Prayerful steps to end the evils of modern-day slavery

"MODERN" slavery, or human trafficking, has become a nine-billion-dollar-a-year global industry involving 27 million people. Increasingly it is tied to organized crime.

Slaves can be found in fields, brothels, homes, mines, and construction sites. A recent report from DePaul University's Human Rights Law Institute says that 80 percent of those sold into slavery are under the age of 24, and many are women and children, employed as recruitment for armed conflict, pornography, prostitution, and other illicit activities. Although the majority end up in Africa and India, at least 14,500 are trafficked into the United States every year. The average cost of a slave—considered disposable when he or she is too old or sick—is under $100.

Often, people are tricked into slavery by being promised a job or marriage in another country, only to find when they get there, that they are stranded because no such opportunity exists. Then the slavers require them to pay off their return passage by working in low-level jobs, often in the sex industry. But the loans are never paid off because the traffickers always find new charges to add, and the victims can't escape because there's nowhere to go. Slavers often threaten to kill family members back home if an individual flees.

Since 1990, 80,000 women and children from Myanmar (formally Burma), Cambodia, Laos, and China have been sold into Thailand's sex industry. The DePaul report also estimates that 300,000 women have been sold to the sex trade in Western Europe in the last ten years.

Today many individuals, international organizations, governments, and businesses are taking strong stands against this evil, unjust practice. One example is called the "Cocoa Protocol," an agreement among individuals in the chocolate industry, human rights groups, labor unions, and consumers, all working together to remove child and slave labor from the product chain. In this endeavor, the chocolate industry has provided more than ten million dollars to stop slavery on the farms of West Africa.

There's still a long way to go in solving the slavery problem worldwide, and our prayers are vital. We need to understand more deeply the power of the one universal God to give people a higher sense of humanity and of their identity as God's sons and daughters. This mental, spiritual impetus will help make slavery an unacceptable option in our global economy and society.

For me, praying with the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3 ), is a powerful way to support freedom for those who are in bondage, as well as those who, in their own way, are trapped in the misguided belief that they will benefit from enslaving another. This commandment is the law of Love, tenderly governing humanity. Our prayers can reveal greater evidence of the all-power of Spirit and the supreme justice of Principle.

To obey the First Commandment is to eliminate any "bottom line" that depends on the weakness and poverty of others for one's own well-being. And each heartfelt prayer must contribute to awakening those in the slave trade from thinking that slavery is acceptable, or that there's no other way to do business. No destiny of ruling another, or being ruled by another, could come from the God who is Love itself.

The First Commandment opens the door to spiritual freedom because it confirms our direct relationship with this one God. Speaking absolutely, we can say that the true freedom of every man, woman, and child is already established because we are spiritual, made in God's image and likeness. Each of us is able to turn to the one infinite God as the freeing power that will unshackle humanity from deceit, violence, and indignity. And this power will also free those who are enslaved. An important part of prayer is to embrace everyone—no matter what their human situation—as inseparable from the freedom that comes with the understanding of everyone's spiritual nature. This freedom is woven into the very fiber of each identity, and it includes peace, opportunity, and power.

When asked by a Pharisee which was the greatest commandment in the law, Jesus answered: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matt. 22:37, 38 ). Then Jesus followed this statement with the declaration that in addition to obeying God alone, we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

This reply provides a structure for all prayers involving human relationships. We can also pray to see more clearly that a healthy global economy rests on a spiritual basis of love for one's fellow beings, and that this necessarily excludes exploitation of any kind. Love's goal isn't to prey on others but to bring increased good for everyone. A healthy global economy must reveal more and more that everyone has a God-given purpose; no one is degraded or disposable under divine Love's plan.

Mary Baker Eddy loved God and all humanity deeply. She longed to free people from every form of mental and physical enslavement through the power of divine Love. In Science and Health, she wrote that human power is "proportionate to its embodiment of right thinking." And she went on to observe how "a few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipotence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market; but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love is the liberator" (p. 225 ).

The power of divine Love destroys the greed and ambition that lead people to do business at the expense of others' freedoms. It can regenerate them and turn their lives toward benevolence and generosity. As divine Mind, God is able to speak to those who are enslaved and to lead them to freedom. For each individual, the journey may be different, but it starts with the inner realization that they are more than "things" to be used, that they have a value and identity of their own. Even if many people don't think of themselves in spiritual terms, our prayers—affirming the spiritual nature that all people have—can help open their mental doors to this possibility.

One way I like to think of the First Commandment is as Love's law of justice for all. This law brings human thought out of the captive belief that one individual can control, or be controlled by, another. It also lifts the burden of fear, whatever individual form it may take. Not even one of God's sons and daughters can ever be resigned to a state of poverty. Not even one exists at the mercy of outside forces. Not even one can be fettered by the perverse thought that the greatest safety lies in familiar-but-despicable circumstances. Love does not impose suffering, and Love is the only power.

Science and Health presents many wonderful ideas about freedom, and speaks specifically about how the First Commandment brings better human conditions: "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed" (p. 340 ). Praying with the understanding that God is the one loving Mind of everyone can lead to progress on many different fronts. And it can open our eyes to intelligent steps that have not already been taken.

The evil of slavery must be stripped of power through a growing conviction of God's supremacy. As our trust in God's all-power deepens, we'll find ways to overturn and expose what isn't right, to educate and uplift the individual and collective consciousness. Specific prayer to confront slavery will bring moral courage and reveal new ways for all people to find their freedom.