffer violent oppression, there is something about the character of these prayers that stands out to me. As we fumblingly try to find words in the midst of such grievous realities, ours are the kinds of prayers that simply take the form of an outpouring.

David exhorts us, in Psalm 62, “Trust in the Lord at all times … pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

As I consider David’s words, he seems to make a fundamental connection between choosing to trust in the Lord and pouring out our hearts. On the one hand, I cannot pour out my heart to God if I do not trust Him. On the other hand, I cannot learn to trust God unless I pour out my heart to Him.

But what does it mean to pour out our hearts to God?

Isaiah 37 offers compelling insight into this question. At this point in Israel’s history, King Hezekiah is ruling over Judah. The King of Assyria, however, is actively threatening to thwart Hezekiah’s reign and to destroy Hezekiah’s people. He has been waging vulgar intimidation, loudly declaring the ruin he plans to bring. Here in chapter 37, we are given a window into his taunts:

“Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to the King of Assyria.’ Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. What makes you think that YOU will be delivered? Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver those nations? Where are those kings now?”

When I read the King of Assyria’s rhetoric and feel his mocking words, when I hear him say that Hezekiah’s God has deceived him, that Hezekiah’s God cannot be trusted, that Hezekiah’s God is impotent, experiences from our work here at IJM come flooding to mind.

When I read the King of Assyria’s taunts, I can’t help but hear the voices of those who told little Elisabeth that her God could not hear her. Elisabeth was mocked as she cried out to God from her lock-down in brothel room five where she was being given over to violent abuse. “Your God cannot hear you in here,” they said.

When I hear the King of Assyria threaten violence with laughing hubris, I can’t help but see the face of the rice mill owner in South Asia, throwing his head back with smiles as he bragged in sinister delight about how he keeps his slaves from ever leaving.

I see the faces of the officials in Peru as they coldly considered a mother’s testimony, as they unflinchingly glanced over the photographs from the scene where her little 8-year old daughter was raped and murdered. I can feel their limp hand shaking mine after they told us how difficult it is to secure justice.

I hear the words of officials throughout the world telling my colleagues that justice for the poor is not possible, trying to convince our tireless staff to go home rather than stay through the watches of the night waiting for these officials to make good on their own laws.

When I read the King of Assyria’s words, I see the tears of the innocent boy who has collapsed in the arms of the jailers hauling him past me toward the cell where he will spend the next 30 years. His tears are the tears we read of in Ecclesiastes, the tears of the oppressed who have no one to comfort them, for power is on the side of their oppressors.

John Calvin says in his writings on Psalm 62, “It is always found, that when the heart is pressed under a load of distress, there is no freedom in prayer.”

Indeed, when we open our hearts to the reality of the world around us, when we consider the schemes of those who violate the vulnerable and prey upon the innocent, our hearts become heavy, weighted down. Even our prayers become stale, rigid, and weary.

But prayer in its very nature is, in a primary sense, an unloading of the heart. When our hearts are so heavily taxed that we feel we can no longer even truly pray, God leads us back to Himself by telling us simply this:

Pour out your heart.
Pour out your heart before the Lord.

When Hezekiah received the King of Assyria’s threats and mockery, it came to him in written form. What did Hezekiah do with this letter of lies mocking his God, exalting the ways of violence? He did not ignore it. He did not burn it. He did not press reply and write back to it. He did not run from it.

When Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, he first read it, and then he went up to the temple and spread it out before the Lord.

Every day we receive “letters” that in one word or image can lock down our hearts in deep burden. And I guarantee that if perpetrators of injustice knew we were considering together how we might more whole-heartedly pray to our God, they would have some strong words to send our way as well. They would surely tell us that our God does not hear, that our God does not see, that our God is not able to intervene.

But all of these “letters” that we receive each day, the discouragements that threaten our commitment to seeking justice – we are invited to spread it all out before the Lord.

When we spread out our letters before the Lord – the lies waged against the reality of God’s reign, the taunts hurdled against our belief in God’s power to intervene and to heal and to redeem – when we spread all of this before the Lord, we are proclaiming the truth that God is the good, just, sovereign ruler of the ages over and against the brutality of the moment.

The Apostle Paul makes a bold claim in Romans 5 that if we hope in the glory of God, this hope will not disappoint simply because God Himself has poured out His love into our hearts through His Holy Spirit. It is this same Holy Spirit who intercedes for us when our words have run dry, when we feel we can no longer even pray. The Holy Spirit pouring God’s love into our hearts enables us, even when we have grown jaded, to pour out our hearts before our God.

As we pour out our hearts, we will see that God is using His people through our prayers. And we will see that Shivaraj and his family, Venus and her children, Elisabeth, Chanda, and thousands of others are being freed. And the prayers that have wrought their rescues are crumbling the foundations of entire systems of injustice.

But what can we DO, besides pray?
Quite a lot. And at the same time – absolutely nothing.

©Bethany Hanke Hoang, 2008

To learn more about IJM and read stories of hope and restoration, visit www.ijm.org

Bethany Hanke Hoang serves as Director of the IJM Institute for International Justice Mission. Since joining IJM in 2004, Bethany has traveled globally, speaking and teaching to thousands on behalf of IJM at churches, conferences and universities. She is responsible for equipping leaders of the global church and academic communities with tools and resources for bringing others into a deeper level of understanding, passion, and commitment to seeking justice on behalf of those who suffer abuse and oppression in our world.

Hoang holds a B.A. in Religion and History from Miami University of Ohio, and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary where she received the distinguished Fellowship in Theology. Hoang was recently featured in The Relevant Nation: 50 Activist, Artists And Innovators Who Are Changing Their World Through Faith.