Did Jesus condone slavery, meaning chattel slavery?
“While the Bible may be morally correct in some cases, it is certainly immoral where human slavery is concerned. It is the secular state, not the Bible, which we have to thank for ending slavery. Also it is the secular state, not the church, which stands as the guarantor of freedom and human rights.”
and
“What did Jesus have to say about slavery? Well, in the revered Sermon of the Mount, widely recognized as a prescription for Christian living, the institution of slavery is never mentioned. However, in Matthew 8:5-13, the story of the healing of the Roman centurion’s slave, not only does Jesus not condemn slavery, he actually compliments the centurion for his faithfulness. Therefore, we can only conclude that Jesus was aware of slavery and approved of it.”
Comment:
This is a misleading but common attack on the Gospel.
Here’s why.
1. Since Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, condemned the rich man who did not feed the beggar at his gate, and healed the Centurion’s slave without partiality, it’s highly unlikely that his vision of the world was confined to talk or that he approved of slavery.
2. Not openly advocating violent revolution to end slavery is not the same as approving of slavery.
Words can be very subversive and powerful – far more than violent acts.
3. Jesus’ vocation was that of a healer and a teacher, not that of an armed rebel.
His goal was to change institutions by changing the hearts of people.
“I will take out your heart of stone and give you one of flesh.”
4. The allegation also overlooks several Gospel passages that show the Jesus did not condone slavery.
1. In the prophecy from Isaiah that Jesus reads in the Synagogue as a prediction of his mission.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
New International Version:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, his spiritual manifesto, he himself clearly sets out his demands on his followers, demands so high that few people can master even one of them fully:
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
The term Money (Mammon) in this verse does not not simply refer to physical coin.
It means material wealth and not just that which is unjustly acquired. Mammon is also the name of a devil, used to personify wealth or greed and exemplify an attitude toward the material world, that makes it all in all.
It refers to the worship of wealth to the exclusion of righteousness.
Jesus says that this world is diametrically opposed to his world.
But this may not imply an outright rejection of the “real world.”
For one thing, Jesus often told spiritual seekers (Children of Light) to learn a lesson from the real world (Children of the World) and his parables were often drawn from ordinary life and business, that is, from the market-place.
He praised many rich men and at least one Roman centurion (captain) who had servants or slaves.
Still, Jesus wasn’t deluded by the “real world.”
In a notable passage ((“Render unto Caesar””) he pointed out the illogic and vanity of trying to question a system while being thoroughly beholden to it.
I blogged about it here, “What Jesus Taught About Taxes,” where I look at what Rushdoony, on the one hand, and Gandhi, on the other, had to say.
That captures the silliness of anti-capitalist jet-set “communists,” who are completely beholden to a system they claim to reject.
But it also captures the silliness of Christian corporatists, who are equally beholden to a system they claim to transcend.
Did Jesus advocate physical revolution?
No. I believe he thought one’s condition of life (male, female, master, slave, Jew, Gentile) was secondary to the transformation of one’s heart.
He taught, far more radically than any radical, that physical slavery or serfdom is not the real locus of evil.
The real locus is within each human being.
This is exactly the same teaching as Krishna’s in the Bhagvad Gita.
It is the teaching of Dharmakshetra Kurukshetra (the field of dharma is the real field of battle).
Spiritual jihad, in other words, not violent revolution.
“The timeless message of the Bhagavad Gita does not refer only to one historical battle, but to the cosmic conflict between good and evil: life as a series of battles between Spirit and matter, soul and body, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, health and disease, changelessness and transitoriness, self-control and temptations, discrimination and the blind sense-mind.”
God and Science has a more detailed account of the New Testament teaching on slavery.
Beautiful and inspiring piece. Inevitably, for me, it brings up the question of the extent to which *citizenship* constitutes a somewhat-hidden form of slavery.
That would partially explain the extent of the horror of slavery that is promoted in government schools. Hide the truth!
Through much of history, slavery was something of a norm.
That always made me wonder a bit: could it really be that because we are born into *the modern era* that somehow we are superior to all other historical societies, by virtue of our having universally condemned slavery?
Could it perhaps be a matter of a subtle (or not, depending on one’s level of consciousness) substitution of the traditional slavery for slavery-by-government?
Perhaps slavery has not disappeared at all. Rather, it has perhaps morphed into another form, in some ways even more insidious than the older more honest and forthright form.
Actually, slavery has not disappeared at all.
Chattel slavery may not be widespread, but sex-trafficking, debt bondage, enforced labor, and forced marriages still exist and the number of all such violations is some 30 million, according to recent reports.
Then, what do you consider the populations of Asia that work at less than subsistence as part of a global corporate system, upheld by bombing and massacre of millions, as well as the debt bondage of others?
The ugliest side of this world plantation is overseas, at first, but it is now coming home to roost, in the domestic police state. But the “government” is not simply the obvious institutions of government.
There is the militarized police. Yes. That is the most obvious. That is the arm and the fist.
But there is also the REAL power behind.
The media and finance are the powers behind government. They are its heart and brains. The people are the patsies.
That’s why I prefer to deconstruct the story lines and the journalists the most.
That’s the dragon’s lair.
And the alternative journalists need special scrutiny, because there is no one looking at them at all.
I like the comments made by Dick Rust.
Thanks to you, I am now more than ever aware of the need to be suspicious of the “alternative” journalists. Just who are they? If I hear five guys on a street corner plotting something, and I agree with them, should I assume that at least four of them are undercover FBI agents? I think so.