this is kind of a gross story.
it begins a few days ago. a one melissa milroy and i were out on our daily prayer walk, just doin our thing, walkin along and prayin. we pulled over into one of the buddhist temples that resides smack dab in the middle of the red light district.
as we were standing there praying over the temple we noticed a little puppy running around, adorable. i think melissa had seen it there before so we figured it belonged to someone who works there or lives on the grounds or something. the puppy sat down with its back to us and for some reason it looked kind of weird all the sudden, like it was heaving.
i said, "that dog looks like it's about to throw up."
seconds later, the most throw up i have ever seen come out of a small animal came out of this dog's mouth. i know, it's disgusting. you might be wishing i wasn't describing this, but here we are. it was like one big solid chunk of bright orange nasty.
[the scene of the crime, the temple itself]
needless to say melissa and i were appalled. we tried to be quiet about it (thai culture does not condone loud people), but we were thoroughly disgusted, so much so that we didn't even want to keep standing there, mere feet away from the site of the vomit. we swiftly exited the property.
but the weird thing was that of all of the other people who had been sitting there, right next to the puppy, not one single one of them reacted in any way. seriously, they didn't even flinch. they just carried on talking without batting an eyelash or moving or expressing concern of any kind.
as we left melissa said, "you know, this makes me think of that verse about the dog returning to its vomit."
[scary dragon statue]
she was talking about proverbs 26:11. "as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly".
as gross as seeing a dog puking was, the revelation was kind of cool, and a surprisingly insightful metaphor for much of the rampant sin in thailand. the red light district is nowhere close to a secret. one statistic we heard even reported that 90% of men in thailand have purchased sex. there are scantily clad women and lady boys at every corner. everyone knows what's going on. but like the dog's vomit, nobody does anything. no one flinches, no one is appalled, no one is moved to act. the same folly is repeated over and over again, like a dog returning to its grime.
sometimes it's good to be disgusted. sometimes we need to see things we don't really want to see to be reminded that some things warrant a strong reaction. some things are not supposed to be pleasant or normal, some things should make us uncomfortable and squirmy, because some things are wrong. i know that's not a super popular thing to say in the midst of today's moral relativism, yet i also don't think you'll find many people, liberal or conservative or otherwise, who would say that human trafficking is okay.
lately my prayer for chiang mai and thailand and the red light district has been that the veil of deception would be lifted. i pray that these people will begin to see clearly, and that they will be moved to action.
bonus: see if you can spot the culprit (aka the puke dog) in this photo. good luck!
