In 2015, when I decided to move to Asia to work, Thailand was high on my list of destinations. I ended up spending a year in South Korea and never had enough vacation time to make it to Thailand. Although I’m not going to Thailand for vacation, working and living there next October and sharing the love of Jesus to others is something I never thought I would be doing.
In my mind, Thailand is a place I would return to over and over again, potentially move to long term if God called me there. There are endless possibilities in this country and I’m excited to meet people, make contacts and work hard at loving others well.
Thailand has become a huge tourist destination, known for it’s laid back “anything goes” atmosphere and a sense of “freedom”. It saddens me to know that a large percentage of this country isn’t truly “free”. Thailand is primarily Buddhist, with a large divide among the urban and rural areas in terms of traditionalism and conservatism, mostly traditional in the northern regions. In these more traditional areas, women work while men work hard to earn their spiritual merit as monks. Many families will send their daughters to urban areas at young ages to earn money, where their only option is prostitution.
I mean I want to believe that all of Thailand is great food, temples rich with culture, mesmerizing beaches with endless activities, and exotic animals that you can see, but there’s a sad truth and that’s Thailand’s worst kept secret, it’s sex industry. Even though prostitution has been illegal in Thailand since 1996, the revenue from it exceeds $6.4 billion per year. Talks of legalizing prostitution has come up in government as a way to improve the lives of sex workers and increase tax revenue. Although legalization has never taken place it is widely tolerated, especially in urban areas.
When looking at the history of Thailand, it’s easy to see why the objectification of women (although men are objectified today in the sex industry as well) is so easily tolerated. Having multiple wives in Thailand was seen as a status symbol and additionally there were no sanctions whatsoever if a husband chose to beat or even sell their wives. Most wives were given one of three titles, ‘the major wife’, ‘the minor wife’, or ‘the slave wife’. When polygamy became illegal, prostitutes became a way for men to still take pleasure in the ‘slave’ wife.
After reading blogs from previous missionaries in Thailand, it became pretty clear what the overall theme was, love. Not only love for the women who are selling their bodies, but also a lot of love for the men buying them.
Can I say I was shocked reading that?
I want to say I’m a loving person.
I’m going to eleven countries to share the greatest love of all, Jesus, and yet I’m so weak and broken in my own righteous anger towards the people who buy these women! I honestly think it would take every effort of mine to not walk over to the men and give them some honest truth,
Don’t you have a daughter?! Don’t you have a wife or a mother? You’re disgusting!
But these courageous people on the race, who are much stronger than me, love these men too. They pray for these men and know that they share similar faults.
And at the end of the day the truth is that it’s not that they are stronger than me, or more fearless, or that the prostitutes and men who buy them are weak, but that our God is so strong. How amazing is God’s grace for us? For all of us. We are all lost and broken, and Jesus’ love for us is so amazingly steadfast.
At the end of the day, it’s sin and grace; we all do it and God knows we all need it.
