The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 4 – Linda Smith

Episode 4: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

Dr. Jeff Myers interviews Linda Smith, the president of Shared Hope International and a former member of Congress, about the global issue of sex trafficking. Smith recounts her personal journey into this work, which was catalyzed by a trip to Mumbai, India, where she witnessed the reality of sexual exploitation. She explains the founding of Shared Hope International and its model of creating villages to provide survivors with safety, a sense of belonging, and the ability to dream.

The conversation also explores the direct connection between pornography consumption in developed countries and the demand that fuels the sex trafficking industry. Smith offers a strong critique of the pornography industry, provides advice for those struggling with addiction, and concludes with a message of hope and a call to action.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey, it’s Dr. Jeff Myers. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. Every episode I interview major thought leaders to show that worldview changes everything. In this show, I interview Linda Smith, who is a leader in the global movement to stop sex trafficking. I’ve got to tell you, I’m recording this intro after I already did the show. I’m just going to go ahead and admit that to you. It was a profound experience disorienting in a way to talk with her because we covered everything from what individual people can do to address issues like sex trafficking to how the addiction to pornography affects our families.

I just want you to know that there is hope. There’s hope if you’re in a situation where you’re thinking, “I’m addicted,” or, “Somebody I love is addicted.” We can address these issues and we can stand for truth. This is going to be a really sobering episode of the Dr. Jeff Show and it’ll be sobering as we talk through one of the most difficult issues literally in the world today, a hidden issue with Linda Smith from Shared Hope International.

(01:13):
But I’ve got to tell you, the source of the problem is right here that on this device you could actually be promoting slavery today by the choices of what you look at, what you support, what you give your time to. The topic that we’re diving into today is the issue of sex trafficking. I know that sounds like, oh boy, I can just imagine there’s a homeschool mom saying, “I thought we were going to listen to this show today as a break and now I’m not sure I want my kids to hear this.”

But there are potentially more people enslaved today than any other time in history who are enslaved for the purposes of sexual exploitation for the benefit of people who live in this country and other developed countries of the world. So today to talk with us about this is the president of Shared Hope International, former member of Congress, Linda Smith. Linda, thank you for joining us.

Linda Smith (02:19):
Good to be with you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:23):
I know there was a particular moment when you were a member of Congress, you were traveling to India, you were in Mumbai and you walked down Falkland Road and realized all of a sudden this is the global center for the trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation. I know that was a defining moment in your career that led to some of the things that you’re doing now. I want to get into that in a few minutes.

I want to return to that story because it’s incredibly powerful, but I’d like for our audience to know a little bit about you. We know that you are a member of Congress. We know that you are a global leader fighting against sex trafficking, but what was your own childhood like? How did you kind of come to this place?

Linda Smith (03:18):
Like most people that get to a place in their life and look back and go, “Huh? How did I get to this place?” I know that sounds kind of funny, but one time when I was actually in India and I was looking at the places that the families lived making brick making and I saw in front of me a picture God showed me that was very graphic.

Some people believe in vision, some don’t, but to me, I guess it would fit a vision and I don’t know I’d ever had one of those before and literally I saw me standing on a pile of bricks and the time when I was little we were transient. We moved a lot, picked berries, picked fruit, thinned pears, but we moved around and I started working young. I started a business at 11, helping elderly people, ironing, doing things like that.

(04:15):
I looked at it and I thought I worked a long time. And then I ended up thinking, “Well, that’s probably kind of like this.” Picking up that straw, they put straw on bricks and then there is the mud and I thought, “Oh yeah, politics.” I had been in the state Senate leadership. I was elected to Congress in a write-in and I was a target. It was just nasty all the time.

And I thought, well, that’s kind of like politics, the mud. And then they add manure, doo-doo, whatever you want to call it, smells the same. And there’s a chemical reaction in some of the best bricks in the world and then they become different. You can’t smell them. All you can do is know that they’re together as a brick and I see behind you bricks, but you look at what goes in them, it’s messy.

(05:09):
God showed me that that messiness had me ready for that moment and I saw myself standing on a pile of bricks and I was looking into the eyes of those girls I had seen the night before that were in children and young women in prostitution being prostituted and sold and I’m going, “Oh God, that’s not me. I’m not the softest marshmallow. I can’t. I’m a business person. I’m a member of Congress. Let me organize it, but don’t. I can’t because I couldn’t feel that it was right.

So my background was early working, transient. The do- do for me was I was never safe if men were around my home. Most of the men were not those that you could feel safe with. Periodically, yes, but you were always trying to not be where you could be vulnerable. I realized today that what drives me is that these women and children don’t feel safe ever.

(06:13):
If you don’t feel safe, you don’t really belong. And so you never settle because you can never just settle. And then if you can’t settle in your mind and belong, you can’t hope and dream. And from that incident, I knew I had to do something, but I tried to run from it and I joked afterwards that my hip should have been out, which is obviously what happened in wrestling with God, but I settled and I would do what I could do.

And from that started the first villages, both in India and Nepal right away. And from that, just a turning and saying, “I can see what you’re doing, God.” And just getting rid of all political stuff, dedicated my list to shared hope, gifted faith, I guess you could say my name and my list. Normally after you leave politics, you sell them. And I started Shared Hope, and I never looked back, but I’ve always felt uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel, not that I don’t have peace, but this doesn’t necessarily feel, I guess you could say comfortable every day.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:24):
Well, you’re convicting me and I think others who are watching or listening to this show right now because we have been told all of our lives that the seeking of comfort is the point of life. We go get a degree so that we can get a good job so that we can have a comfortable job rather than a hard one. We move into certain neighborhoods so that we can have a comfortable existence rather than a messy one.

And when you were there in Mumbai, and again, I want people to picture this, you were a member of Congress. There is an entourage, it’s officialdom, it’s all the stuff going on and cars and things like this and the government’s trying to show its best face, but you had a background in business and you were thinking back because you looked at these little girls, these women who were so helpless, never feeling safe and you thought, “I remember growing up feeling unsafe like that and now I’m at this personal point of crisis where I have this official position, but I personally care.”

(08:36):
“I want something to be, I have to get involved. I have to get in this.” Now tell us about the villages that came out as a result of this, because I think that’s fascinating. You mentioned that the person who doesn’t feel safe cannot belong and a person who cannot belong cannot dream. Did I get that? Did I get that right?

Linda Smith (08:57):
Participation is in your stability. If you’re being sold, you’re afraid you could be victimized, you’re always looking to defend yourself, right? You’re always looking and being aware where your brain is safe and you belong, you can create and I’m sure that there is better theology than that or a logic, but there’s a little different story than what you told, Jeff.

When I was called, a man called me in my congressional office and talked about 45 minutes, just wouldn’t stop. And I thought he was exaggerating that there were thousands of children and women and there’s little boys too in this market and yet I couldn’t sleep. Well, that’s always been a sign of, something is wrong, and pleading with God. I actually self-funded went to India and I did it in a five day break during the Clinton impeachment votes and it was about a five day time and we’d fight.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:56):
You didn’t even have to do this. This wasn’t an official, this wasn’t like an exploratory committee or anything like that. You just sensed you needed to be there.

Linda Smith (10:04):
Yeah. I was involved in the human rights issue. I was involved in trafficking of organs from China. There were a lot of different things I was involved in researching and being a part of in Congress and children and babies and trafficking and I kind of knew a little bit about sex trafficking, but it was not on my radar at all, but I was fighting it from the moment he talked to me and I think it’s partially because of my situation.

It was like, I’m going to stand here as a person people respect because you always feel like you’re dirty and you just believe when people find out what happened to you, you’re somehow dirty. So you’re always looking kind of here going, “I wonder if they realize who I am, really, and that I’m bad.” And so you really end up having to come up with a defense.

(10:55):
I wanted to be this person in positions, not that I love power or position. I was written in for Congress. I didn’t even run. It just kind of happened in about six weeks, but I needed to be respected and not seen as dirty. So once I realized that that’s what it was, that I didn’t want to go back where God wanted to use the things that had happened to me, to his glory and that he wanted me to understand.

And no, I don’t think he creates evil, but Proverbs, or excuse me, Romans 8:28 is always the scripture that just says, “Okay, he doesn’t just say the good things. He says the doo-doo. He says the manure.” I used to say crap, but a pastor said, “Don’t say that.” And so I said, “Okay, it all smells the same. I’ll just say whatever you want to call it.”

(11:48):
But after those things that he’s going to use in this journey, this mysterious journey he gives us to take and he says he orders every one of our days. No, I don’t understand all that, but what I do know is he said there will be sorrow. You will have pain and we run from that and Go showed me that clearly not to run from that, but to run into the pain and to understand it.

I mean, one of my favorite scriptures is on that. It doesn’t sound like it should be a favorite because you just about read over it. So Mary and Mary are leaving the tomb and they’ve just seen Jesus gone and it says they leave in fear and joy. They’re right together. Well, fear is not comfortable. If you’re fearful, many people just go, “Well, that something’s wrong.” No, they were especially loved by Jesus the first to realize he was missing the one to carry the news, but their humanity had fear.

(12:54):
I’ve learned in this walk I can have fear and joy and that I’m to step into fear. That doesn’t say to step into foolishness, but to step into fear. Now I just started preaching and I’m really not a preacher.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:11):
Well, this is a sermon I need to hear and I think other people are probably thinking the same thing because I sometimes ask that question of, God, why are you allowing this to take place? Why is there pain? And I don’t realize that God’s answer in part to that question is me, that I’m here and I am to step into that area of fear trusting him and that he’s bringing healing through that.

So what you’re saying is this discomfort that we have facing difficult things is the first question we need to be asking ourselves. Why am I so uncomfortable talking about this? Because it disrupts the pattern of the life I want, which may not be the life that God is leading me to embrace. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so self-reflective on a show before, but I’m hearing this in, I think, in a very personal way.

Linda Smith (14:22):
Well, and we would not choose those things to know them God in his love for us. He walks along with us and then there’s something that we say, why God? But in our heart it’s like we can say why God’s our daddy and it’s not saying, screaming at him, why God? And yet sometimes it feels like that too and all we can really do for the day, I mean, if we’re looking back or forward either one very far, actually instead this day is what I have, then we’re outside of where God wants us. He wants us to show up where he’s put us with the gifts he’s given us and the willingness and often that position for me is uncomfortable.

No, I still am not a counselor type of person. I’m not the softest marshmallow in the bag. I’m more likely to organize everything and I’m more likely to take the pieces I see and build a little structure or a big structure in my mind and then go, “Well, I can do this much and start.” So that first five days I developed a budget for houses for the women and children to flee to if they would flee because I could see they had sisters and I didn’t know everything about them, but sure enough, when they had a chance they would flee to somewhere else and then we could move them out to a village we built and then move them if they were from Nepal back to another village.

(15:51):
That was all within months that God did that and went in front of me and he used a lot of the people I knew from politics who had money to help me immediately. And so I had a 20 some thousand piece made a fairly significant donor list that by gifting it and saying, “I’m not going back, this is what I’m doing.” That is what launched shared hope. Did I know that after the writing campaign? By the way, I said no to the writing campaign and left town because I didn’t think it would.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:21):
And people wrote you in anyway. And you became a member of Congress and developed a list of people who could then help you realize the vision to help these girls.

Linda Smith (16:32):
Couldn’t have organized it like that. I always joke, he knew my heart, that I wanted to be obedient, but I was exhausted. I’d run two state Supreme Court cases on two initiatives that I had written, one on budget and one only government. I was exhausted. In fact, a couple of weeks before I went away to sleep September of 94, I literally had said, “I’m done. I’m just so tired.” But they had given the initiative a spending control initiative to spend what government actually spends on programs, et cetera. They had said, “No, the people voted for it and that’s their right to vote to limit the size of government.”

So we won and I just literally was exhausted and during that time is when the writing started. So I said, “God had to get me out of town, literally work with other people not using money because I don’t believe in taking special interest money.” And I had refused and been fighting it even and weaned myself from most everything, lobbyists, packs.

(17:44):
And so I was on my way in this journey, how could I take the five million or whatever you would 10 million, 20 million for a congressional race. And so I knew I just couldn’t do it because of those things. So you can’t spend very much money when there isn’t very much time and I couldn’t get in the way and God already knew I was exhausted. So he just had to get me out of town, but he still loved me. So sometimes I’ll say, “God, am I in that moment now? Am I resisting? Just take me out of town for a minute, do what you’re going to do and I’m going to pray and be obedient and show up.”

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:24):
It’s occurring to me, Linda, that no one would ever write this up as a how-to manual for how to get into a position where you can help millions of people, but it’s one of those crazy stories where you think only God could have done this, right? Well, let’s go back to India for a minute. I’m really curious as you were standing there and for people who’ve looked in this know, Mumbai, India, huge sex trafficking center, Falkland Road, sort of the center of it all.

And it’s not the only place. There are places all over the world, but as you were there and you were asking how to help, what can you do? How can you help? What difference could you make? Where did the idea of giving villages to flee to come from? That almost sounds like the Old Testament idea of a city of refuge.

Linda Smith (19:33):
I don’t. I will give you the best I can. I was so shocked by the smells, the sounds. And I spent the first night in the brothel area with a wonderful man. His name was KK Deverage and I was teen challenge under teen challenge in Mumbai and he had been ministering to little boys, drug addicts on the streets and had discovered their mommies and their sisters and they had a little church down in that area for these women and children.

And so he was taking me around showing me the boys the first night and I said, “I really want to get to where the girls are ” Because that was my call originally. I didn’t even realize little boys were trafficked too. I knew nothing. So he had gotten me there and I went into what I think is shock. There was a woman standing asking if I’d pray for her sister because they had said that I was a Christian and I think they were having a hard time believing a politician could be a Christian.

(20:35):
They’re not highly respected places in the world, but I did go into their little church service and I ended up being asked to pray for this one little girl and I don’t know what age she was. She was very, very skinny and very sick. I didn’t want to touch her, I have to be honest. The smell of us Americans, this smells pretty repulsive. It’s diesel and manure and pea and it’s just incense. Mix it together and it’s really bad.

And yet it was like God said touch her for me. And I could still hear his words and it was like, when I can’t come and then it was I needed to touch her. Well, she fell into me and I could still feel her heartbeat. To this day, it’s one of my strongest memories and it’s like it’s today I can feel her. And it was clear to me that I had to do something.

(21:26):
So I did what everyone does. Well, no, I don’t know. I mean, you use what you have, right? And so I knew God had put me there for that time. Faith without works is dead is one of my base scriptures that kind of kicks me in the backside every once in a while. It’s like, “Okay, Linda, you have to do something.” Well, I am a natural. God has made me an entrepreneur. I chaired the small business committee in Congress. I love the creation of business and structure and helping people and all of this. And so it made sense to me that, if they could flee.

So Bombay Teen Challenge and Deverage said, “Well, we could have these safe houses for the women because we have a little village, a place up in the mountains that we’re going to develop for the boys, but we could do something like this for the girls.” And not sure, you look back, I knew innately that if you could flee, you would.

(22:24):
I just knew that. If you could get away, if I could hide, I wouldn’t be molested if I could not be available. And so that made sense to me. Now there was a heart for these girls in KK Doverage and he knew he needed to do something, but the village was really what he thought would be better for boys up in the mountains and I knew God had called me to the girls.

Eventually we developed the village within months and I raised the money for most of the infrastructure and everything for it in the first months so we could show people something and then they would start donating through their church or whatever. And so I guess you say I used what I knew. I knew structure. I knew how to put together a budget. By the end of the second day, I had put together a budget based on what it would be to lease, what it would be for utilities, for food, for staff to open safe houses.

(23:25):
I think it was two or three I had in the budget and that I wanted it to happen immediately and I would deliver the money if we could get the leases. The leases are really expensive because most properties are owned by very few people in India, even today. So it drives the property up really high. So they were started right away. They had 37 women in them right away and some of them wanted to go to Nepal. So I went to Nepal with the same men and we helped meet what was my own underground church originally and we started developing safe houses there to help the women and children come back from Mumbai. And so we had to build out in a very short period of time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:13):
There’s so many times where I’ve, and I marvel at this because I remember these times where I think what I’m seeing is so sad or so awful, but there’s not really anything I can do so I’m going to go on and do something else. But then I have to live with that in my memory because I know that maybe there’s something I could have done. And what you’re saying is it’s not even that you have to, as a friend of mine put it, it’s not that you have to feed the 5,000, but you do have to bring your loaves and fishes.

Linda Smith (24:52):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:53):
And you brought your business experience and said, “Well, look, we can’t save…” The question is not how do we save them all? The question is, how do we help the ones who can flee right now and just begin developing that? Just give us a little.

Because we’ve got to address something in this show that’s going to be super uncomfortable for everybody who’s watching and that is that the consumers that drive a lot of the sex trafficking around the world are right here in the United States. They’re the ones with the money who are paying and then bad things happen around the world. But before we get to that, I just wanted to hear a little bit with the villages, tell us what all Shared Hope is doing now to help these women and children who are in such desperate situations.

Linda Smith (25:48):
Well, many of the villages over the years are now standing and operating and we capitalized them and started their programs and then spread their fundraising sources so that they were operating ethically and strong and able to not have one just fund source to begin with most of the time I capitalized them sometimes putting as much as nearly a million dollars into capitalizing a village around the world some are operating that way. Some are like in Nepal and parts of India and literally there is no way to make them self-sustaining.

The kids are too little, the women are coming out of brothels, they’re bringing their children or we’re educating the children and the mommies and they’re not sustainable in any business market. And so we do try to do that, but our goal is this. We want them to get up in the morning and have a hope where they’re safe, they know they belong and that they can then dream about tomorrow, but that they do something each day.

(26:50):
So the structure needs to be, they’re going to school, they’re doing something there, they have a value in what they’re doing for the day and then they can dream about tomorrow. And now today we have women and children, young men through college. They’re working around the world, some in ministry, some are counselors, some are business people and because we decided or I decided, my husband decided that once God brought them into our lives that we would do everything we could to fulfill their hope and keep our promise if you’re going to rescue, you better have a long-term plan because God has just given you a child.

Now that means that we have limited the number of villages. We’ve spent a lot of money on some and yes, lots of money on some of the survivors to bring them through college. In America, I’m working with one right now that is, I just bought her first home and she ended up being put beside me for four years because she had been put in prison because the 81 year old man who was buying sex with her and she was a child, she stabbed him with a little knife and he had a heart attack.

(28:05):
They put her in prison at 16. So raising hers from a point of injustice, helping her build her life is just awesome as this morning we were talking or communicating and the new house is some of the expenses of repair are a little much and so she comes home to mama, she comes home just like in the villages often that is their home for life, whether it’s Nepal or India or Fiji or wherever.

So the model is just like you would have if it was your child, hard, expensive, but right. And one of them could be working alongside one of you that is listening someday because they could be that other engineer or that other business person. But by the way, some of mine, you might work for them someday because they’re really awesome entrepreneurs.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:58):
But that model’s so incredible. They feel safe, they have a refuge, then they know that they belong, then they can dream and as they dream, then they become the new generation of entrepreneurs and business people, but also the new generation of rescuers.

Linda Smith (29:20):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I have a group of individuals that are survivors of sex trafficking, mostly children that were children of sex trafficking who are my advisors and they’re men and women, one’s a judge, they are one’s a nurse, well, she was dealing with burn children for a while and now she works in intensive care. I look at these children and these, I still see them as my children and I go, “Whoa.”

But had I known that terrible night when we were wrestling that little girl away from a trafficker. After working with the police in the United States, what was going to happen? No. They called, I just showed up and tried to be the negotiator with her to get her out. And that’s today, that’s in America, that’s now. And I’m not comfortable with that. But there was nobody else. And at that point it was me.

(30:20):
That sounds like my little girl at my home. If it were me and I just showed up and God spoke through me and today again, she’s an intensive care nurse and she will talk with other girls. She will reassure. She will speak to students.

(30:39):
She has created what’s called Chosen with another survivor and they talk to students and it’s called We Were Chosen. Neither one of them were going after anything. They were chosen by traffickers in different ways. One was 12 when they chose her and Brianna, the one that is the nurse. They started stalking her at 17 and she thought the actual trafficker was a college student he was, but he was also a person finding the product to bring to market and this kind of petite little high school student, cheerleader, all those things. She was the market. She was the product.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:24):
I think there are a lot of people and they would be embarrassed to have others know this, but we think it’s probably up to 70% of people are watching porn, using porn. And we’re going to do a show specifically on this and show people how to be free. But I need for you to, because the story you just told is an incredibly disturbing one because it implies that people who are using pornography are contributing to the problem. Just consuming it or looking at it may actually not be a victimless crime, but may actually be perpetuating the problem around the world.

Linda Smith (32:20):
Whatever porn you’re looking at in whatever kind it might be males, females, children, you’re adding to a marketplace. So if you picture yourself driving to a local mall or down the freeway and you see a big billboard in the market you pay more money for that billboard. So if I was going to put up a billboard, I’d pay more money for it.

So the more traffic, the more money is made by the industry, the primary sites like Pornhub or even Google. So they will allow those sites and every time you go onto one of them, you’re adding to the profit of someone. They actually, you’ll say, “Well, I’m not paying for it.” Some of you are. Some of you are going to sites where you are paying for it and you think it’s all hidden. I will tell you, we investigate those sites. Also the police does, and one day somebody could knock at your door.

(33:14):
If you are happening to be on a site and there are minors on that, you will be a part of trafficking of children because you’re viewing minors. So do know it’s not safe even if they tell you it is, but there is a market there created by you, the consumer. The serious thing that I found back in 2006, and this sounds like, or 16, excuse me, sounds like a long time ago, doesn’t it? No, it was six.

I actually was investigating the pornography industry with the sex trafficking industry at the same time for the US government in a project. And what we found was, the delivery system even then was absolutely online because men coming from other countries to Amsterdam or Las Vegas, people coming even from other parts of their own country were researching and going online to look. So they were finding out where they could get the delivery.

(34:12):
So I was going in, researching child trafficking around the world for the US government. And what I found is I always designed the marketplace. What’s the product? What’s being sold? This is just a business practice. What’s in your way? What does the consumer want? And then you go along and if you’re looking at your opponents, you’re figuring out what he or she is doing also.

Well, in this market I was looking at disrupting child sex trafficking and what you need to do then is look at who owns what, how it is marketed. And it was marketed online and most of the sites connected directly the delivery sites to porn sites. So what they were doing is you might be in porn thinking you’re okay, but when that porn wasn’t enough and you need to go to the next experience and it needs to get a little more violent and you all, they’re hearing me know this.

(35:07):
Some of you using know this. And then you need a next experience and a next experience to feel good because the feeling you have right here is in the section of your brain where there’s addiction, compulsion, you want more. It becomes a cycle and you all know that or that are listening. So you sometimes are so compelled you cannot even get through a workday. Some of you are just doing it on the weekends. It’s just recreation. It’s like any other drug or alcohol.

Some of you say, “No, I only do that on the weekends. I am not an addict because of that.” So some of you are like that you’re using and you’re going in, but those pictures of an adult woman sexually or man posed isn’t enough. You need the motion. You need that next act. You need younger and more vulnerable because you’re wanting more violent and more degrading.

(36:03):
That’s where pornography goes. No question. Unfortunately, I’ve researched it now enough years. And so you’re in that somewhere, but there’s a place for you to come out of. You need to find a group immediately. And some of you are pastors and you go, I have no way of doing this. Go to a different town. Go with somebody else if you want. If you’re uncomfortable making it look like you, take a brother because a lot of them do and join a group and do it now because you will not be able to stop on your own. You need an accountability group.

(36:35):
But God hasn’t thrown you away either. What I found in this, and my husband would say, Linda, I’d come home after one of these research projects and he’d say, “I didn’t do it and I just feel so sad because I was so mad at men for a while.” But you see, we women, your children need you to take the step today and then you can be the person that’s not hiding things. The person that doesn’t have a broken relationship with your wife isn’t afraid to have people come in the room where you’re at or who could lose their job.

Some of you have gone a long way. Some are just starting, but don’t get to where they are. If you think you’re even vulnerable, find a group. And there are several you know them from your churches, you know them from your friends and you that are in leadership are guiding other people to these same places and often they’re addiction related, but consider if you’re using regularly, you’re an addict and treat yourself as such and give your family a gift and you a gift of a future that’s going to be free of line.

Dr. Jeff Myers (37:45):
There’s so much healing taking place in this show. I just sense that as people are listening carefully, watching. Thank you. I really, this means so much. It gives me hope for people around the world, but it also gives me hope for our own nation and for a lot of the young adults, high school, college students, 20 somethings who are watching right now who feel trapped, right? There’s always that with every addiction there’s at first you choose it, but then it chooses you and then you feel trapped.

I wanted to address one more thing and then I’m going to ask you to give a brief word just to this rising generation, but there is now a counter movement. As crazy as this sounds, there are people in America who benefit and profit from supporting sex trafficking. In fact, I just found this, I think I showed you this article from Salon.com, which is a major publication. Essentially it says the anti-porn religious lobby just destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of pornographers. So their approach to it is by standing up against sex trafficking, you’re destroying lives.

Linda Smith (39:11):
It’s very interesting. I always laugh at it because I’ve been called a moralist. I’ve been called one of those radical Christians way back from when I was at the state legislature and the reality is I’m a Christian that also is a business woman, a Christian that also is a human rights activist. And so it’s interesting. If you notice the first line, the anti-porn religious lobby. Now that’s very interesting because it’s inaccurate.

So look at words. Look at the words on that. They’re trying to discredit us as there being no credibility in fighting the porn industry. Now the reality is that there was a whole group of us fighting to close porn hub right after we started closing other sites like Backpage. So we have fought these sites where there are more and more children. So it is a coalition of individuals and organizations, but big organizations comprised of feminists.

(40:12):
They probably wouldn’t be included in anti-porn religious lobby. What they’re trying to do is use words to discredit and to build themselves up. So in this article, they use sex work. We have decried that as a nation from the beginning and only allowed it to states in certain areas and even then people are pushing and pushing against it because it hurts people. The biggest reason shared hope has joined and in some parts led some of this effort is that it hurts kids.

When you create an environment where demand is facilitated by acceptance law or normalized like it is in Las Vegas, you have an increased number of product lines like children and vulnerable that are brought to market and people buy them in an accepted market and people don’t look at it then so you have a growing market. So there has been a huge growth in the marketplace in the United States because of the cultural acceptance of pornography and prostitution based on words.

(41:28):
So what you hear in the words is sex work. We have never given the sale of another person or we call that slavery or renting another person by the act. We’ve never called that work and never for children. We actually protect them under 18 in many laws to protect them. But in this, they use sex work entertainer. No, sex work as they call it is really a pornography. Pornography and prostitution are violent by nature for a very simple reason. Buyers are not just looking at pictures.

They want acts that are degrading young and you don’t see stretch marks on pornography. Literally they are young and there’s a market for children to fall into it and the pornography actually gets them ready younger to be ready to be taken for market and some of them in sexting, et cetera, entered the market unaware that then their life is changed forever as those pictures of them are used to blackmail them as well as just being on the site forever. So no, pornography is horrible, violent, as well as is prostitution.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:49):
And so we just can’t allow this to be covered up with rhetorical tricks. As a friend of mine says, when words lose their meaning, people lose their lives. So we need to be very clear about what we’re dealing with here.

Linda Smith (43:00):
Send me that quote and who that was.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:03):
I do remember it was a friend of mine named Michael Bauman, who was a professor at Hillsdale College, passed away last year. But when words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.

Linda Smith (43:15):
Yes.

Linda Smith (43:16):
This could not be better for this, for sex trafficking.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:21):
That’s right. Could you give a sentence or two to the young adult who’s watching right now, this is just kind of a mentoring moment. Look at them and give them a challenge and some hope.

Linda Smith (43:37):
No, I am asked frequently how I got to where I am and usually I just say I showed up, God brought me to a point I showed up and worked from that point. Quite often we think we have to know everything. We want to know what our ministry is and our ministry really is obedience. So if we know that we have a gifting to do a certain thing or an ability, we start college in that.

I didn’t because of where I came from, but you start what you can do and you work at it with all your might and you keep listening and then you’ll find something else shows up and something else shows up and before long the bricks of your life, you can stand and see further and then you’re starting to see what God has been doing and building you through the moment you’re in.

(44:31):
Many of you are building, but don’t miss the day because I think of all the times, all the people that God is taking me through life with and a little Sunday school teacher called Opal Golden, poor as a church at my son, I was too. And how she treated me at the age of seven set me on a path of believing there were good Christians and wanted to go to church because of Oklahoma.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:05):
Wow. Linda Smith from Shared Hope International, thank you for being on the Dr. Jeff Show today.

Linda Smith (45:12):
Very good to be with you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:15):
Thank you for joining us for the Dr. Jeff Show today. This conversation with Linda Smith was powerful but difficult and I’m sure you’ll want to know more about Shared Hope International. I hope that you do seek that out. But if you are struggling with pornography addiction or someone you love is struggling with it, I want you to know there is hope and we’re going to have some resources at the Dr. Jeff show page that can help you, things that you can do, filters that you can put in place, resources that you can use to have those difficult conversations because we want to move toward hope and healing so that we can act to help people who are suffering all over the world.

Ryan Dobson (46:02):
Hi everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting Podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17, we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks, I’ve returned every summer for 34 years. This summer, your student can attend an in- person conference. That’s right, in person.

Summit Ministries Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 24 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in person with other students learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience and it’s amazing. Change your students’ life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.