Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Justice Mission

In Sunday school today we did the first session of “The Justice Mission,” the five-session youth curriculum I mentioned a few posts ago. Each session includes a short video followed by discussion. Today’s lesson was “Oppression,” and it was sobering. I felt like all of us were shaken by what we saw. In the video, four teens from the U.S. travel to India and see oppression and slavery firsthand. They grapple with the reality of it and actually take some practical steps to fight it.

For me, the most powerful part of today’s video was when the teens spoke with a young woman who, at age 12, went looking for her father, who had left home. At the local train station, two elderly women with another young girl offered her a job and convinced her to go with them. You can guess what happened. When they arrived in a different city, they forced her into prostitution. She had to service some 30 customers every day.

This kind of subject matter is pretty intense, and I’ve been a little nervous about presenting it to the kids. But then I think about how our Christianity so often can come across as divorced from real life, irrelevant and, for many young people, actually kind of boring. Maybe if they can see how God calls us to join Him in the great cause of defending, rescuing, redeeming and restoring people, that can help them hold onto faith through their high school, college and young adult years.

I’ve also ordered a dozen copies of Zach Hunter’s book “Be the Change,” and I’ll plan on leading the youth group through that in the coming weeks as well.

No comments: