54 Identifying and Fighting Human Trafficking with Dr. Jeff Waibel

DISCLAIMER: This message contains adult themes and is not intended for little ears

 

54. Identifying and Fighting Human Trafficking with Dr. Jeff Waibel

 

**Transcription Below**

 

John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel is the Director of Clinical Services at Gateway Woods Family Services, a faith-based human services organization with locations in Indiana and Illinois. Dr. Waibel oversees the residential program located in Leo, IN, which provides residential treatment to at-risk teens with addictions, trauma, and behavioral and mental health challenges. He also supervises Home Based Services at Gateway Woods. Dr. Waibel serves on a number of state committees in Indiana, including the Psychotropic Medication Advisory Committee, the Anti-Trafficking Network, IARCA Residential and Home Based Work Groups, and the Indiana Coalition for Family Based Services. Dr. Waibel obtained his doctorate in Education from Indiana Wesleyan University, a Master’s degree in Education from Indiana Wesleyan University, a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Michigan State University. Dr. Waibel is a licensed social worker in Indiana.

 

For the past nine years, Dr. Waibel has also served as a bi-vocational pastor at the Apostolic Christian Church in Leo, IN. He and his wife Margo have been married for 15 years and have three children aged 11, 9, and 6. Dr. Waibel lives in Grabill, Indiana.

 

Gateway Woods

Polaris Project Map

Polaris Project

The National Human Trafficking Hotline Number: 1-888-373-7888

David Platt’s Sermon

Dr. Kanani Titchen’s Ted Talk

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

 

“Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn’t make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God’s acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.” – Tchividjian, Tullian., Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels (p.56)

 

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Gospel Scripture: 

 

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

 

Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

 

Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” 

 

Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” 

 

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

 

Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” 

 

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

 

Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” 

 

Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

 

Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”

 

Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”

 

Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

 

Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“

 

Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“

 

Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

 

**Transcription**

 

[00:00:01] <music>

 

Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger and I'm so glad you're here. 

 

[00:00:17] <music>

 

Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message. 

 

As a teacher or counselor, have you ever wished you could get more training on healthy sexuality or to have better skills in helping people deal with the sexual part of their lives? Sexual Wholeness is a Christian teaching organization desiring to help you accomplish this goal through classes and helpful resources. Visit them online at sexualwholeness.com. 

 

I'm honored to share this chat with Dr. Jeff Waibel, who is the Director of Clinical Services at Gateway Woods. He is a licensed social worker and lay pastor, and today he's going to share what he's learned about human trafficking over the years, and he will share his theology on trafficking. I hope you find this chat to be enlightening. [00:01:17] 

 

Welcome to the Savvy Sauce, Jeff. 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Thank you. It's great to be here. 

 

Laura Dugger: Well, can you just first start us off by telling us more about yourself? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Sure. I grew up in Michigan, northern Michigan. Went to college at Michigan State University, undergrad, graduate school at the University of Michigan. After that, I became a therapist in a residential treatment center for children ages typically 12 to 19 here in northern Indiana and I am still here. 

 

I've been here Gateway Woods which is this residential treatment center. I have been here for about 16 years now. Along the way I've gone back to school in Indiana Wesleyan University. I did another master's degree in a doctorate all to get us to this point where I'm the director of clinical services here Gateway Woods. 

 

Got married somewhere in there to a beautiful woman, Margo, about 15 years ago, and we have three kids, 11, 9, almost 10-year-old boy, and then a 6-year-old girl. [00:02:20] So life is full. Life is busy. 

 

Laura Dugger: When did you get involved working with people who have been trafficked? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: It's a really interesting thing. And this is the experience I think a lot of people have when they get into this population of human trafficking victims. You don't set out to do treatment for human trafficking victims. You kind of fall into it. You kind of find your way in there by accident. 

 

So here at Gateway we've been treating young people from mostly northern but really all over Indiana for over 40 years and we've always had some young people who have come to us and we knew that they had a background, perhaps a young lady who was coming out of prostitution of some sort or whatever. That was just kind of one of the things that would happen sometimes and we would treat them and whatever. 

 

We started kind of waking up to this idea that that is a human trafficking situation. As we went along, we realized, hey, we're treating these young ladies, typically young ladies, kind of like everybody else, but really, they don't respond to treatment in the same way. And so we started thinking about, is there more to this human trafficking thing? Is there more specialization that we should try to get at here in order to more effectively treat? [00:03:34] 

 

So that's kind of how we ended up here. Over the years, we have seen lots and lots of human trafficking victims, mostly coming out of the sex trade come through our doors. We get many many referrals for human trafficking victims every year. We're fairly small treatment facility. We only have about 32 beds so we'll have about 32 young people in a given moment. 

 

And so every year we get, I would say estimate , probably between 50 and 60 human trafficking referrals for young people who need that sort of treatment. So it's more than we can handle. And because we also treat drug and alcohol addiction, we also treat mental health issues and things like that, so this is just one very small piece of what we do. 

 

Laura Dugger: Well, and like you mentioned, it's not a really large urban population that you're dealing with. I think if we're in small towns, we would like to believe that this doesn't affect us. But just to lay the foundation for this talk, can you give us a good definition of human trafficking? [00:04:36] 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Sure. Yeah. I really like Homeland Security's definition. They have something called the Blue Campaign, which is all about human trafficking. Straight from the Homeland Security website, their definition of human trafficking is the best. I think it's short and it kind of describes this as human trafficking is modern-day slavery. It involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. 

 

So you have to have these kind of components. You have to have forced fraud or coercion, one of those three, and then you have to have a benefit to the person who's doing the force prod or coercion of some sort of labor or commercial sex act. I think that's a great definition. 

 

So when you start thinking about all of the implications of that, we can start to put a lot of things kind of under that umbrella of what human trafficking is. I think one of the problems that we have, especially in the church, when we think of human trafficking, we think of typically something more along the lines of human smuggling, which is we're going to kidnap your kids and we're going to take them to a foreign country and put them to work in a mine. [00:05:40] I don't know what we think about. But that maybe is more along the lines of how we think of human trafficking. When really, in reality, the number one kind of human trafficking that happens right here in the US is sex trafficking. 

 

It's young ladies typically over the age of 18 but under the age of 25 who are coming out of broken homes or coming out of perhaps runaway situations, financially desperate, they get hooked up with some guy and he befriends them and starts providing for them and before they know it they're being prostituted. That's by far the most common form of human trafficking in this country. 

 

It happens with underage girls too. The statistics on that are heartbreaking and just staggering. You know, hundreds of thousands. They estimate hundreds of thousands of young girls under the age of 18 who are currently being trafficked right here in the U.S. It's really staggering. 

 

Laura Dugger: That's a really sobering number. You've mentioned it's in the U.S. [00:06:41] Where specifically is this occurring? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: This is another thing that people are kind of blown away by. If I could show you a picture of the United States, most people would assume, because they kind of confuse it with human smuggling, which is kind of a different thing, this whole kidnapping idea and dragging across the border. They assume that human trafficking is mostly along the border, so southern border with Mexico, for example. "Don't go to these border towns near Mexico, you might get kidnapped or whatever." It's not accurate, not in the slightest. 

 

If you go to the Polaris Group, and the Polaris Group is non-profit here in the U.S. and they track human trafficking cases across the country. They have a map that you can look at and they highlight major human trafficking areas in red, and then orange, and then yellow, and then green, and then blue is the least. 

 

If you look at the United States, the heaviest areas of human trafficking are in California, especially Southern California, on the East Coast, New York City, Boston, right down the East Coast, and in the Midwest. So it's Chicago, Detroit, Northern Indiana, right where we're at is kind of a major corridor for human trafficking. 

 

So if you go to that site and look at that map, if you live in the Midwest, it'll take your breath away because you're like, "I didn't think this was here. I thought this was somewhere else. I thought this was in border towns in Arizona or in Texas." And it's just not. It's right here in our own backyard. [00:08:06] 

 

Laura Dugger: Well, and we'll certainly link to that in our show notes in case this is the first time somebody's hearing about this. Another follow-up question with that. Who are some of the perpetrators? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Depending on how you define a perpetrator, most people when they ask, they're talking about the actual traffickers themselves. However, I do want to point out that the people who use trafficked girls, women, are also perpetrators. 

 

But if you're talking about the traffickers, typically we're talking about men, usually young men. So this is just really fresh in my mind. There was a story right here in Northeast Indiana, Northwest Ohio of a human trafficking ring that was broke up here in the last week. They put pictures of the traffickers on the story. I think there were six people all told who were arrested. They were young men and young women and who were basically getting young girls into the sex trade, befriending them, then providing for them, creating dependency, creating isolation, and then using them. It's a heartbreaking thing. But that's right here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That's right here in Northwest Ohio, just in the last week. [00:09:21] 

 

The traffickers are maybe not what you'd expect. I don't know what you'd think, some clean-cut, good-looking young people who have somehow gotten into this. At least here in the States, that's typically what we're seeing. Obviously, there's also a lot of connections with organized crime as well, but not in this part of the country. That's more on the coast. 

 

Laura Dugger: And so there's nothing predictable or anything identifiable? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: No, there's not. Let me just say this too. This is a really heartbreaking reality of the human trafficking world, but a lot of trafficking is done by family members as well. We've seen that many, many times here in the young people that we've treated over the years. It's a mom, it's a father, it's an uncle who is in a desperate financial state or desperately addicted to drugs and needs money and essentially sells their children out for sex. It's heartbreaking, terrifying stuff. 

 

Laura Dugger: It really is such a dark topic. Do you have a biblical theology as it relates to human trafficking? [00:10:25] 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: One of the things I didn't tell you in my kind of little introduction of myself here was I'm also a pastor. I'm a lay pastor here in Northeast, Indiana. I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about this because I think one of the things that's so hard about talking about slavery, even modern-day slavery, for Christians, it's just this reality that the Bible also talks about slavery. And it maybe doesn't say exactly what we want it to say. 

 

So this is dangerous stuff to say that, you know, how would you rewrite the Bible? But I think in our modern world, what we would want the Bible to say is, slavery is evil, it is wrong, and it needs to be stopped. Anybody who does it is evil and wrong, etc. The Bible doesn't really say that. 

 

And so this is something that I think Christians, if they've spent any time thinking about it at all, and I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, it's something that they struggle with. So what I've tried to do, and maybe you've heard me talk somewhere on this topic, but one of the things that I try to do is to talk through biblical ideas around slavery, because it is such a sensitive topic, and it really rocks people's faith. [00:11:38] 

 

I'm going to give you some principles if that's okay. For your listeners out there who are part of the Church and they want to think through this, but at the same time, maybe they've heard from unbelievers or people who are atheistic or agnostic or critical of the Christian faith, you hear from people out there, and they say, well, the Bible supports slavery. How can you believe in a book like that? 

 

I'm going to try to just walk through some kind of high-level principles. And just for your listeners, just to think through this, I do absolutely think that slavery is a scourge. I think it is evil. It is not part of God's plan. But I do also want to engage with the biblical text as honestly as we can because the Bible does talk a lot about slavery. It kind of just assumes that slavery is part of the human condition since the fall. 

 

The first principle is the Bible regulates what a fallen world demands. So I'll give you just a couple examples of that. Divorce would be one, slavery would be another one. In the Old Testament, we had many instances of polygamy, men having many wives, multiple wives, even kings of Israel having hundreds of wives, like Solomon. [00:12:48] 

 

The Bible regulates what a fallen world demands. I don't think that we can look at God's heart and say divorce is something that He wants, or slavery is something that He wants, or polygamy is something that He wants. But the Bible does regulate it. 

 

That being said, the Bible does not demand what it regulates. So even though there are certain rules around divorce, both in the Old Testament law and in the New Testament, you know, Jesus and the Apostle Paul both talk about divorce as an example. It doesn't demand that people get divorced, but when they do, it does have rules around it. 

 

The Bible regulates what a fallen world demands, but it does not demand what it regulates. And kind of the big picture here is none of these things can be imagined in a sinless world. None of these things can be imagined that people would be doing these things like slavery, like prostitution, like any of these things in a fallen world. And so the Bible does regulate that. That kind of as the overarching principle. 

 

Let me just talk through a little bit about the Bible and how it approaches slavery. [00:13:51] So principle number one, God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. Genesis 1, it says God created man in His image. God created human beings in His image. Galatians 3, Paul says all humans are equal in their status before God. There's no Jew nor Gentile, Jew nor Greek, male or female, some of these categories that we have, all humans are equal in status before God. So God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. 

 

Also, God considers Himself the protector of the weak and powerless. That's in both Testaments, Old Testament, New Testament alike. Deuteronomy 10:18 would be a great verse to look up. And Luke 4:18, Jesus is kind of giving His mission statement. He's quoting from Isaiah, saying the Lord has appointed me to release the captives and all these types of things. And one of the things he talks about there is releasing people from captivity. 

 

Again, God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. [00:14:51] God really does expect His followers to be the same. He expects His followers to be protectors of the weak and the powerless. We find that in the Old Testament and New Testament alike again. 

 

Principle number one, God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. We are God's creation. We're made in His image. He cares deeply about us. 

 

Principle number two, the Bible, both Testaments, Old Testament and New Testament alike, forbids the forcible taking of slaves. Exodus 21, this is out of the old law, it says, "...whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death." Again, singular and uncompromising message from God about His value of the human race. 

 

First Timothy 1, Paul is talking to Timothy and he says, "Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, and for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers, the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine." If you caught that inside that list, he has enslavers, or in the older translations of the Bible, he says man-stealers. [00:16:05] 

 

That idea of forcible taking of people and putting them into bondage or slavery is something that God detests. But God also forbids the exploitation of the poor. Again, this is in Old Testament, New Testament alike. I love this verse out of Proverbs 14, "Whoever oppresses a poor man, insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him." 

 

So if you oppress somebody who is poor, you are insulting that poor man's maker, meaning God Himself. So you oppress a poor man, you insult God. But if you're generous to the needy, you honor God. That's what the Proverbs says. 

 

So principle number one, God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. Principle number two, God absolutely forbids the forcible taking of slaves and exploitation of the poor. So therefore, when the Bible does talk about slavery, which it does a lot, the principal thing it's talking about is voluntary and economic slavery. [00:17:03] 

 

So you will find examples of that in the Bible where people are slaves. And sometimes you'll even find God's people making their enemies slaves. But again, a lot of times in warfare that was given to them as a choice, you know, do you want to be wiped out or would you become our slaves? And they voluntarily become slaves. It's not what we would want, it's not what we would expect to see in a sinless world, but in this fallen world that's something that happened. 

 

So, principle number one, God's view of humanity is singular and uncompromising. Principle number two, God forbids the forcible taking of slaves and the exploitation of the poor. 

 

Principle number three, the trajectory of the New Testament is away from slavery. Again, from Luke 4, Jesus' kind of mission statement, quoting Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." That's Luke 4:18 and 19. [00:18:06]  

 

Jesus said, "I'm here to set captives free." Then we have an entire book, an entire letter in the New Testament that is about slavery. It's one of the least, in my opinion, as a pastor, it's one of the least preached on books of the Bible. It's that little letter that Paul wrote to Philemon. That whole letter is about slavery. 

 

If you think about what's going on there, Paul is writing a letter to a brother in the Christian church, Philemon, an actual leader of the Colossian church, who also owns slaves. Again, this is one of those things that we kind of modern believers have a hard time wrapping our minds around, that there was a Christian leader in the first-century church who was also a slave owner. And the Apostle Paul wrote to him, and he wrote to him upon the occasion of returning his slave to him, Onesimus. That book kind of takes your breath away a little bit when you think about it. 

 

But listen to what Paul says right in the middle of that letter to Philemon. He says, "For this perhaps..." Speaking of Onesimus, the runaway slave that he's returning, he says, "For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me." [00:19:25] 

 

Paul is saying to Philemon, Look, you can't look at this guy the same way anymore, because while he was on the run from you, your slave became a believer in Jesus Christ, just like you, Philemon. So you can't take advantage of him any longer. You've got to think of him differently. He's no longer a slave. He's now your brother in Christ. And what does that mean for your relationship? 

 

And Paul says, "What it means, Philemon, is that Onesimus is now equal to me. We're all brothers now." And so he's setting this runaway slave in front of his owner... He's setting this runaway slave equal to himself. This is the Apostle Paul talking. 

 

Again, this is the idea. The trajectory of the New Testament is away from slavery. It's this idea that if we follow what God thinks about humankind we're going to think differently about the people around us. So that's principle number three. 

 

Final principle, principle number four, and then I'll be done and we can talk about it. But principle number four is that nobody is free. [00:20:27] This is one of those things in the Bible that I think is super clear, but we don't like to think about it, especially in this country. I think we got a lot of people who really want their rights. They want to demand their rights. They want to think of themselves as free agents. They want to think of themselves as self-determined or whatever. 

 

But Jesus was the opposite. Jesus wanted us to think of ourselves as slaves. So listen to what he tells His disciples in Mark chapter 10:43-44. He says, "But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be slave of all." That's from the ESV. 

 

So Jesus wants us to think of ourselves as slaves. Jesus also thought of Himself as a slave. He says in Mark chapter 10, same passage, verse 45, next verse, he says, "For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many." Again, Jesus is using slave language here about being a servant, being a slave to all, giving His life as a ransom. He's talking about economic terms for His own life. [00:21:38]  

 

Peter, and this is my favorite verse on this topic, just to kind of reorient our thinking biblically around this topic of slavery and our rights and all of that. Peter says this, 1 Peter 2:16. This just blows my mind every time I read it. "Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God." 

 

So Peter's saying, Live as people who are free, but when you're free, never forget that you're a slave. I think that is the biblical idea. I think the biblical idea around slavery, and there is slavery in the Bible, I'm not going to sugarcoat that and there is horrible, evil stuff that the Bible records. I'm not going to say that that's not true. But the biblical idea about slavery is principally this, that everybody's a slave. 

 

So if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, if you've found your faith in His shed blood, then you are a slave to Christ. If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, the Bible would say you're a slave to sin. In other words, everybody's a slave. There are no free people. [00:22:49] 

 

This is something that our modern world just does not like. Even believers sometimes, I know me, I'm that way, I don't like that idea. But the mantra of humanism is that every person deserves complete and utter freedom. Freedom to do what makes you feel good. Freedom to love who you want. Freedom to choose what to do with your own body or your pregnancy. Just frankly, these are not values that God shares. God doesn't want us to think of ourselves as free, primarily. He wants us to think of ourselves as belonging to Him, purchased possessions of God. 

 

So I think one of the reasons that the Bible uses slave language to describe the believer's life is because the Bible knew that slavery was always going to be a part of this fallen world. And so when I talk to people, especially skeptical people, about how the Bible deals with this topic of slavery, I try to very carefully kind of walk through some of these things saying, let's think about this now. Let's think about overall, what does the Bible talk about when it comes to slavery? Why does the Bible use so much slave language? [00:24:01] 

 

And I think it's because God wants us to remember that our rights, our view of our rights will always be in competition with the gospel. So if we as believers are thinking of ourselves as free and I can do what I want, we're not going to be super duper effective for the gospel. If we think of ourselves as slaves to Christ, we'll have the proper orientation.

 

Laura Dugger: So now, after digesting all of that, if we are a Jesus follower, what responsibility is ours after hearing a message like this? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: I think for me, in knowing what I know about the human trafficking business in this country, and by the way, I don't consider myself an expert. I don't know if there really are experts on human trafficking. It's such an underground thing. But for me, based on the little I know, this is such a complex problem that it's not going to be solved easily. 

 

If this issue could be solved by petitioning your legislator, writing your congressman, and making a law, then we would have done it already. But in fact, this stuff has been illegal for hundreds of years. This is not easily solved. It's so complex and it's so underground and it's so dark. I really think this is something that really only God can effectively fight. [00:25:21] 

 

I think as believers, the very first thing we do is we pray. We got to pray for people. We have to pray for the people who are victims. We have to pray for the people who are trafficking those victims. We have to pray for the people who are using those victims for their own pleasure. And we have to pray for the people who are out there on the streets trying to pull people out of that lifestyle, trying to convince them to come out, trying to convince them to go into treatment or whatever else. I think prayer really is key. I think it's first. 

 

Second, I think we have to teach. So we have to pray, we have to teach. And what we teach is the Gospel. I think the Gospel is the only hope for a social problem of this magnitude. I love this quote, it's from a guy whose name I can't pronounce, Tullian Tchividjian... Oh goodness, I can send it to you, you put it in your show notes. 

 

He says, "The Gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive. And I think that's what the Gospel does, and that's what really needs to happen here. So we have to teach the Gospel. We have to teach the Gospel to people who are on the demand side, you know, largely men who are caught up in sexual addiction and are using young women for their own pleasure. [00:26:37] We have to teach the Gospel to them. 

 

We have to teach the Gospel on the supply side, you know, to the young women themselves and to their traffickers. We have to figure out a way to teach the gospel. 

 

We also then have to teach God's view of humanity. We have to teach this singular and uncompromising view that God has for every human being that's ever walked. And we have to teach it... I always say, start with your own kids. Start with your Sunday school class, start with your close group of friends. 

 

We have to teach God's view of human worth and dignity, that every single human being is made in the image of God. And what does that do? It completely and radically changes the way that we think about people. How do you objectify somebody who's made in the image of God? How do you oppress somebody who's made in the image of God? How do you take financial gain from somebody's pain who's made in the image of God? So we have to teach God's view of human worth and dignity, and then, of course, I think we have to teach God's view of sexuality. 

 

Laura, this is something that I'm pretty strong on. Again, if you've heard me talk before, you know I get strong on this. But I think the Church, by and large, is not doing a great job of talking about sex. [00:27:48] I think there's lots of good reasons for that. We have our kids with us on Sunday morning. We don't necessarily think that's a super comfortable topic for a very diverse congregation or whatever. And I do get that. I'm in the ministry myself, so I think we've got to still figure it out. 

 

We have to figure out ways to talk about this, because I think there's just the numbers on sex addiction and all of these industries that feed the human trafficking problem. The numbers on it are staggering, so staggering, that we know it's in the church. We know that there are people in the church who are caught up in this stuff. We've got to start having those conversations as hard as it is.

 

Laura Dugger: I think that you've empowered us with some starting points, and that's really helpful. And now a brief message from our sponsor. 

 

Sponsor: Today another anonymous donor stepped up to pay the sponsorship fee and share a very important organization with you. It's called Sexual Wholeness. Wouldn't you get excited and want to know more if you heard of an organization whose mission statement was commissioning a network of Christian therapists and educators to revolutionize the church with God's truth about sexuality? [00:28:57] 

 

This Christian non-profit organization, Sexual Wholeness, has that as their mission, and they work to accomplish it through classes and video-based resources. The Institute for Sexual Wholeness provides graduate courses in sex therapy for licensed therapists. These classes are offered in a three-day weekend intensive format in Atlanta, Georgia. Taking these courses will not only increase your ability to deal with sexual issues, but it can also lead to a certification as a sex therapist through the American Board of Christian Sex Therapists. 

 

Sexual Wholeness also has the Christian Association of Sexual Educators, with video-based courses designed for church educators to facilitate in their local communities. Currently, there are three video-based courses: Dance of the Sexes on Single Sexuality, Covenant Lovers with Sexual Enrichment for Married Couples, and Heroes and Warriors for helping men with sexual integrity. 

 

In a sex-saturated culture, the church needs trained educators and therapists to cultivate God's truth about sexuality with the freedom and wholeness that it will produce. [00:30:02] 

 

Many of the guests on The Savvy Sauce have taken these courses and then they come back to share with us all of their findings. These continue to be some of our most popular episodes and they get shared around the world. We appreciate Sexual Wholeness and we hope that you'll visit their website to find out more, sexualwholeness.com. 

 

Laura Dugger: What are some identifying factors of someone being trafficked? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: That's a tough question, Laura. There's actually a number of different groups that we kind of need to talk about, at least briefly. So, first off, you have kind of what you might think of as the stereotypical adult trafficking victim. And if you go to the research, if you go to the statistics, the biggest group of people are ethnically hispanic, females, young adults. That's the single largest group. 

 

That's one answer to that is you would look for Hispanic or Asian females usually involved with escort services or massage parlors, that sort of thing, maybe don't speak English very well. Just in the last six months or so, I've done two different talks on this, one at a medical professionals conference and one at a dental professionals conference. [00:31:18] And what I told them was, you're already treating these people. You're already treating victims of human trafficking. You just don't know it yet. You haven't been recognizing them. 

 

In this group, in the adult group, what you're going to look for are young ladies, because they're almost all female, by the way, well over 80%. I'm forgetting the exact statistic here off the top of my head, but predominantly female, predominantly young. And they are going to be avoiding eye contact. They're going to be avoiding most social interaction. They're going to be dependent on another person. 

 

So if they come in for like a doctor's appointment or something, they're going to have usually a man or somebody with them who's directing them, telling them where to go and what to do. They are not going to be allowed to carry their own identification or money or anything like that. They're going to defer all decisions to this other person. There's maybe a general aura of fear or not looking like they're in control of their own life. 

 

That's kind of the stereotypical adult type of human trafficking victim. But there's a second part to that answer and that is what we work with primarily are adolescent girls. [00:32:31] This is a major problem in this country, that there are adolescent girls who are entering into human trafficking situations unwittingly, unknowingly, a lot of times through social media and those types of entry points. 

 

And they are not going to be that stereotypical thing that I just said. They're not going to necessarily be a minority. They may very well be Caucasian, White. They are going to feel like they're more in control because maybe they knowingly entered into this sort of a situation or relationship with a man. They think they're in control. They don't even think of themselves necessarily as a human trafficking victim, even though technically by law, by definition, they are. So those types of situations are harder to identify. 

 

And these are the young ladies who are, as I said to the dental professionals, they're sitting in your chair and you just think they're like any other teenage girl, except that they're not. Those are going to be a lot harder to identify. The way I talk to medical professionals is you just got to talk to them. You have to ask them lots of questions. [00:33:40] If they have unusual scars, unusual markings, unusual medical problems, or dental problems, ask them about them. And when you start getting evasive answers, those types of things, it's a lot easier to identify. 

 

Now, for you and me, Laura, the average person on the street, we're probably not going to see them or we're probably not going to identify them quickly unless you've really spent a lot of time kind of tuning in to what to look for. But it's generally going to be somebody who has a history of family problems. They have been in and out of the juvenile justice system or the child welfare system, whatever it's called in your state. And they usually had pretty disrupted childhood experiences. And so they're looking for situations where they can find control where they can find somebody to provide for them, those types of things. 

 

When you look at the adolescent side, those are the types of things I look for. Really marginalized girls, often who have run away, who have been approached, or maybe even sought out somebody that would protect them and provide for them, those types of situations. [00:34:49] 

 

But Frankly, Laura, this is one of the things that the church really struggles with, because the types of young people on the adolescent side of the human trafficking problem, the types of young people that are involved are exactly the types of young people that you tell your children not to spend time with. This is one of the difficult things for the church to kind of wrestle through, is that the victims are the exact wrong type of friends for your kids. That's why I'm saying you probably won't see a lot of them, maybe because we're going and running in the wrong circles. 

 

Laura Dugger: Wow. And if we do happen to recognize something or identify someone who we believe is being trafficked, what can we do next? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: So this is, I think, a good exercise in knowing our limitations. You know, I generally suggest to people that it's not a good idea to try to play hero in these types of situations. [00:35:49] There's a lot of reasons for that. Human trafficking is against the law. It is a legal issue. And if you're going to hope to have the traffickers themselves prosecuted, there are legal courses of action that must be taken. 

 

What I generally tell people is, when in doubt, get advice. Call the human trafficking hotline. There's a great human trafficking hotline that's set up by the Polaris Project. It's 1-888-373-7888 and just talk to them. Talk to one of their phone consultants and kind of spell out what you're seeing, what the situation is, and get some advice. 

 

Ask them, "What should I do next? I think this is, but I'm not sure." Or maybe you actually know for sure that this situation is a human trafficking situation. You say, "This person even told me they're being trafficked. What do I do next?" Let them direct you. I think that's the safest course of action. That may eventually go into calling law enforcement. [00:36:49] 

 

If it's a child that's involved, I would say call the Department of Child Services. At least that's what it's called here in Indiana. In Illinois, I think it's DCFS. Every state has a different name for the Child Welfare Service. But there's usually some sort of a child abuse or neglect hotline or something that you can call. Sometimes there's even websites you can go to to report these sorts of things. 

 

But my first thought is get advice because very few people are experts on this. So a lot of times it's just good, like if you get a weird feeling from something and you're not entirely sure, call that National Human Trafficking Hotline and get advice. 

 

Laura Dugger: Well, we will definitely link to that number in the show notes. I'm also curious, are there any industries that we're unaware of that actually may feed human trafficking? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Yeah. So this is an interesting question, an interesting thing to consider because, you know, we've talked about adult human trafficking, we've talked about adolescent human trafficking. But now we also have to talk about human trafficking across the world. [00:37:54] And what is our responsibility as citizens of the world to try to fight this on a global, international level? 

 

That's kind of another whole series of questions, right? Because all of a sudden, we're not so much talking about sex trafficking here in the United States. Now we're talking about labor trafficking in India, or in Africa, or in other places in the world. And that raises a whole nother list of ethical questions. 

 

So if you look at the research, what is human trafficking internationally across the world, you'll find that labor trafficking is the biggest form of human trafficking across the world. So for us, how do we benefit from that? Well, we benefit from it by buying cheap products. So I'll just kind of give you some things that maybe you hadn't thought of before. 

 

But how do we keep foreign agricultural products so cheap? How is it possible that we are able to get things that almost exclusively come from outside of our borders, things like coffee, things like chocolate, things like agricultural products that are not raised here, primarily not raised here, rice, those sorts of things? How do we get those things as cheaply as we do here in the United States? [00:39:15] Sometimes cheaper than they are sold for in the country that they were manufactured. How is that possible? One of the ways it's possible is through slave labor, even child slave labor. That is still happening in a lot of places. 

 

The good news here is there are ways to kind of try to dig into this. There are places online where you can go and try to support companies, support retailers who only sell slave-free products. So some big names out there have really taken a strong stance on this, some that you're probably really familiar with. Trader Joe's, for example, prides themselves on being slave-free; they don't want to have anything to do with this problem.

 

In a similar way... and Trader Joe's maybe not everybody's favorite place to go. Little bit on the cheaper end is Aldi. So Aldi and Trader Joe's are connected somehow, sister companies. Again, LDI tries very hard to make sure that all of their products are slave-free. That's one very simple thing we can do here in this country is vote with our pocketbook. You've probably heard that statement before. [00:40:27] 

 

Interestingly, on the chocolate side, this is just kind of an interesting little tidbit. Chocolate is one of those agricultural products that we almost exclusively buy from outside of our own borders. And it's kind of a big deal in the human trafficking circle. So if you go online and Google slave-free chocolate or whatever, you'll find lots and lots of hits. 

 

You know, Hershey, for example, is the number one chocolate seller, manufacturer here in the US. But less than 1% of their chocolate is verified slave-free. That doesn't mean that 99% of it is being harvested by people in human trafficking situations. It just means that they're not trying very hard to verify where their chocolate comes from. So that's kind of an interesting thing. 

 

Again, it's something that we don't think about. We don't think like that. But it is one way that we as Americans we consume a ton of chocolate, coffee, other types of things like that. We're a very wealthy nation and we can change the world by how we shop as crazy as that might sound. [00:41:33] 

 

Laura Dugger: No, that's actually very empowering to know a step, even as simple as googling something slave-free. So that's a really helpful first step we can take. 

 

Some of you have reached out to find specific books or resources that we have mentioned in one of our episodes. That's why I'm so excited to let you know about our new Resources tab. When you visit thesavvysauce.com, you can now click on our new tab called "Resources". There you will find all the resources we've ever mentioned on all the episodes of The Savvy Sauce. And when you purchase a resource from that list, you actually support our work at The Savvy Sauce. 

 

We also spend a lot of time preparing show notes for every individual episode, so you can still access the websites, scripture, and recommended resources when you click on any individual episode. We hope you take advantage of these features so you can apply all that you've learned. 

 

Just in general, where would you direct us if we want to learn more about human trafficking? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Probably the best single organization out there that tries to capture the human trafficking problem is the Polaris Project, and that's just found at polarisproject.org. [00:42:46] They do a great job of condensing down statistics and getting their arms around what is human trafficking for people. They're also the group that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. 

 

Just to give you an idea as to how central this one non-profit, non-governmental organization, this one NGO is, if you were to go to the Department of Homeland Security website for the United States, and go to their Blue Campaign, which is all about human trafficking. If you go to Homeland Security's Blue Campaign website, and if you click on "what should I do if I suspect human trafficking", the Department of Homeland Security says to call the Polaris Project. 

 

So that's the one place everybody should go because it's kind of the place for statistics, for really interesting and insightful graphs, and trying to wrap your mind around this project. 

 

For believers, I always point to, you know, there are some big names out there who talk about this, even on the evangelical Christian side. David Platt is a name that many people are familiar with. The pastor does a lot of preaching online and has a large following. He has a really well-done presentation on using the power of the gospel to end human trafficking. [00:44:08] 

 

That probably can be found in a number of places. The place that I found it was on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission website. That's part of the Southern Baptist Convention. They have a link to that entire talk that he did at their 2015 National Conference. 

 

He's been very outspoken on this issue, so that's a really good place to just kind of learn about what does the Gospel have to do with this, and how can we tackle this problem with the Gospel, with prayer, those types of things. 

 

For those who are in the medical community, I suggest a TED talk by a doctor named Kanani Tichen, K-A-N-A-N-I, and her last name is Tichen, T-I-C-H-E-N, like kitchen with a T. She does a great job of kind of walking through as a practitioner, if you're a medical practitioner or a dental or really anything like that, or if you work in a clinic or something, how to spot human trafficking. She has a voice of experience and has become, again, kind of a thought leader here in the United States for this problem. [00:45:13] 

 

So for the church, I generally say, let's start with the David Platt talk. I think it's a great place to start. For just basic statistics and research, the Polaris Project. And for anybody in the medical field or in the helping arts, counseling, pastoral ministry, or even things like homeless shelters, or if you volunteer, a place like that, Dr. Kanani Tichen's talk on TED Talks. 

 

Laura Dugger: That is a great place to start. Those are new ideas to me, so I appreciate you sharing that. Overall, it's just such a heavy topic. So do you have any personal stories of light overcoming darkness from all that you've witnessed? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Yes. You know, this is the business we're in. We take young people. We work only with adolescents. And we bring them into our residential treatment center and we try to help them turn their lives around, not just by the latest, greatest counseling techniques. We do all of that. You know, we have lots of licensed and certified counselors and trauma therapists and stuff here, but also just through the power of the gospel. [00:46:23] 

 

You know, I think we forget sometimes that God is more powerful than any human being or any human institution or any human problem. And so through prayer and through the power of the gospel we have seen young ladies who come to us and have literally been on the street or been in a human trafficking situation, a prostitution sort of situation, and they've come into our place, and it is a little bit like night and day for them. You know, walking into our place, which is very calm and very safe, and all the people here are very kind. 

 

And we have seen God's grace working in these young people's lives. And we've seen young women not only leave that lifestyle but never go back. Sometimes they're reunited with their families, but a lot of times their families also are really struggling. And so maybe they'll go into a Christian foster home or something like that. But we have seen it over and over again. 

 

Not every story is like that. Not every story is successful. But we have seen God use the church, God use his people to positively impact individual lives who are struggling, desperately struggling with this problem. [00:47:34] 

 

Laura Dugger: I think it goes along just with what I've been learning personally lately is just pondering that thought of light always overcomes darkness. I'm just so thankful that we know the end of the story and that God does win in the end. 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Absolutely. 

 

Laura Dugger: So I have one final question for you. We're called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce? 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: Well, let me say this. A few years ago, I set out on a quest to read the classics, the classic literature. I had never voluntarily read something that was considered a classic. I had read some in school because you're forced to, and if you're going to pass a class, you've got to do it. But I had decided if there are books out there that have literally been around for 100, 200, 300 years and they're still selling, there's got to be something there that's good. [00:48:31] 

 

I was kind of frustrated with the state of modern fiction. Anyway, I'm a big fiction fan. I love reading. And I was kind of frustrated with the state of modern fiction. And so I was like, "Let me go back to the classics." So about three years ago, I set out to read classics. 

 

In the last three years, I've read 27 classic novels at last count. I'll just tell you, if you haven't done this, and if you have the stomach for it, not everybody does, but it has really enriched my life. There are books out there that are just breathtaking in their beauty. There are books out there that describe the human condition in a way that is just so poignant. It pierces right to your heart. Some of these authors, 200 years ago, are saying things that just feel so fresh and modern today. So I love that. I'm still reading them. 

 

But the savvy sauce for me lately has been reading the classics. If I could give you a recommendation, one of the books that I recommend to people is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, one of the Russian authors. Leo Tolstoy was a believer, Christian, and he writes this book, Anna Karenina. [00:49:42] It is largely about the effect of sin on a person's life. 

 

At the same time, so there's two kind of competing storylines. One is Anna Karenina herself is kind of falling head over heels into this destructive kind of whirlwind in her life. And there's another guy, kind of a simple country guy, who is at the same time that she's going downhill on this slide, he is coming alive to the gospel. 

 

The juxtaposition of those two storylines is just magical, and it's probably the best fiction book I've ever read. Anyway, that's where I tell people to start. At the same time, it's like a thousand pages long, it's written by a Russian guy. So I do get it, that not everybody has the stomach for that. 

 

Laura Dugger: But that's wonderful. This time in general has just been so informative, and I just want to say thank you for taking the time to share all this with us. 

 

Dr. Jeff Waibel: It's been my pleasure. 

 

Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. [00:50:47] But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.

 

This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.

 

This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. 

 

We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. [00:51:52] Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 

 

So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen. 

 

If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him. 

 

At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started?

 

First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John. [00:52:59] 

 

Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. 

 

We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process. 

 

Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today. 

 

If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.