A NEW PERSPECTIVE
JACKIE PULLINGER
20th October 2000
There was a woman most terribly wronged most shamefully treated. Here is her story:
Hagar was a slave. Her master named Abe and mistress named Sarah were unable to conceive a son so they devised a plan to have a proxy by this poor woman who could not say no and so became pregnant by her master after he slept with her. Hagar then despised Sarah for her barrenness and she in turn could not stand the derision and so with the permission of her husband she mistreated Hagar who fled.
"Does anyone hear me?" "Does anyone understand me?" "Does anyone see?"
We live in a world of injustice where many cannot cry out and find justice.
After returning home it happened again. Hagar bore a son whom she loved and he began to grow. Then amazingly Sarah, although she had thought she was past it, conceived herself and gave birth to her own son. But Hagar's son mocked Sarah's and she hated to listen to him. "Send her away -get rid of her!" Family strife. All over the world. Birmingham. "Her son! My son!" Abe was distressed for it was his son too.
But Hagar was sent away into the desert with but a skin of water and a little food which soon ran out. She could not bear to see her son die so she put him in the bushes and walked a little way away sobbing desperately.
"Does anyone hear me?" "Does anyone understand" "Does anyone see?"
This story happened centuries ago and still the world is crying in pain and anger. So those who have been wronged declare A DAY OF RAGE.
Why the rage? "It is natural that my pain must be equalled. How else will anyone know how I feel ? How else will they understand my loss -my shame?" It is inherent in man. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. "The one who mistreated me or my loved one must be punished as badly so he will know what is like for me. "
And so often it builds and builds up. Look at gangs, countries, ethnic groups and personal feuds. "They did it to me! They should suffer too!"
Ah Ping's story: I knew him in a place called the Walled City many years ago. It was a dark place and by a historical accident there was no law there. Although it was in the middle of Hong Kong it had been left out of the agreement between Britain and China at the end of the 19th Century. Although the police were not officially allowed there, many of the 32 opium dens, heroin dens, brothels, blue film theatres and gambling joints were actually run by them or gave huge bribes weekly. It was small in area -maybe five or so acres but at one time contained nearly 100,000 people crammed into rooms and shacks built on shacks in a place without water, toilets or electricity . No light. No justice.
But there were gangs called triads who bonded to run these places and control the city . Ah Ping joined when he was very young and by the age of fourteen was well established as a fighter. If he did not have the gang how could he walk the streets? He was poor. His hope was to become feared so he could survive.
He asked me at fourteen, "1 have been offered a girl -should I take her?" The gangs and the men considered it their right to live off a woman who would sell her body for him. She might do it willingly at first thinking he loved her and enjoying his protection until, after some time, she knew the score and it was too late. One day Ah Ping was walking down an alley and was jumped by seven men from a rival gang. Some old insult to be avenged. They beat him with pipes until he had a hole in his neck and his back.
When his gang brothers found out they held a meeting and decided to go to the houses of one of the other gang and take out his family members one by one and beat them. They reckoned that as seven had attacked one man they would take fifty men for the beating, as that was fair .
There are strong words, which I love, for we live in a time where many cry out for justice or healing. The words which need to be heard are Vengeance. Righteousness. Judgement. Justice.
Then there are those who cannot cry out. For the pain of the hurt is too hard so they must shut it out. They shut it in. Or the memory of the guilt is too shameful so they must blot it out... . They scratch their arms. They stick needles in their arms, noses, necks and groins. "Can I make a pain greater than the pain in my heart or hurt myself enough to cancel the confusion of deciding if I have been wronged or I am wrong? Am I hateful and bad or was it done to me by hateful and bad people?" "Do I hate them or do I hate myself!"
So they get high to forget or they just drink something or sniff something to make them dream so it all goes away. .z. J This starts the problem of addictive behaviour .Because the heart issues are postponed the struggle becomes internal and they shut down. The worst fear of all is facing what is inside. So they take more. And then -because they are now in physical pain and terrible distress without the drink, drug or the man who beats them -because they are lonely and confused without the crutch which once helped them, they must find a way to get more.
So they steal, cheat, lie and commit acts of violence against those who may even have loved them or tried to help. They shut themselves away from friends in case they are cheated, or, worst of all, faced with what they cannot face. They, themselves having once been victims, become the perpetrators of pain and they pass it on to another man, or family, or nation.
Where does it end? Is there an answer to the cycle of rejection, pain and unhealthy ways of compensating? Maybe those you know or deal with in your city have less dramatic stories than those I am recounting. Maybe less violent or understandable than those. They seem to come from ordinary families or even have confused parents who do not know what has caused their child to become anti social or shut down. But their pain is as real to them, their shame or loneliness is as awful, and the struggle is just as terrifying. Where does it end? There is an extraordinary book which some of us base our lives on, which has extraordinary answers and a way out both for those who have done wrong or those who have been wronged.
On the plane from Hong Kong I read Harry Potter. Ah -now there is a hope. A different world of magic -the righting of wrongs -come-uppance for the bullies and the little man winning against all odds. And somehow we have the impression that some one is watching everything all the time (is it the headmaster?) and everything will come out all right in the end.
It is all in the other book too. Just as magic. The extraordinary book known as the Bible, which has preceded Harry Potter as the best seller of all times. See what is in it: The theory of justice. Judgement. And, as we will see, an amazing marriage of Magic mixed with Vengeance. A psalm describes it as Righteousness and Peace kiss each other. (a) In wrath remember mercy. (b) (a) Psalm 85 v 10 (b) Habakkuk 3 v 2
In times of national and personal injustice it so often seemed .that no one saw, and, indeed the wicked often triumphed. And so the book spoke of A Day. A day of Judgement. The Day of the Lord. A day when all unseen crimes and afflictions would be brought to account and had to be paid for. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. One day the score would be settled fairly and in kind. The people longed for the day and could bear the pain for a while knowing that one day they would be vindicated. The Day of the Lord.
But for some there could be a problem. "If the offences against me are punished and dealt with -then what about those I may have committed? Even unwittingly. Can I do enough good myself to cancel out my own little wrongs? Can I answer the complaints against me?"
Into the world God sent a sort of Harry Potter. Apparently he was just as unlikely. He was not good looking and had not studied in any of the world's best schools. A simple family. A man who would be the avenger of the wronged and then bear the pain of the suffering. He would also be executed as the criminal of all times, paying dearly for all the offences ever committed. He would be despised, rejected and insulted. He was crushed, wounded and afflicted. His name was Jesus.
So, for those of us who know this book and have met this Jesus, there is an answer. Not a denial of our pain, anger or guilt but the real possibility of finding resolution in Him.
Walter Moore, the founder of Adullam began the work of Adullam homes in the City of Birmingham to help the homeless, ex-offenders, drug addicts and alcoholics. He had this hope in him. And the belief that a God who had changed his own heart could be found by the unloved, confused and the lonely. We are here tonight to celebrate his foundation and to offer ways that many more in this nation may participate and share wonder of seeing lives changing, hearts touched and people transformed.
Here are some transformation stories !
1: Hagar. The shamed, rejected, ill-treated woman met someone in the desert. Twice. The first time she fled Abe ' s house she heard an angel of the Lord say, "1 have heard your misery." She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. "You are the God who sees me. I have now seen the one who sees me." She was seen. She was heard. She was understood at last. "The second time she was sent away, her son was dying of hunger and thirst and she heard him again. He spoke from heaven and told her he had heard her son, seen her pain and would provide for their future. Not just pie in the sky either. -He provided water on the spot. Magic. She was seen. She was heard. She was understood. She was provided for. She had a future. And a son.
2. Ping. On the night he was beaten I had met him in a narrow alley, three feet wide, with an open sewer filled with rats. I had had what you might call a day centre -except mine was a night centre because our gangsters slept by day. We played ping-pong and darts and I had Christian meetings attended by me.
"Why do you keep coming here?" he challenged me. "Go find some nice students - they'll make nice Christians."
Most Chinese come from ancestor worshipping homes which mostly consisted of placating the spirits with offerings, hoping to avoid their tricky visits. In his case it had certainly not affected his behaviour or way of life. His family did it. The gangs did it. He did it. "We'll never change. We fight, steal, cheat women -even sell them. We can't change. Go find some nice students -they'll make nice Christians. You 're wasting your time with us." Smart guy.
It was as if he knew this was the way to spur me on. "I'm not going away", I said.
"When Jesus died for me I was His enemy. He didn't wait until I changed before He died. He died whether I changed or not so I could be forgiven for all I've done wrong. He loved me so much. And I love you too. I hate the things you do but I love you and I' II stay whether you change or not so you can know what He's like." "How does it work?" he asked -beginning to cry. "It's like you give Him your dirty clothes and He gives you His clean ones. He takes your crimes and cheats as if He did them and you go free. You start a new life. " He did. He fell to his knees in the gutter and with tears streaming down his cheeks he asked Jesus to take his filth and make him clean. He said he could hardly believe anyone would love him like that. It was a beginning.
After the beating that night when the gangsters planned their fifty strong revenge attack he croaked, although he could hardly speak, "No. No. No revenge. I believe in Jesus now. It's enough. No revenge." And he spent the night with some friends praying. He became a man of peace. Of course it was only the beginning of a long journey but we found that if we applied the same principle to all his problems there could be solution. Because the solution was in a changed heart -not changed conditions.
3. Elfrida. When I walked down the Walled City lanes I tried to avoid her. In her sixties, she was still working as a prostitute though mostly her owners sat her in the street to solicit for the younger ones. She sat on a step and poked the sewer with a stick to move the excrement down so the rats would congregate elsewhere. Her payment for services was three injections of heroin in her back daily as she had used up all the veins in her arms and legs. Her life was a catalogue of horror. She had been thrown out of home after witnessing her father having affairs with men and women and relations. Her mother had committed suicide. She ended on the streets and, of course, had to sell herself. Soon she took to drugs to make life bearable and there was no way out. She had no identity card, no one would care if she died. She witnessed brutal murders in the brothel and was afraid it would one day be her turn.
"Please let me live in your house," she would grab my sleeve as I passed, "1'11 iron, I'll do anything. Please let me live in your house. "
She had heard of my house. A bit like some Adullam homes except it was where I lived too. By this time dozens of men had met a magic Jesus and we had discovered that we could take them off heroin with no medication and no pain when God's Spirit came on them and they prayed in a miraculous new language. So their friends began to queue up to meet this Jesus and live in my house too.
I could not put a 60 year old prostitute in a house with twelve men. No room. Not suitable. And I had run out of normal mends! Most people live in Hong Kong live in one room and the few who had a spare one could not take on an old prostitute.
However, one day I could not resist her and we found a room like a cupboard three foot by five foot and put her in. She was very small and we washed her, prayed for her and the miracle happened again. She detoxified with no pain and started a new life. Magic!
It was only the beginning however . Whenever we worshipped, which meant singing for hours every day, she cried and cried. We prayed for her and the pain began to come out. But there was so much pain. Soon the Hong Kong Government offered us an old tin hut camp where we eventually housed a hundred and fifty people and she came to live in our new 'house'. She continued to cry.
After a year I wondered how long it would take. Over fifty years of ill treatment and shame -how many years to let the pain out? Could the cross of Jesus turn it round more quickly? We found the answer after she joined a group of ex-addicts who went to help in an old people's home. She came back incensed one day. "They just feed them there," she said. "They don't pray for them like you do." And she began to go and wash their hair and pray for them and love them as she had been loved. And that is what turned her round. No longer filled with self-pity she realised what she had received and started to share it with others. Magic!
4. James. He was a high- flying lawyer from London who was living it up in Hong Kong in the 1980's and deeply regretted meeting me. His old Oxford pal had introduced us hoping there might be some magic chemistry but instead he was disgusted not attracted by whom he met. Maybe it is the flip side of the same coin. I took him to a street stall in Western District of Hong Kong and he found himself, not only sitting over a drain flowing with chicken's blood and feathers, but sharing a table with some of the men who lived in my house. I translated some of their stories, bits of them like Ah Ping's, but quite different because, of course, they are all quite different. The man born to Public schools, Oxford and legal practice met the illiterate men raised in poverty , oppression and crime. And there was no doubt (if we are talking of Harry Potter's spells) who was awarded more points for shining.
"If I ever , ever do the Christian thing, " he registered, even as he recoiled, "this is what it means." The poor, using your own time, your own money, your own house, our own hearts. So he could not believe. It was too much and spent his remaining months in Hong Kong clearly avoiding us all. And drinking.
Two years later he was back, "How can I help ?"
And so this man who had a professional right to represent our men in court came to live in one of our houses -shed his pin stripe -and began to dig toilets, for we had none there. Setting aside his financial and legal skills for a while, he toiled manually along side the same kind of men he had formerly been paid to appear for, and they sang as they worked. This went on for weeks. He helped with the washing up. He played football. He sat up for hours on the nights when it was his turn to pray for a new arrival going through drug withdrawal. He spoke in magic tongues and watched as a wreck of a man became an Oriental treasure. Magic!
The men watched him closely of course. They are not remotely interested by our qualifications, or lack of them, but they are intensely impressed by those who stay with them. They did not want lectures, and counselling is an unknown word for the oppressed, but they were touched that he served them. And laughed. And sang. And loved them.
Anyone who works with us is called a volunteer, for we are all unpaid in salary terms, but definitely full-time in every way. Our helpers sleep in the same rooms (sometimes two tier bunks ) as those broken or homeless that they have come to learn from. James had no privacy, an uncertain day off and had swapped theories of justice as practised by the legal society for another justice whereby he too found pardon for his own wrongdoing. Magic. Harry Potter's team wins. 100 points.
Jackie Pullinger is one of the more respected and well known Christians involved in the world of drug rehabilitation today. Her books have sold around the world and her story and achievements - have touched and impressed even the most cynical international journalists.
Jackie left Croydon in 1966 with plenty of zeal for making a difference in people's lives but no financial support and no clear idea where she was going. She ended up in one the most dangerous and inhospitable places on earth Hak Nam, or the infamous 'walled city' in Hong Kong.
Since the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 it has become a park and shopping centre. In the 1960s it was over six acres of stinking, rotting alleyways where the only successful industries were prostitution and drug dealing.
From nothing Jackie began to build a remarkable mission-based work. Many came off drugs through prayer and care, prostitutes were rescued and shelters established. In the last few years the work has spread beyond Hong Kong to many other parts of Asia, including working with the boat people of Vietnam. But it always, in Jackie's words, "starts with the love not the bricks and mortar".
In 1989 Jackie shot to world-wide fame with the publication of 'Chasing the Dragon' - the book that told the story of her work in graphic terms. She was awarded an MBE for her work and was interviewed in a seminal TV programme by Alan Whicker She married John To, a former heroin addict, in 1992.
Sadly John died of cancer quite recently but Jackie's work continues and she has several speaking engagements lined up in the UK this year.
