The deaths of 39 Chinese and Vietnamese migrants in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Essex have shocked the world. The truck, said to be Irish owned but registered in Bulgaria, had only been in Britain for less than 2 hours when the tragedy was discovered.

How long they had been in the truck, where they embarked and the personal stories of the migrants are all unknown at the time of writing. But one thing is clear: the desperation of this little group of human beings who were prepared to entrust their lives to evil lawbreakers in the hope of finding a new way of life.

Shockwaves have run right through the nations of Europe, which are perceived by people in two thirds of the world as being rich and offering eminently attractive life opportunities. The inequalities in the distribution of wealth that still exist in the 21^st Century are surely an indictment upon the whole of humanity.

Uncomfortable Facts

We rarely stop to think of the way in which the whole of our financial and industrial systems are organised to favour the rich nations and to block competition from the euphemistically labelled ‘developing nations’. It has ever been thus. In Britain we rarely stop to think of the incredible suffering we inflicted upon millions of Africans whom we transported to a life of slavery in the Caribbean islands to produce our sugar.¹ 300 years of cruel slavery built the great cities of London, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester and the great houses of our landowning aristocracy.

We rarely stop to think of the legacy of slavery that still exists today in the black community in Britain. The history of slavery has been suppressed in our schools for 200 years. If slavery is ever mentioned it’s always the cotton fields of America! – never the sugar plantations in Jamaica! We don’t want to know that the largest slave plantation in Barbados – Codrington Hall – was owned by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, linked with the Church of England! These kinds of facts are simply too uncomfortable for us.

The inequalities in the distribution of wealth that still exist in the 21^st Century are surely an indictment upon the whole of humanity.

We certainly don’t want to know that, under British colonial law, marriage was forbidden to slaves in the Caribbean islands while white men took slave girls for their sexual pleasure, producing many grades of colour that still exist today.

Neither do we wish to know that after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, when the British plantocracy were no longer able to replenish their African slaves who they cruelly beat to death, they encouraged the strongest African males to produce as many babies as possible to increase their workforce. This is directly responsible for producing the culture of ‘fatherlessness’ we have in Britain today, the result of which is the black-on-black knife crime that is the scourge of our city streets!

Downward Spiral of Degradation

We have a history of inhumanity and hypocrisy in Britain from which we are still suffering today. At root lies a lack of respect for the God of Creation and the precious gift of life that God – and only God – can give. The Apostle Paul got it right when he said that once we suppress the truth of the God of Creation, “his eternal power and divine nature”, we descend into a downward spiral of degradation that corrupts our humanity and leads to ultimate destruction (Rom 1:20).

Paul notes the stages in this downward spiral: first, when we cease to believe in God, we don’t believe nothing – we believe anything! We make up our own gods to suit our predilections: we worship money, fashion, pleasure, gambling, sex, fast cars and a thousand other things. Paul has a devastatingly penetrating phrase: “Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts…” (Rom 1:24). In the final stage of corruption, he says that they actually “invent ways of doing evil” – surely an accurate description of what’s going on today, with the evil human trafficking trade selling human beings in just the same way as, for 300 years, European nations conspired to capture, trade and transport Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the unspeakable horrors of slavery.

The worldwide trade in human life today is equally horrific: promising young girls opportunities of education and training in professions; but in reality they are enslaved as unwilling prostitutes in the sex industry – where every act of intercourse is a rape! In countless poorer communities, parents actually sell their children to modern slavers, thinking that they will be going to a better life. Sometimes their children are actually bought and sold for body parts, so that children in the rich countries of the world can have organ transplants.

We have a history of inhumanity and hypocrisy in Britain from which we are still suffering today.

Travesties of Justice

In Britain, our news media are all expressing their horror at the deaths of 39 migrants in a refrigerated truck. Yes, they suffered an incredibly horrible tragedy in the dark, airless, freezing cold of that tomb of death, but this is only a symbol of our general lack of care for the precious and sacred gift of life.

This incident has made the news headlines, but in our hospitals similar numbers of human beings are killed every day; their tiny bodies dropped into black plastic bags, taken out of the back door and burnt in incinerators that consume unwanted life.² It is no different from the ‘Valley of Slaughter’ outside Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day, which he said was “detestable to God”, where the people burnt their baby sons and daughters in the fire as an offering to the gods (Jer 7:30).

This week, in the name of ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’, the same devastating practice has been imposed by our Parliament on Northern Ireland, against the wishes of the majority of its citizens and without the say of its politicians, a detestable travesty of justice that is surely abhorrent in the eyes of God.

Isn’t it time for all of us to come humbly before the God of Creation – the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – confessing that we are part of a generation that has abandoned its trust in him and is rapidly sliding down the spiral of degradation towards the destruction of our civilisation? Only REPENTANCE and turning can save us, through Jesus our only Saviour.

References

1 An amazing new interactive exhibition on colonial slavery is now being made available to museums in the UK by the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation. Information available from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

2 There is also a sickening trade in the body parts of aborted babies, exposed in the USA through an undercover operation in 2015. The enemy surely delights in degrading humanity to the uttermost – even after death.