Reflections on ‘Stepping out of the Traffick’

Reflections on Stepping out of the Traffick: Pausing for theological reflection on Christian Response to Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking, edd Glenn Miles and Christa Foster Crawford with Bill Prevette, Regnum, 2024.  Published on pp27-30.

The varied chapters in this book share two key characteristics. First, they want sexual exploitation to end, the exploiters to be deterred and turned round, the exploited to be freed and healed, and societies, cultures and economies no longer to be conducive to it. This is the horizon of hope towards which the arguments and passion of these papers are looking, in company with the people and projects featured here. The horizon is far distant but it is enough that the direction of our travel and our duty are both clear and compelling. Second, they are written by Christians, seeking to see and respond to sexual exploitation in the light given by God in Christ. 

In their practical engagement with sexual exploitation, Christians are bound to work with many wise and competent people who are content to leave anything that looks like religion to one side as an unhelpful complication. For many, faith is a private option, which brings them inward personal support, but they do not expect it to do enough to make a significant difference to their analysis of sexual exploitation and their action in response to it. So they do not initiate a close encounter between exploitation and theology. This book is born out of a conviction that such an encounter would be as useful as it is difficult. It calls for deliberate effort to do theology with one hand and to oppose sexual exploitation with the other. It is not surprising then that making this book has not been easy, for the organizers, editors, and authors. 

The audience hoped for includes all who are concerned about sexual exploitation in any way—even including the exploiters themselves and the bystanders and those (unreliably) assured that “This doesn’t happen in our town.” Much in this book will be immediately accessible to people who experience sexual exploitation or merely learn about it from the newspapers. But theology does not get a hearing so readily.

Why theology?

One obstacle on that way is the off-putting image that theology generally has. Politicians sometimes dismiss the ideas of their political opponents as “theology”, not because God has been brought into the discussion, but because the talk has become complicated, practically irrelevant, merely clever. People immediately know what the politician is getting at, and if they ever go to church and hear a sermon, they feel the same. And even worse than the pulpit, university theology is often “academic” in the bad sense, a mystifying elite pedantry.

This dismissal is unfair to theology and stifles its potential usefulness. Why? Because it judges theology from occasional (though frequent) symptoms of disease, as though the body never was or could be anything but the cancer now found to be growing in it. Let us start with theology as a body in its beautiful healthy original elements, before any disease twists it. Theology is simply talking and thinking (logos) of God (theos). In its essential roots, it does not have to be an extended, abstracting learned discourse; rather it is free exploration, risking naivety and clumsiness to venture a meeting between situated human being and the living God: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8)

Theology and prayer

Jesus tells us: “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases, speak to your Father who knows what you need before you ask.” (Matthew 6:7) To pray, we only have to be human beings, alert to our context in the world, which is awesome, both in its manageable accessibility and in its disconcerting hidden reticence. We sense that we are beset by both good, life-giving and life-enhancing “powers beyond our own” and by menacing, even malevolent possibilities. We seek to make sense of ourselves in context, and to find ways of living well. We seek to know, respect, and have the supporting accompaniment of good powers. And so we pray, reaching outward from what we have and looking for help. Many more people pray than preach sermons, or speak about God. Praying has theological authenticity because it is not cluttered: indeed on its human side it consists largely in uncluttering, until our hand is empty and open to receive, unbusy and ready to be redirected. Prayer is simply human being talking to, and with, God: “God, if you are there, help me.” “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” “God, why have you forsaken me?” “Even so, come Lord.” “Dona nobis pacem. Give us peace.” “Make my way plain, before my eyes.” “Lord, here I am, send me.” “God, thank you.” “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your Name….”

Theology rests on the acknowledgement of God as God. Christian faith is constituted by the recognition that “God is in Christ”, and so confesses that “Jesus is Lord.” Such confession can only be made in the humility and openness of prayer, where we give up all pretence that we are masterfully free to decide whether Jesus shall be Lord or not. Theology becomes cancerous when the human talker assumes defining control of the talk. Indeed, in our talking about God we easily become idol makers, so achieving nothing beyond mirroring ourselves in puppet-images that have no life in themselves and cannot bring us near the living God.

Whether prayer is a tentative entry into mystery, ready to find out what, or who, shows up, or is a peaceable conversation with a trusted Other, it cannot avoid being a little seed of theology that grows roots and shoots. “Help me” leads to specification of what is desired, or needed, and with it, some imaging of what the Helper must be like. The cry “Why have you forsaken me?” implicitly confesses: “We thought you were faithful and able” and thus confronts us with a choice between two questions that spawn more theology. The one: “Is God not here at all, or at least, not for me?” and the other: “If God is, but in this time and place is not giving the answer I think I need, or have a right to, what then is God doing? What is the meaning of his silence and absence? What is it now to have trust and hope?”

When what passes for theology ceases to be sensitive to questions and possibilities that arise in prayer (which is the most basic, simplest attempt to draw near to God in truth), it is losing its way, no matter how clever it may be. Or put it the other way around: the theological appreciation of any human discourse or chunk of life comes from looking for the prayer that is being prayed in it, openly or implicitly, precisely or vaguely. Discourse—in words and in practice—may be searched with the aid of many disciplines, all bringing some reality to light; to understand it theologically, find the prayer in it and then pray along with it.

Theology in a practical context

This is how, on the human side of prayer, theology is seeded and may grow. But many who pray are not aware or interested enough to become self-conscious or publicly active as “theologians.” Nevertheless, they do find that when they pray, they move outside themselves and are met in some way. Their requests may not be granted according to the terms in which they were made, but a conversation develops, and they are accompanied on the road of life in ways beyond their expectations. What they wanted for themselves is both sifted and enlarged by what the Other gives to them.

What God gives is more than a detachable gift, like the healing nine lepers got from Jesus that they could take away with them, and never look back. The tenth leper understood better the connection between giver and gift so he turned back to thank Jesus. (Luke 17) The younger son got the inheritance and left his father behind, until life brought him to himself, and he saw that the good part of his inheritance could not be detached and enjoyed without his being with the father. (Luke 15) To seek and to be finding the non-detachable gift is to get beyond being merely a needy, consuming recipient; it is to be drawn into close company with the Giver, and thereby, in turn, into being a giver. 

The poor are not simply to have their needs supplied so that they can survive. They need to be able to share in the giving. The objection to “charity” is not that have-nots are dependent on the haves, but that charity rarely calls or enables have-nots to become more than recipients, with enough spiritual and material resources to be cheerful, open-hearted givers. Calculating charity (that makes sure people have just enough to get by on) fails because it has no practicable intention to call and equip recipients to be givers. Understand this, and we are moved on from praying, consumer-like prayers of “Lord, help me” to the prayer of a fellow-worker: “Lord, here I am, send me.” 

Theology is more than a theory about the power and goodness of God the bountiful provider. Such a theory embroils theology in theodicy, lamely defending God who does not appear to live up to the job specification that our neediness writes for him. Theology is not, however, a theory of provision, but a challenging and empowering call to courageous and generous living for others, in company with God who enters human living, suffering as God and human being together, taking responsibility for the mess as a helper and hopeful pathfinder. Theology thus is missiology—it articulates vision and understanding of what we human beings are called to do, starting from where we are now, in faithfulness to God who is faithful to us: We love, because He first loved and loves us; the love of Christ shapes, directs, and empowers us.

Theology in the pages of this book

Praying is the way into the treasury of talk about God which is found, for example, in the accumulation of Christian theology through the centuries and throughout the world. The papers in this book dip into the treasury and deploy some of its treasures, showing how it inspires and informs responses to sexual exploitation. There is a search for resonances between the engagement of victims and perpetrators, bystanders and theorists, and themes and motifs of theology. Reading the Bible, praying in hope of the promise of God, loving genuinely according to the measure of God in Christ, being forgiven as we forgive, sharing the grace of God, learning to serve in the way and spirit of Christ, standing by God in the hour of his grieving: all this and more come into view in the reports and analyses of contemporary action against sexual exploitation found in the pages of this volume.