A very interesting story from the AP – it seems that the good people of New Beginnings Church of God have taken to picketing a local strip joint – including asking potential patrons if they really should be going in to a strip club. In response the strippers have taken to picketing the church. The article contains all the usual things you’ll get in such an MSM report: references to “do unto others” and “cast the first stone”; quotes from other Christians who think this congregation has got it wrong; references to alleged good works done by the strippers; congregants being kind to the strippers in turn. Its all there – the whole Church vs World debate in one, little story.
Naturally, I want to put my two cents in.
One thing which struck me right off was the bit about the stripper holding the “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” sign. The poor girl just didn’t realize, I think, what she was holding up. If I were to be seen by someone entering a strip club, I hope very much that someone would try to talk me out of it. I wish that back in my young and greatly insensitive days that someone had – I wish, that is, that I had never been a participant in the degradation of a fellow human being.
The girls, of course, are trying to make money – and it is noted in the article that when the church congregation does its thing, receipts are down. This is because people who want to go to strip clubs want to do so anonymously – because they are ashamed of it and know they should be ashamed. The last thing anyone in the various sex industries wants is for the average patron to be put in the light of publicity – that would kill the whole thing right off. You don’t need to ban pornography – just have the consumers name appear on a website every time he visits a porn website, and that would shut it down in ten seconds.
While one can sympathize with the poor girls for trying to make a living, the fact remains that for those girls who are not just supporting a drug habit, they are allowing themselves to be degraded for a lie. The degradation is being put on display for the pleasure of strange men – the lie is that they can’t make it any other way. In the article is that all too common story – the girl who’s just doing it as a temporary stop gap. Always sounds so reasonable – but any lie usually does, especially at the start.
It is a falsehood that the only way a person can support themselves is by doing something disreputable. Head over to Missionaries of the Poor and see what they have to deal with in real poverty – and then note that no one is ever sent out to sin to find help for these desperately poor people. There is always an honorable way to survive – it is, though, some times more difficult than the dishonorable way, at least at first glance. Always, in the long run, it is proved easier to be honorable.
The traffic in human beings for sexual purposes is as great a stain upon our age as the slave trade was in earlier times. The problem lies in the lack of respect for the dignity of the individual. The strip club owner wants to make a buck – the church congregation wants to help people to salvation. Who is right? The modernist would say that neither or both are right – but that is not the case.
We have a situation where one man wishes to profit off the wrecking of lives (strippers and patrons) while on the other side are a group of people who want the bad thing to stop. Supposedly, to a finely tuned post-Christian moral relativist ear, the Christians are just narrow minded bigots sticking their nose in where its not wanted – but the truth is that the congregation is trying to rescue their brothers and sisters from an evil thing.
