I hear much about slavery. Most of the time it is a person of color that is doing the talking and they seem to make it a black (Good) and white (Bad) institution.
I believe this attitude is detrimental to relations between the two races. When I hear such an attitude I think to myself, “They have never been a slave and I have never been a slave master” and I for one do not appreciate the inference that, because I am white I am any more evil than anyone else. What happened to either my great grandfather or theirs has no more relevant with either of our situations today than what the weather was 100 years ago.
This attitude also completely discounts the white people that helped the slaves escape, those masters that were not cruel to their slaves, and all of the Union soldiers that died to liberate the slaves.
Then because I question everything I wondered just what the Bible said about slavery. I was surprised that it does not condemn it! Even more so when I realized that if one applies the second Royal Law to slavery it does not pass the test.
The second Royal Law is “Do to others as you would have them do to you” If I were a slave owner and I applied the second Royal Law to my position I would have to free my slave.
The shortest book in the Bible (Philemon) is an account of Paul sending Onesimus a slave back to his owner. It is an example of our salvation and that I believe is why it is included. It is an allegory where we are the slave and are sent back to our Master (God) by our savior (Jesus) who paid the price for our freedom: just as Onesimus is sent back to his master by Paul, who offers payment for him.
I think I understand the dichotomy of why the Bible doesn’t condemn slavery and yet it is wrong.
God owns everyone, just as you would own a robot if you designed it and made it from your own materials. So God cannot declare slavery wrong without declaring Himself a sinner. God is love therefore He is the perfect Master and no one would be slighted by being the slave of God. But men are not so full of love and men should not own men.
What prompted me to write about slavery is that I was passing the home of John P. Parker the other day and since it was on a weekend it was open. Mr. Parker was a slave that managed to buy his own freedom and I have wondered how that was possible. So I stopped and asked. The lady suggested that I buy Mr. Parkers Autobiography “HIS PROMISED LAND” and I did.
Now, I usually only read the Bible, but I really wanted the answer and when I started to read it I couldn’t put it down. It has more action in it than “The Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
I believe it is just waiting for someone in the entertainment business to discover.
I also believe that the story of Mr. Parker, if handled right, could do as much to restore relations between people of color and white people as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did to push us apart. I don’t mean to malign Tom’s Cabin” as it was necessary to unite people against slavery.
Mr. Parker was both white and black. His father was white and mother black. Also he was both slave and free man. He hated slavery, but he did not hate white men. Most of those who risked losing everything and serving time in jail to be conductors in the Underground Railroad were white men.
There was only one sentence in the whole book that turned me off. I almost put it down when I read it, but I didn’t have my answer yet so I continued to read it and I am glad I did. I can’t say enough about the book, or about Mr. Parker.
“O”, if you also wonder how Mr. Parker bought himself, then buy the book! I had to!
June 26, 2008 at 3:23 pm
While this is an interesting position, can you find any Biblical backing for it? The Bible speaks at length on the proper ways for men to own other men. For instance, Exodus 21 talks of how the Hebrews are to deal with other Hebrews that they buy (these are just protections for other Hebrews; they don’t protect non-Hebrew slaves). Men are to be released after 6 years (so like indentured servants), but their children are to belong to the master for life (so like slaves). There are detailed rules here for the treatment of daughters that you sell into slavery. Abraham and Solomon owned slaves with no comment from God. It goes on and on.
It’s important to understand that most of the laws on slavery in the Bible are quite progressive for their time. Even those that seem cruel or arbitrary are actually ways of making sure that slaves are protected. Don’t like the Hebrew girl you bought? God says you have to offer to sell her back to her family. You can’t go sell her to foreigners who might mistreat her. But this doesn’t change the fact that, while progressive in context, these are still laws that accept slavery as a natural part of life, not something to be condemned. That makes the morality of the eternal laws of God inferior to even the moral understandings of a modern child in America.
Most Biblical slavery was likely not the chattel slavery of America’s history. Chattel slavery is based on the premise that men should not own other men, so slaves must be less than human. The Bible says that the slaves are human and even have rights, but it is acceptable and natural for men to own other men. They may not (at least in most cases I’ve found), kidnap other freemen, but there are still many ways for people to be owned for life, including being sold by their parents. We certainly wouldn’t consider that moral today.
The New Testament does not create a new understanding of slavery. Mostly it is silent on the matter, with only a few comments one way or another, despite its being a common practice at the time. But again, this makes sense in context. The New Testament does not call for changes in the world. It says the world will soon end, so do not worry about worldly things. Perhaps this is still true, but it is still difficult to square the Bible as eternal truth and perfect morality if it never even bothers to condemn slavery. This is a book that takes a strong stance on mixing wool and linen (it is forbidden). Slavery was too minor a subject?
June 26, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The Apostle Paul said that while he was once a slave to sin, he became a slave to God. That’s an interesting analogy.
Let’s also remember that the slavery we read about in the Bible, the slavery that existed in Africa, those were nothing like the slavery of the American south. White Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries devalued and demoralized slaves in a way that had never been seen before. For this very reason, slavery has been outlawed in most of the world, and by all civilized nations.
June 26, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Totally agreed. Do you believe it would be moral for the US to institute Biblical slavery laws? I should be allowed, for instance, to sell my daughter to another man, and a country based on a Biblical foundation should help manage and enforce that transaction in the same way that it regulates and recognizes marriage.
This is a key point I believe. Christianity does not include the concept of freedom. You must be a slave to one thing or a slave to another. God buys you, he does not emancipate you. God established marriage as the Earthly shadow of the our Heavenly relationship to Christ. Should we embrace Biblical slavery as the Earthly shadow of our Heavenly relation to the Father?
June 27, 2008 at 10:45 am
pantheophany,
Well, I believe the second Royal Law is Biblical backing for my statement. It comes straight from the Bible and if we all obeyed it there would be no wrongs against anyone.
If you do not want to be a slave to any man then do not make any man your slave.
I agree that slavery was allowed in Old Testament times, but one can not condemn God nor say His laws are unjust, for if God made everything and therefore owns everything He has the right to allow slavery if He chooses.
Slavery is not all black and white (Chuckle). If you are starving along with your family and you could sell your daughter to someone that would not do her harm then I think you ought to be allowed to do so. That way none of you would starve to death. Well, not for a while.
You see we make laws that are very specific in nature. Slavery is not permitted in most countries today so in that situation everyone would starve; except the man who would buy someone. There is no need for any law to guide any man but the second Royal Law and we only confuse ourselves with all of the laws we write.
As I understand it we are slaves to either the world or God. You are correct about that, though it is not that we must be slaves, but that we are slaves. The only choice that we have is who or what we are slave to. That is to say that only on this earth are we slaves. When we accept Jesus as our Lord we become sons of God and a brother to Jesus; no one in Heaven is a slave. Families were to help each other, so there would be no brother slave to his own brother.
Thanks for pointing out the Old Testament concept of slavery. I have much to think about.
Clark Bunch,
You may be right about the treatment of slaves of the American south, but let me quote John P Parker who is much more an expert on the subject than either of us.
“It was not the physical part of slavery that made it cruel and degrading, it was the taking away from a human being the initiative, of thinking, of doing his own ways.” (Chapter one – His Promised Land)
June 27, 2008 at 1:03 pm
If you do not want to be a slave to any man then do not make any man your slave.
As I understand it, I have no choice in whether to be a slave or not, as Paul explains to us, so seems unrelated to whether Biblical slavery is moral. As you point out, there are perhaps good points to Biblical slavery, and if God designed its implementation, one must imagine that it also passes the Second Royal Law. So my question is simple: should we not as a God-fearing country institute the laws that God provided in Exodus and legalize Biblical slavery? If we should not, how do we come to that position without invalidating Exodus?
“Do onto others” is a very slippery law. The common retort is “if I am a masochist, should I beat others?” But a less extreme example, I like to talk to other about technology almost incessantly. Yet, I know that in love, I should not do this to others, and rather consider why they would like to talk about. Thus I must continually elevate this law to higher levels until it reaches the level that appears right. If I do not take “Do onto others” at its literal, simplistic face value, what standard do I use to determine at what level I should properly interpret it? Why not use that standard to judge your behavior in the first place and skip this law all together? Alone, “Do onto others” provides limited, and often fallacious, moral guidance.
Christians certainly do not wish to be converted to other religions, yet it is required that Christians attempt to convert others. If to avoid this issue, we raise “as you would have done” to some higher level, then Muslim use of conversion by the sword is equally moral following the same law. They also, at a higher level, would wish someone to convert them by the sword rather than be condemned to Hell. As a solitary law, it does not lead to moral action, and when other laws and guidance and truths are added to remedy this, we find that the second law is generally redundant.
June 30, 2008 at 12:18 pm
pantheophany,
You say that God implemented slavery among men, but there is no verse that supports this. It is true that we are either slaves to God or slaves to Satan, but that is a spiritual slavery not the same as a man slave to another man. It seems as if there is a slightly different shade of meaning between believers and nonbelievers of the word slave. When I say I am a slave of God it only means that I know that God owns me. It doesn’t mean that He abuses me in any way. Because of the sins of men slavery to most people congers up imagines of beatings and all kinds of abuse.
Because God made us and therefore owns us God’s slavery is only natural in the course of things. That in no way means God designed slavery between man and man. God gets blamed for the sins of man all of the time, probably because God does not stop man from sinning. There is no doubt in my mind that slavery, where a man is the master, is wrong. It does not pass the test of the second Royal Law and therefore it is wrong.
All of the laws in Exodus that pertain to slavery are for the protection of the slave, as you said in your first comment, but not to, in any way, legalize slavery among men. All of the protection applies to foreign slaves, because there were not suppose to be any Hebrew slaves. As I said, God does not stop sin, but He does make laws to minimize the damage. He does not stop the sin that causes problems even if those laws are not obeyed. He said that Israelites should not be enslaved by their own brothers and when they were He allowed it; though He did not bless them for it. He also did not stop divorce though it is wrong.
Now I have to laugh!!! If everyone practiced the second Royal Law how could the masochist practice his disorder? Who would beat him? It would not be me, because I don’t want to be beaten so I would not beat anyone and it wouldn’t be a sadist, because though he likes to inflict pain he doesn’t want any for himself!!!! I suppose the masochist could find another masochist and make a deal where he would abuse the other half of the time and be abused the other half, but deals between deranged people seldom work out. Anyway it is a funny response to the second Royal Law and worthy of a laugh.
The second Royal Law is simple and if followed as it is written there is no need to complicate the law. All of the law is based on the second Royal Law. If one looks for why murder is wrong it is apparent that the second Royal Law was not followed at the very start of the problem that led up to the murder. I used murder, but any offense can be traced back to disobeying the second Royal Law.
Your own example is a good one. You do not want someone to talk incessantly about some subject that you have little interest in, so applying the second Royal Law you do not do it to them. It does not require any elevation to a higher level at all; if it is applied to the beginning of the problem. There is no problem that escalates when you apply the second Royal Law to what you know bothers others.
As a Christian I am not required to convert anyone. That must come from within the nonbeliever. I am only responsible for warning those who do not believe. Because some do not want to hear what we say they become angry and accuse believers of powers they do not possess. If I had the power to forcibly convert someone I would not, because it is not God’s plan. Though everyone is a slave it is up to the person what, or who he is slave to. Those who do not want to believe seem to think that it is right for them to express their own views about religion, but wrong for those who believe to do the same!!! That also does not pass the test of the second Royal Law.
One can not be converted by the sword. Anyone who does not believe in any god will only claim that they do to keep their head where God put it. Lopping off someone’s head if they do not validate anything does not pass the test of the second Royal Law.
God allows sin so that man has a choice. That choice is obviously to sin or not to sin. If He stopped sin there would be no choice. Though God is always right, He wants sons that agree with Him, just as any father does. And though all men sin He has instituted a plan where anyone who wants can be saved. The problem seems to be some do not want to really think about it because they (we) enjoy sinning and we would have to stop. Then there are those who make up their own god that allows their favorite sin and then lop off anyone’s head that disagrees with them. hummmmm