It used to be that the Bible was known as the “Good Book”, and those who believed it were viewed by society as moral people. Society has changed, and there is an increasing number of people who say that the Bible is an evil book and those who believe it are immoral.
A lot of these objections
are “understandable misunderstandings”. That is, I can see why people are
horrified by certain verses or passages, but they have misunderstood either the
intent of the passage (i.e., the author wasn’t presenting this as a good
thing, he was merely describing what happened) or the content of the
passage (i.e., they have imported wrong ideas into the passage).
One of the things that
people understandably object to is that slavery seems to be condoned in the
Bible. There are instructions in both the Old Testament and the New Testament
on how to treat slaves. Why would God allow such an evil practice?
Here are three things to
keep in mind.
God’s prototype
God’s original plan for
mankind is seen in Genesis 1 and 2 – man and woman living in harmony together,
in fellowship with God, as stewards of His creation. God created human beings
in His image, meaning that they have inherent and infinite value, and are not
to treated as means to ends. They are not commodities. He states that creation
is given for man to use, but humans aren’t given for us to use. This shows
right away that slavery is not God’s intention. In fact, when you look at the
creation stories from the ancient religions, the gods created humans as slaves
– they were created to do the dirty work the gods couldn’t be bothered doing. The
Babylonian creation myth, Artrahasis, says:
When the gods
instead of man
Did the work,
bore the loads,
The gods load
was too great;
The work too
hard, the trouble too much…
Belet Ili the
womb goddess is present –
Let her create
primeval man
So that he may
bear the yoke.
It is no surprise then that
slavery arose from cultures that had that worldview.
Slavery is something that issued
from the fall and man’s sin; it is not something that issued from creation.
God’s
prohibitions
In the Mosaic Law, God
forbids stealing and selling humans. In fact, anyone who engaged in human
trafficking was to be put to death:
He who kidnaps a
man and sells hum, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.
Exodus 21:16
This is confirmed in the New
Testament. In 1 Timothy 1:9-11 Paul puts kidnappers in the same list as
murderers, fornicators and others, as those whose behaviour is opposed to sound
doctrine and contrary to the “glorious gospel of the blessed God”.
Furthermore, the Lord Jesus
taught us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) and do unto others as we would
have them do unto us (Matthew 7:12).
These verses unequivocally condemn
the whole enterprise of the slave trade.
So, what was going on in the
Old Testament then when God gave instructions regarding slaves? We have to try
and rid ourselves of the notion that this is the kind of slavery that existed
in the southern United States. The slavery in the nation of Israel was
indentured service. If you were in over your head in debt or had robbed
someone, you could put yourself into the employ of your creditor or victim and
work for him, getting your lodgings and food in his home. The servant was to be
regarded as a hired worker, not a mere slave (Leviticus 25:39-40). At the end
of the seven-year period of servitude he could go free, with sufficient
resources to stand on his own two feet (Deuteronomy 15:12-15). People in our
society condemn this as primitive and harsh? This is reparative justice. Is our
system that puts the offender in prison at greater expense to society really
better?
In terms of foreign servants,
the land of Canaan was given by God to the nation of Israel (to provide a place
for the arrival of the Messiah for the blessing of the world). So, only
Israelites were allowed to own land. If foreigners wanted to live in the
Israelite community then they had to be incorporated into a home, and the only
way poor foreigners could do this was by selling themselves into servanthood.
As we have seen, the Israelites were explicitly forbidden to steal anyone for
slavery. There were regulations to ensure their humane treatment, and when
these regulations are compared with how other Ancient Near Eastern cultures treated
slaves (see, for instance, the Code of Hammurabi), the contrast is stark. The
strangers in the land were not to be oppressed and the reason God gives for
this is that He loves them (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).
God’s programme
God’s original plan was that humans would live in harmony
with God and each other. Sin spoiled the relationship between God and man, and
marred the relationships that exist between humans. Man became self-centred
and, rather than looking for ways to serve others, wanted to be served – thus
slavery arose. And slavery was a universal fact. Every culture engaged in it.
God’s programme for the world is to restore that harmony – to
bring about a world in which slavery will not exist. But God was working with
real people in the real world. The Lord Jesus shows us this in Matthew 19. He
is asked a question about divorce, and He takes them back to the beginning,
showing them that God’s original plan is one man and one woman becoming one flesh
for life. They then asked Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a
certificate of divorce…?” The Lord replied, “Moses, because of the hardness of
your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was
not so.” Notice, the civil law of Moses does not express God’s ideal
arrangements for society.
To illustrate the point, let’s assume that human activity is
causing real damage to the climate, and the only way to save the planet is to
go back to agrarian societies – no cars, no factories, etc. There is no way
such a massive change could be implemented in one leap. It would have to be
done step by step. Similarly, the Mosaic law makes provisions for practices
that were so imbedded in human activity that it just wasn’t practical to
eliminate them all at once. The Mosaic law put up safeguards, made improvements
and changed attitudes. It was progress on the journey.
When we come to the New Testament, the slavery that existed
was not a Christian invention – it was Roman slavery. Timothy Keller writes:
[T]here was not a great difference between slaves and the
average free person. Slaves were not distinguishable from others by race,
speech or clothing. They looked and lived like most everyone else, and were not
segregated from the rest of society in any way. From a financial standpoint,
slaves made the same wages as free labourers, and therefore were not usually
poor. Also, slaves could accrue enough personal capital to buy themselves out.
Most important of all, very few slaves were slaves for life. Most could
reasonably hope to be manumitted within ten or fifteen years, or by their late
thirties at the latest.
This is not to defend Roman slavery, but merely to understand
it. It was not “slavery” as we think of it, i.e., New World slavery. Those who
take issue with the New Testament giving instructions to slaves and masters
really need to get into the real world. If Paul had commanded all Christian
slave owners to free their slaves, or if he had commanded all slaves to rise up
against their masters, what would have happened? Slavery was such a part of
Roman life that crucifixion was the punishment for a disobedient slave. The
best place for a slave to have been in that society was with a Christian. For
Paul to call for the overthrow of this institution would have been taken as an
act of revolution and would have resulted in a lot of bloodshed and wouldn’t
have got rid of slavery.
Instead, what Paul did was subvert slavery and show that it
is antithetical to Christianity. He says in Galatians 3:28 that, “There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male
nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Slavery was, therefore, an evil in society that the advance
of the gospel and the Christian worldview would eliminate, and so it did. Where
the gospel prospers, slavery can’t survive.
When the Lord returns, He will bring all creation into
“glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21), and slavery will be
forever gone. In the meantime, He is setting people free from the worst slavery
of all – slavery to sin, and He is doing it through the gospel. “Therefore if
the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
