Amazing Grace

Some friends and I saw Amazing Grace, the movie, a while ago. It was a good historical piece about William Wilberforce, John Newton and the abolition of the slave trade. What is sad to me is that we still have human trafficking going on today. Have we learned anything from that terrible torture inflicted on other human beings? There are direct relationships to that movie going on today. Human trafficking, Darfur, AIDS orphans in Africa, human rights issues all over the world. It makes my head spin and my spirit heavy to think about it. I know God is sovereign and good. I have to believe He allows suffering for a reason. But I can't help wondering how much of the suffering of others is caused by the institutionalized carefree and selfish western lifestyle that I live. And how much of that suffering is inflicted by other human beings. This is what I can't understand. I tend more and more to a pacifist point of view. It must be the influence of Quakers in my past.