Prostitutes and Polygamists by David T. Lamb

Author:David T. Lamb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Learn, Tell, Pray

The stories of the four women we’ve looked at in this prostitution chapter all end positively. Sarah was delivered by God with supernatural plagues from Pharaoh’s harem and became the mother of Isaac. Tamar was declared to be more righteous than Judah and became the mother of twins. Rahab was welcomed into the family of Israel and became the mother of Boaz. While we know nothing about her family, the loving prostitute departed in peace, a forgiven woman.

While these stories have happy endings, most prostitute stories don’t end positively but, as we said at the beginning of this chapter, are more like Fantine’s in Les Misérables, a death in poverty. If that reality isn’t enough to make you lose hope, the astronomical number of prostitutes scattered throughout the world might do the trick. In their bestselling 2009 book, Half the Sky, Kristof and WuDunn estimate that approximately three million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade, and more females are being sent into brothels annually in the twenty-first century than African slaves were sent into plantations in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.21 The problem of global prostitution and sex trafficking is one of staggering proportions.

What can be done? We need to start by remembering that the God who redeemed Tamar, Rahab, and the loving prostitute of Luke 7 is still at work calling sinners of all kinds to himself. And we should recall from our discussion about prostitution prevention that helping people out of the sex trade industry will require community involvement. Here are three things everyone who is concerned about the global prostitution problem can do.

Learn about prostitutes in the Bible and about sex trafficking in the world. Don’t ignore these amazing stories of biblical women with a sexually scandalous past. The biblical authors included them in Scripture to teach us lessons in surprising ways. We learn about piety from Tamar, faith from Rahab, and love from the forgiven prostitute. Investigate, support, and get involved in ministries like International Justice Mission (IJM) that rescue victims of the sex trade and bring criminals to justice.22 In response to a desire to learn more about IJM, I recently read a book by its president, Gary Haugen, titled Just Courage, in which I learned about Donaldina Cameron, who worked for forty-five years in San Francisco’s Chinatown and rescued over three thousand girls from forced prostitution.23

What do you do with what you’re learning? Tell stories. Talk about Tamar, Rahab, and the loving prostitute at church and at work, at home and at school, because many people can learn a lot about piety, faith, and love from prostitutes. If you use social media networks, post, tweet, or blog about IJM or other ministries that you learn about as you read, investigate, and travel. I have only one personal story of interacting with a sex worker, and I told the story of Sandy, who went by the name Domino, in the acknowledgments, so I won’t repeat it here, but I did devote a chapter of this book to the topic.

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