A Seventy Year Old Looks at Slavery

My pastor has been preaching from the book of Philemon, introducing us to Onesimus, and a couple of weeks ago, alluded to the difference between slavery spoken of, without apology, in the Bible and slavery in the context of, particularly, American History.  The media news cycle has been ripe with reports of racial discrimination, racial preference, accusations, innuendos, challenges of racial preference and baiting, as of late.  I would think that most thinking readers of the Bible at one time or another has been bound to ask at some point in time, “Does this book actually condone slavery?”  I answered te question for myself, thirty five years ago, in a pastoral/pulpit role of a congregation of believers in Arkansas. But, to be sure, slavery is not the only issue the Bible has caused me to question.  The Old Testament is rife with palace intrigues, polygamy, divorce, violence and the like, and godly people, historically and seventy years of observation and sadly, personal experience, are very often part of the problem.  Although the New Testament is decidedly improved, it still seems to fall far short of that which twenty-first century human rights would expect. My O’ my, there are no women among the twelve disciples of Jesus and Christian masters do have slaves working for them.

Sometimes I get right down disgusted and find myself talking to the television or computer monitor, out loud, when newscasters and/or bloggers begin their analyses!  But, really, in my addressing issues of this kind, I need to calm down, realize I’m an older adult, got the t-shirt proving it, walk away, step back and ask three larger questions:  What are the theological, political, and cultural contexts in which the Old Testament narrative unfolds, and how is the behavior of God’s people in the Old Testament expected to be different from those of other cultures?  What are the major developments in the New Testament that give a clue to interpretation of Old Testament ethics?  And am I expected to further extrapolate changes in behavior beyond the New Testament times to the present day?

To begin with, I should not forget that the Old Testament narratives contain codes which are ethical, ceremonial, and social.  Therefore, their application to the present day should not always be considered in literal terms.  The social elements of those narratives need not apply, and the ceremonial ones are largely fulfilled in the completed work of Christ.  It is the ethical aspects of Old Testament teaching with which I am concerned, and there is indeed much to consider.

As an example, on the way to Canaan, God tells his people through Moses that the alien, or foreigner, among them should not be oppressed Exodus 23:9.  The reason given is fascinating: the people of Israel know in their hearts how it feels to be oppressed!  (The word translated “alien” is not the same as slave, but the experience of the Israelites in Egypt was certainly that of slaves.)  Here I see the first statement on human rights: the alien was to be treated as a citizen; in fact, he was to be loved as one of their own. Leviticus 19:33-34 Even when Hebrew law and custom shared in the common heritage of the ancient world, there is a unique care in God’s Name for those people who by status were not considered people—something absent from the codes of Babylon and Assyria. 

The New Testament further gives a paradigm to interpret Old Testament practices.  In one of their notorious fault-finding missions, the Pharisees test Jesus on the subject of divorce. Matthew 19:1-9; Mark 10:2-9.  He initially appears to play into their hands, asking what Mosaic Law has to say on the subject.  When they gleefully quote the permission of Moses to divorce one’s wife, Jesus lays down a method of interpretation that has to be taken very seriously.  He makes it clear that certain Old Testament commandments were to be understood as concessions to the hardness of the human heart rather than as expressions of God’s holy character.  He goes on to reference how this was not the state of affairs in the beginning—that is, before the fall. 

The regulation of slavery should therefore be seen as a practical step to deal with the realities of the day resulting from human fall.  The aberrations that lead to alienation among individuals, races, and nations are the result of a fundamental broken relationship between humankind and God.  Within this tragic scenario, Scripture comes as a breath of fresh air as it seeks to redeem the situation and sets us on a path of ever-increasing amelioration of our predicament.  While the Bible does not reject slavery outright, the conclusion that it actually favors slavery is patently wrong.  Scripture does reveal that slavery is not ideal, both in Old Testament laws forbidding the enslavement of fellow Israelites, the law of jubilee, and in New Testament applications of Christ.  In fact, the Bible teaches that the feeling of superiority in general is sin! Philemon 2:1-8. The abolition of slavery is thus not only permissible by biblical standards, but demanded by biblical principles.  The pre-fall statement that should guide and ultimately abolish such (and any) practices of superiority is the declaration that all humans—men and women—are made in the image of God. 

On this principle, the Bible even lays the foundation for progressing far beyond what was possible in New Testament times by addressing the very economic discrimination and favoritism of which slavery is the worst expression. James 2:1-9; 5:1-6. Of course, lamentably, it must be admitted that the Church has taken many centuries to live out what Scripture taught long ago, and I have no doubt that some of our feet are still dragging.  My view is that the time delay between the Word of Scripture and its implementation is often due to what I call the “holy huddle.” The holy huddle is that group of Christian who are largely unconcerned about issues outside of their immediate periphery.  I am thinking that another reason many Christians continue to remain silent in the face of injustice is the platonic view of the cosmos many have adopted, implying that life in the hereafter is the only issue to be addressed, while we watch the world go by in its destructive way.  Both mentalities are sadly misguided.

For me, personally, pastorally, and professionally, if I say that I believe the Bible to be the Word of God I am responsible to raise my level of awareness and involvement regarding social issues.  If I fail to do so, I will let these issues pass into the hands who may not be Christians, but are better informed about social injustice and concerned enough to fight wrong practices through legal means.  While they have no logical basis to do what they are doing, the real tragedy is that I, having a basis to address these issues, remain largely indifferent. 

Father, God, open my seventy year old dimmed eyes to see that You are interested in the redemption of the whole of creation and not just disembodied souls and spirits!  Amen

Mining Unusual Places

Years ago, I stepped off a plane in England, journeyed  to the rent-a-car counter, hopped on a shuttle to the rental lot, unloaded my bags from the bus in front of the car assigned me.  Opened the trunk, loaded my bags again and opened what I thought to be the drivers side of the car only to realize it was the passenger’s seat.  That was only the beginning of a brief harrowing experience of driving throughout England, France, Belgium, Austria, and Germany.  Cognitive dissonance had set in.  The study of psychology had told me previously that cognitive dissonance is the internal tension that results when experience doesn't match beliefs and values.  I quickly and fully understood through the sense of unease when I encountered something that contradicted what I have held to be true.  Over the years I have experienced this tension in the course of being with the terminally ill and dying person and family. Just listening, seeing, holding brought an immense amount of inquisitiveness about new ideas. But perhaps my dissonance has been felt most acutely when it occurs in the realm of faith commitments. When listening to struggling spouse who was left by the partner of forty or more years.  How could such a thing happen if marriage is God's ideal?  How is it that my prayers go unanswered if I have been so faithful to pray?  How do I reconcile my personal or the global experience of suffering with a view of a good and loving God?

Yes, there have been those who, I think, have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance as a reality in their own lives, have been quick to offer all kinds of explanations over the years to me and those like me, who don't find it quite as easy to reconcile the gaps between beliefs and experience saying:  We have drifted away from our moral center.  We have not studied the Scripture enough, or prayed enough.  We have not understood right doctrine.  And surely, in my case, there are times when all of these explanations may have been true.

But I am often unsettled from my own tendency to explain dissonance away, when I look at the doubts of John the Baptist.  The gospels portray John with all the intensity and moral outrage of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi—zealous prophets from the days of ancient Israel prone to weeping and crying out with zeal and tenacity.  The courageous cousin of Jesus preached repentance resolutely.  In preparation for Jesus's earthly ministry, he baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.  He stood against the immorality and hypocrisy of those who were religious and political leaders.  John was resolute in his ministry as the forerunner to the Messiah.  Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to Jesus, John stood clear in his calling: "You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, 'I am not the Messiah,' but 'I have been sent before him'" John 3:26-28. 

Yet all of this background creates a dramatic contrast once John was imprisoned.  His resolve was shaken.  Both Matthew and Luke's gospels record his dissonance: "Now when John in prison heard of the works of Jesus, he sent word by his disciples, and said to him, 'Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?'" Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:20  Here was John experiencing a gap between what he believed about Jesus and his own life's reality.  If Jesus is the Messiah, John must have wondered, why am I sitting in this jail?  The Messiah John proclaimed would "thoroughly clear his threshing floor" and "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" Matthew 3:12.  The Messiah was coming to rid Israel—and indeed the world—of evil.  Yet in John's day to day existence in his cold prison cell, evil had won the day.  "Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?"

Well, I think John's dissonance is not unlike my own gaps between what I believe and what I experience.  Yet Scott Cairns in The End of Suffering suggests that the “suffering that results from  gaps can become illuminating moments in which we see our lives in the context of a terrifying, abysmal emptiness, moments when all of our comfortable assumptions are shown to be false, or misleading, or at least incomplete." The gap between what I, like John, believe about the nature and ministry of the Messiah and the reality of a Jesus who is free from my comfortable assumptions often creates unbearable dissonance. 

Jesus acknowledged that his ministry would be disruptive, and even be misunderstood.  In responding to John's doubts, Jesus said, "Blessed is the one who keeps from stumbling over me" Matthew 11:6. 

 

Father, I thank You for exposing the fact that gaps between what I believe and what I experience often cause my stumbling and falling. And then again, thank You for drawing my attention of mining those gaps also illuminate new paths of discovery from Jesus's own life and ministry.  Thank You for leading me in discovering that the gaps I experience often hold the treasure of new insight and the beauty of a more faithful devotion when I am willing to let go of my "comfortable assumptions" and dig deep, where what is precious and most valuable is often found in the deepest places of dissonance.  Amen