I watched Traffic tonight at the cheap theater. It’s not a feel-good movie. It’s not a family movie. It’s not an entertaining movie. When you slap your money down on the counter to see this movie, you’re not paying for a good time. You’re paying to have you eyes opened. You’re paying to get slapped around. You’re paying for the truth.

Or at least what I can only guess is the truth from Hollywood. Traffic is what appears to be an honest portrayal of the drug trafficking industry–from the Mexican police to the U.S. “legitimate” businessmen to the street dealers to the suburban white girl who lies to her parents and does drugs in the bathroom.

The scariest thing about this movie is that I went to high school with that suburban white girl. I sat behind her in class, listening to her stories of getting high and how she’s been clean for a month, for two months, for a whopping three months. What amazes me is how I was not there. I was hanging out in church with the youth group, learning how to read my Bible. Perhaps that’s the way things are, and that’s the way things need to be. I doubt that my Jesus-boy high school self could have been any help to a drugged up sophomore girl. I probably couldn’t have handled myself in that situation then, and I only think I can now.

But it still amazes me where the church is. The church is not on the streets, keeping kids of drugs, shutting down the dealers, saving families and showing love to the least of these. The church is hoarding a few safe white kids in their youth groups and trying to show ’em a good time and maybe teach them a thing or two about God. Yet the girl who sat in front of me in American Literature seems to have slipped through the cracks, and I wonder how many others are just like her.

What really sickens me is that it takes a movie to make me realize this.