Keep Thou My Feet

I've been thinking a lot this semester about the importance of having a righteous society. This is largely because I've been studying a lot of dysfunctional societies in my history class. What has struck me again and again is that the cultures that have the most trouble are usually the ones that condone immorality, greed, selfishness, laziness, and so on. A recent example that I have encountered is sex slavery in Thailand, which I learned about while reading the book Disposable People. Prostitution is extremely prevalent in Thailand. It's part of the culture. We are familiar with men going out and drinking to celebrate, but in Thailand after getting drunk the men will also go find a brothel. Few of them even feel bad about it. It's illegal, but the police help the brothel owners because the owners bribe them. Another striking problem is that parents commonly sell their daughters into sex slavery so that they can get enough money to buy a television or other luxury. Can you imagine selling your child for something as cheap as a TV? You can donate lots of money to helping stop sex slavery in Thailand, but until these flaws in the society are overcome, I doubt that sex slavery will disappear there. The fundamental problem is that a large portion of the population has no problem being immoral, dishonest, greedy, and without natural affection. If those problems are overcome, a lot of their other problems will also disappear.

So what it comes down to is that we need good missionaries to spread the light of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ will do more to improve conditions in a society than any amount of money or economic reform or government regulation. And this is why it is so important that we avoid moral decay in our own society. It doesn't just affect that one person. The more a people becomes immoral, the more everyone suffers. It seems that lately a lot of people are saying that they should be free to make their own choices when it comes to morality, without being judged. But ultimately this will lead to everyone losing their liberty, because an immoral and wicked society is a scary place to live.