When Vulnerability Changes Everything

A review of Raleigh Sadler’s heart-wrenching book, *Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking*

Why am I sitting here, on Christmas Day, writing a book review about human trafficking? I bought Raleigh Sadler’s Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking a little less than a year ago, and it’s been on my list but kept being pushed just far enough out of reach. Then the New York Times posted a story (for some reason as an op-ed even though there was tons of reporting) entitled “The Children of Pornhub”. I encourage you to read it in full when you have time to devote it, not scrolling and half-reading like I’m sure you do with book reviews. But for the uninitiated, Pornhub is the world’s largest pornography site, and the story unveils the trafficking, abuse, rape, and under-age videos that pervade the site. I read this story and it broke me. I wanted to know what I could do. So I picked up Sadler’s book, followed him on Twitter (it turns out we run in the same Twitter circles as well), and fully committed to learning and taking action. Little did I know that this book would change the way I think about so many aspects of the Christian life.

The key tenet in Sadler’s thesis: with human trafficking, “vulnerability is not only part of the problem, but it’s part of the solution.” Trafficking, in all its…