Isaiah Roman

Understanding Slavery

The Bible addresses slavery on many instances. In the Old Testament it talks about the sale, transfer and emancipation of slaves. In the New Testament it talks about the need for slaves to remain obedient and masters to be kind. The subject of slavery came up as a part of the Glenn Beck show on George Whitfield, May 14th, 2010.

In that show Glenn and his guests were perplexed about the seemingly contradictory view Whitfield had towards Christianity and slavery. Whether feigned or real, they seem to be mystified about why such a devout man could possibly believe in the institution of slavery. Their confusion comes from a modernized sense of morals.

In the Old Testament it is clear that a person might sell themselves, their children, or even a captive into slavery. Why would someone want to sell themselves, their children, or their captives into slavery? There are two reasons.

The first is debt. Pure and simple, when a person put themselves into debt there was no bank bailout. Unless a person had lots of family to borrow from, or good friends with wealth to lean on, one bad decision could put them into deep debt. Many people in today’s society can understand this principle, but what they don’t understand is that this type of slavery is still prevalent in this world today, and is growing moment by moment.

When people live in a society they seek to earn a living. Sometimes those efforts are unsuccessful. In those cases there are two paths to take. Try again, or give up. In a society that encourages people to give up by giving them a means of income without effort, you end up with a group of people who are willing to place their very lives in the hands of those who give the handouts. This in turn ensures that those who are giving the handouts remain in power, because the indigent is not going to give up their ease and income. The fear of not-having becomes subject to the fear of trying the alternative.

When you attempt to try again you may be tempted to borrow from someone else to get the resources you need. When you do this you place yourself into the ownership of the lender. You are indebted to the lender, which means that the things that you produce belong to the lender until such time as the lender is paid off. If you try to renig on the deal, then the lender will seek retribution against you. In our modern times that retribution takes the form of law suits. In ancient times that retribution took on many forms, including death. In both cases the result is a removal of freedom and placement in captivity; or worse.

The unfortunate outcome of both of these scenarios is that those who lend begin to understand their position. When you start to reap the benefits of interest loans, or the power associated with being the grand benefactor, then you begin to become bloated with ego. You begin to rationalize that you are somehow righteous in your efforts, when in reality all you are doing is oppressing the minds and hearts of those who you keep beneath your thumb. Honest lenders do so with principle, honesty, and integrity. Unfortunately there are far more dishonest men than there are honest men. The inevitable result of unchecked indigency is unchecked oligarchy of the rich and the oppression, through subjugation, of the poor.

The second is control. When you conquer a foreign nation, what do you do with those who are conquered? In today’s society we see the government of the United States fighting against separate factions of a once conquered nation. Those factions cause tremendous damage to property, people, and moralle. The wars fought against insurgents are a futile attempt to quell an ideology. When WWII was fought, all those who were captured were not released, or imprisoned. They were sent to internment camps and labor camps where they were kept busy. They were, in essence, made captive and slave to their conquerors. There were, however, two completely different methods of captivity.

The Germans and Japanese issued their captives into death camps. They treated their impressed labor as animals, forcing them to work like beasts of burden even to the point of death. The Americans gave their captives structure, rules and order. These captives were indeed captive, and they did indeed suffer difficult conditions, but they were treated with dignity and to some degree a bit of honor. In the American internment camps their prisoners began to understand the character of their captors. They knew full well the difference between an American internment camp and the conditions of their own internment camps. When the war was over the Germans did not seek retribution against their captors. They understood full well the conditions of their release. They had been given pardon for their actions. They could not say the same of their own people’s attitudes towards their enemy.

So, if you want to have a society that doesn’t encourage indigents living off of the fat of the diligent, and you don’t want a society that creates a class of people who learn to prey upon the indigent, what do you do? Some have suggested that a redistribution of wealth is necessary. It is this sensibility that permeates society today. We abhor slavery as a practice because we have been shown the terrible mistreatment of individuals at the hands of the despotic oligarchy that sought to maintain their largess at the expense of their humanity. We abhor slavery because we percieve it as a means of nothing more than treating humans as though they were animals. The truth is that the institution of slavery is not the cause of any of these woes; mankind is.

Jeremiah 17:9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Without a set of rules and principles any action conducted by men becomes wicked. If you want to call slavery evil, fine; the idea of one person owning another person is not good. But, allowing a factious force to blow up women and children in the cause of insurrection is also wicked and evil. If you don’t like the idea of selling children to pay for debt and want to call that evil, fine; the idea of selling a person as though they were cattle is odious. But, allowing those children to starve to death because you, yourself are starving to death for lack of food, income, and shelter is also evil.

So what is the solution? Once again we look to the modern sense of redistribution. In a perfect, utopic world everyone would have enough to live on, and everyone would share equally in their misery and triumph. This assumes one basic tenet that simply does not bear up to scrutiny. The idea of socialism – collectivism – rests upon the idea that all men are basically good at heart, and society makes men evil. Humanists are quick to assert the evils of religion as the great oppressor. They also are quick to fight aganist the existence of God. If religion is evil, and there is no God, then who created society? The idea that men would share equally the fruits of their labors without some force of society impressing righteousness on them is just plain silly.

In the absence of bank bail-outs, lending institutions, public grants and government hand outs, slavery is an institution that cares for the indigent in a way that does not encourage the indigent to remain in their position, and which creates control over those who would use their indignities as a cause for insurgence. And, in some sense bank bail-outs, lending institutions, public grants and government hand-outs are all forms of slavery, surruptitiously hidden behind legality and couched in the language of freedom.

In the beginning mankind was free, truly free. They had every opportunity and no oppression. Then they sinned. At this moment they became debtors to God for their transgressions as opposed to children of God in their freedoms. They sold themselves for a promise of power and a taste of luxury. Many today are doing exactly the same thing, day after day. Just as Adam and Eve became captive to their lusts, those who seek these things today are made captive to others in the same way.

Yet despite this, God established a way for men to be free; look to God and live. In a society where all men fear God – in righteousness – slavery is not a problem. If every slave owner were to take on the demands of Whitfield, all slaves would be treated with equity, honor, and dignity. In a society where all men fear God – in righteousness – slavery would become a non-issue because there would be no need for slaves. There would only be fellow bretheren in Christ. How can I assert this? History shows us the truth.

The Roman Empire was once one of the greatest slave states the world has ever known. Slaves were used as animals, sex toys, sporting equipment, and labor. The essence of Roman power lay in the glory of it’s institutions. Slavery was a means of asserting the superiority of the Roman over the world. In other words, there were Roman citizens, then there was everyone else. The Roman Empire fell because Christianity eroded away at the pagan society. Slowly but surely the hearts and minds of the men of that era began to be molded towards a Christian view of righteousness. Subsequent to the fall of the Roman Empire and as Christianity spread throughout Western Europe and Scandanavia slavery became extinct in these Christianized lands. Even the mighty Vikings eliminated slavery after missionaries began to change their society. Though there was serfdom and servitude, there was no slavery in Christian Europe.

It was the Muslims who brought slavery back into the world. It was the greed of despotic kings which then began to propogate the practice once again. It was an institution of greed built upon this desire that enacted laws to firmly ensconce the practice into society. The second resurgence of slavery came not from Christianity, but from Islam, which has no firm prescriptions of righteousness towards other humans, but instead borrows from the Roman principle of exclusion. Once again it was a resurgence of Christianity that spoke out so violently against slavery in the Colonies and which eventually led to a war against the institutions established on slavery. It was a Christian reformation which finally laid the practice of slavery in the grave.

Benjamin Franklin once said; “I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

If your alternative to being poor is being a slave, would that not encourage you to try your best to not be poor? If you find yourself in a position where you must place yourself into the debt of another, wouldn’t you rather be given the opportunity to redeem yourself than to remain a servant? If you simply had no means of redeeming yourself, wouldn’t you be best off being cared for at the expense of another while still being given the opportunity of employment?

You see, the institutions of slavery are not the evil. The evil that men make of it is evil. It is the condition of men to be evil, to prey upon each other for the desires of self. It is God that changes the hearts of men, renewing them to a new heart and a new mind (Romans 12:2). The Christ did not come to emancipate the down-trodden. He came to quicken the dead. We are dead in our sins and are desperately trying to make ourselves free by preying upon others to gain power over our circumstance. It is God who helps us understand that the only freedom we have lies in our relationship to Him. We can either be debtors to sin, slaves to our own desires; or, we can be free from our sins and slaves to Righteousness.

The system doesn’t matter; all systems can be broken. The practices don’t matter; all practices can be evil. The only thing that matters is the condition of the heart. Look to the Christ and live.