The Love of Money

Colored fountains at the Chiang Mai zoo

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

I recently purchased tickets to come home on vacation in late August.  It will be the first time I've set foot on American soil in a year and a half.  Thailand is a beautiful place to call home, but I am so grateful for this upcoming opportunity to see dearly loved friends and family in both Virginia and Alabama.  Praise the Lord for this gift!

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Please pray for opportunities to share Truth with two new friends, W and J.  They are 20 and 18 years old, respectively, and both work in a bar in one of the red-light areas.  They are each single moms and have been working in this bar for the last two months.  Recently, we have been able to meet together for dinner and have plans to do that again next week.  Pray that, as I continue to develop my friendship with them, they would be open to hearing about Christ and would desire to follow Him.

New cell group

2.  Pray for the cell group I mentioned in last month's blog (pictured here).  That group has been somewhat inconsistent in meeting.  Please pray that they would catch the vision for assembling together in fellowship and that the group's two young leaders, F and S, would live lives of godly obedience for the others to follow.  Pray that they would mature in the faith and would share His Truth with others.

3.  Pleas pray for me as I work to finish what is, hopefully, the last of my required seminary coursework.  If you've ever pursued graduate courses, you know that the workload is, at times, overwhelming, especially when combined with a busy ministry.  Please pray that I would be disciplined in my studies and would know how to strike the proper balance between ministry and schoolwork.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

I have been trying to learn more about these ladies with whom I work, so that I might know how to serve them better and how to present the Gospel to them more clearly.  To that end, I made an exploratory trip into several red-light areas around Bangkok last Friday night, just to spend some time in observation in those areas.  I wanted to see these women in their work environments and to learn as much as I could from just watching what went on there.

I went to a red-light district called Patpong at around 8:00 pm.  Let me see if I can describe this part of town for you:

The main street in the area is very wide.  In the middle of the street, vendors will come and set up temporary stands to sell their wares each night.  They sell all sorts of things:  Souvenirs, T-shirts, sunglasses, food, luggage, just about anything you can imagine.  Each of these stands is covered with plastic and rigged with lighting, so it's almost like being in a market.  The only difference is the permanent buildings on each side of the street are filled with a variety of go-go bars, massage parlors, and tattoo artists, with the occasional restaurant or convenience store thrown in for good measure.

The whole environment is loud and boisterous, with music blaring out of the bars, street vendors and bar employees hawking their wares out on the sidewalk, and scores of customers haggling with the street vendors. And everything is in English:  The vendors' spiels, the bar names, the music, the menus.

What struck me almost immediately was the darkness.  I was prepared for spiritual darkness; I can feel the forces of evil in these places all the time.  But Patpong was very physically dark as well, and that was what really caught my attention.  I'd only seen it before in the daytime, but it is a whole different world at night.  

The bars are dark.  Literally, physically dark.  If you've ever been in a bar in the States, you probably know this already, and it's not news to you.  I knew it already, too, but it really struck me on this Friday night just how dark they all were.  The dim neon lights inside that provide the only illumination really just cast an eerie glow over the whole thing, and it made me wonder at the thought process involved in designing these bars, these places so intimately connected to the evil underbelly of society.  And this is the verse that came to my mind:

"This is the verdict:  Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed." (Jn. 3:19-20)

After I came to notice the darkness, the other thing that really hit home with me was the volume of business being conducted there.  And I'm not talking about the sex-industry transactions that were occurring.  That area is a well-known red-light area, and those are the women I want to meet in order to introduce them to Jesus.  I expected them to be there.  It was the whole reason I went to Patpong in the first place.

But they weren't the only ones transacting business there.

No, what surprised me were the "legitimate" businesses in the midst of all that decadence.  The souvenir vendors, the convenience stores, the restaurants, the grocery store.  It was when I realized they were there because of that decadence that I felt almost physically ill.  All of those businesses serve the same clientele.  Without the sex workers to draw the customers, the other businesses wouldn't be there either.  

Though Thai society in general claims a disdain for prostitution, tourism is its major industry.  And, unfortunately, sex tourism is its largest draw.  It is repulsive and horrifying, but it seems that everyone gets their piece of the pie here.  Surely, the Scriptures ring true when they tell us this:

"...the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Tim. 6:10).

Trust me, this is no condemnation of Thai people or their culture.  Lest we climb up on some hypocritical high-horse, we must remember that we have our own set of problems with the love of money.  If we're honest, it should be easy to admit that American culture, overall, is highly materialistic; it's something we as believers should fight against constantly.  But this is a sharp reminder of where the road to sin can take us and of what kinds of evil it can lead to if we allow the love of money to seep into different areas of our lives without realizing it.  We cannot serve two masters, and we must be diligent to push back the god of money and possessions in favor of the only Master Who can truly provide all that we need.

Me at the Chiang Mai zoo