upside-down

"So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the (slave) trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition," William Wilberforce, British politician and leader of the abolitionist movement in the late 1700’s.

Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Maryland, described slavery as a life of "perpetual toil; no marriage; no husband, no wife, ignorance, brutality, licentiousness; whips, scourges, chains, auctions, jails and separations; an embodiment of all the woes the imagination can conceive."

“There are more slaves today than ever before in human history…the worldwide statistics are staggering, but in the United States alone, an estimated 200,000 people are living in slavery.” (http://www.callandresponse.com; http://slaverymap.org)

16Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:16-23)

I imagine you were with me when I started – hear the word slavery and your mind immediately conjures up stories and images of the civil war South, plantations filled with Black slaves, terrible injustice and oppression. My mind is immediately taken back to living room of my elementary school days, watching video after video of the series “Roots” with my family in wide-eyed shock and horror. Summed up, slavery = bad.

What on earth then is the BIBLE doing talking about slavery? I mean, whether you believe the Bible to be the inspired words of God or just a book of ethical guidelines, why is it telling us we are slaves? And furthermore, if I were a person considering following Christianity, I would not find the idea of being a “slave to God” a very warm and welcoming invitation.

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately after reading a blog post called, “Rethinking Slavery,” and I’ve been bothered. Since this is what the Bible, the book I believe to be God’s words to me, is saying, I decided to do some sleuthing.

Just what did Paul mean when he wrote those words? Was slavery a good thing back in those days?

Paul lived in the Greco-Roman world. In the Roman Empire, slavery was not only an accepted and important institution, but there were more slaves than free people living in society by the time of Christ. People became slaves because of war, poverty, debt, or by birth. However, culturally during this time the Master-slave relationship was often affectionate and it was seen as a moral obligation to one day free your slaves. A slave could also earn his freedom or a free person could pay the price of freedom for him. But even when a slave was freed, he maintained a special relationship that showed obedience and honor to his old master (like going to the master’s house daily to say “Good Morning” and “Good Night.”).

So that’s where Paul was. Where are we?

If I believe in the Bible (which I do), then:

1.) I also believe that I couldn’t escape slavery because I was born into it….as a slave to sin. Just like slaves in the Roman times, since I was born to my parents (who were slaves to sin, and their parents slaves to sin, and their parents, etc, all the way back to Adam and Eve..), then just by “legal standing” (not even my actions) I was already in slavery at birth.

2.) I believe that Jesus bought me out of this slavery. He paid the price for my life by his death on the cross. His life for mine. Again, by “legal standing” He became my new master. I became a slave to God, to live in His way of righteousness.

I went from being born into slavery to being bought into slavery.

“Consequently, slavery is an inescapable concept. There are two kinds of slaves in the world – slaves to sin, and slaves to obedience. There is no third slave master, nor is there a status of non-slavery. There is no neutral ground from which a person can stand and gaze upon the two camps and remark, “those people are slaves, but not me.”

So….If I believe in the Bible (which I do), then:

3.) I am still a slave; a slave to God, a slave to righteousness.

Is that bad? Well, no, because I’m told that as a result I get eternal life and righteousness. But I still don’t like being called a slave.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." Romans 8:15

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision… but born of God. John 1:12-13

And then, BOOM! God calls us “sons” and “children.” I was confused about this. How can God call me His slave one minute and His child the next?

There was another situation within slavery in Roman times, and this one intrigues me; a slave could actually be adopted by the master and have an equal inheritance with the natural sons. On the flip side, in that time people argued whether a son had any more rights than a slave – he still had to obey his father and received punishment for wrong.

So, I went from being born into slavery, to being bought into slavery, to being made a child.

“God made us His slaves in order to free us and adopt us as His children.”

This is crazy and radical and doesn’t fit into our concept of reality, does it? It was the only way.

http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/christia/library/slaves-christ.html

http://www.stlukesrec.org/SlavestoObedience.htm