What mother in the world today, or history, has cradled her newborn at her breast and thought, “I want you to become the most successful and sought after young prostitute who has ever lived?” Unless driven by an unimaginable greed or desperation.

To be sure, mothers aren’t perfect. Even God’s word reminds us of that. Unlike mothers, whose love for their newborn may lapse in the rarest of circumstances, and perhaps in the most desperate, God’s steadfast covenant love for his own never fails:

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and  have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will  never forget you  (Isaiah 49:15).

I recently wrote about a baby girl abandoned one Saturday night by her mother in a Cape Town hospital. I cannot pray for Poppy Honey and her family without thinking of the crippled conscience of her frightened, fraught and faraway biological mother.

Doesn’t every mother want the very best for her baby? They (and fathers) often don’t know what that best is, but we know that we want it.

The mother of James and John wanted the best for her babies, even though she got it wrong:

Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus  with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favour of  him.

“What is it you want?” he asked.

She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine  may sit at your right and the other  at your left in  your kingdom.”

You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus said to  them.

(Matthew 20:20-22)

But what mother would want her newborn child to make a living from prostitution?

Popular culture has helped us to understand what prostitution does to the human spirit. Look at the words of Aldonza from Man of La Mancha and Fantine from Les Miserables:

Oh I have seen too many beds
But I have known too little rest
And I have loved too may men
With hatred burning in my breast

Aldonza from ‘It’s All The Same’ in Man of La Mancha

 

Easy money lying on a bed
Just as well they never see the hate
  that’s in your head
Don’t they know they’re making love
  to one already dead?

Fantine from ‘Lovely Ladies’ in Les Miserables

‘Making love’, as we popularly call it, producing hate! The description of sexual intercourse, the gift of God that physically symbolizes the metaphysical one-flesh union of husband and wife, being spoken of as a living death! That is as broken and rock-bottomed-out life could be in a fallen world.

However, without excusing any one from personal responsibility for choices and behaviour, the link between prostitution and poverty is as obvious as it is confronting.

But there are also more subtle strains of prostitution in poorer communities throughout the world. I have heard too many stories of young women from rural African villages who have been afforded the opportunity of tertiary study due to family and clan members providing financial support to make it possible. Often they are the first and only child from their village to have such an opportunity and they carry large community expectations on their shoulders.

But it comes at an insidious cost. When they return home for weekends and semester breaks, uncles and other clansmen expect sexual favours in return for their ‘investment’.

And the link between sheer desperation and poverty is equally confronting.

How could a mother in India ever entertain the thought of killing her newborn baby daughter because she is another mouth to feed in a family teetering on the brink of starvation? Yet, I have personally met such a mother.

Anglican Aid’s partner in India interceded for this baby’s life and now both mother and daughter (now 13 years old) have converted from Hinduism and are secure in Christ.

Twenty thousand mothers every day nurse the corpse of the fruit of their womb as they have watched their children, quite literally, starve to death in their arms or die from causes related to nutrition deficit or from preventable diseases. A number of these parents are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anglican Aid partners with indigenous Christian organizations that are dedicated to reaching homeless youth in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and the Congo. I have been involved with churches in Johannesburg that seek to reach and meet the needs of homeless boys who live on its dangerous streets.

An astute observer may ask, “Why only to homeless boys?”

The answer is simple. Girls are quickly swept up and recruited into prostitution.

Anglican Aid also has partners who are trying to rescue and rehabilitate women and girls caught up in this vicious cycle of poverty and prostitution.

We would be wise not to be too hasty in our judgements of those who sell their bodies to prevent starvation.

If we listen closely we may hear the cry of a frightened girl crying out for God’s forgiveness and restored human dignity:

I dreamed a dream that life would be.
So different from this hell I’m living.
I dreamed that love would never die.
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Fantine from ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ in Les Miserables

It was astonishing to onlookers in the first century that Jesus hung out with pimps, prostitutes and other ‘pathetic’ individuals (tax collectors and ‘sinners’):

If this man really were a prophet, he would know what  kind of woman is touching him! He would know that  she is a sinner

(Luke 7:39)

It may even be more astonishing that Jesus hangs out with and continues to offer his grace to white, wealthy, westerners like me whose choices and behaviours may be much more culpable and condemning than poor souls who are forced, by desperation, to surrender their bodies to prostitution.

This Mother’s Day, we can make a mother’s dream come true.

Feature photo: fveronesi1