Genesis22 #fundie

Genesis22 #fundie rr-bb.com

I know that God has given me a heart for girls and women caught in sex trafficking. What I'm not sure about how to handle is labor slaves who are forced to do labor jobs (farming for example) for little or no pay and can't leave their often cruel masters. Don't get me wrong and please listen to my question- it's not that I don't care about these people or don't wish they had better lives. But, looking at it from a biblical perspective, it confuses me if/what we are supposed to do about it. When Paul encountered a runaway slave (in the book of Philemon), he didn't set him free. He sent him back to his master. Paul has specifically written about "slaves obey your masters, whether they are nice or cruel to you" and how if they can be set free in an honest way they should, but if not they should remain a slave as they are. I know a lot of people say "things were different back then"...but in God's eyes, nothing about humans has changed since the day that Jesus rose again and saved us...and these verses about slaves happened long after that. So, my question is, how are we supposed to handle modern day labor slavery? I hope this makes sense and doesn't sound cruel. Again, it's not like I don't want to help...and I'm going to help those caught in sex slavery regardless...but how does the bible say we should handle labor slavery? Because nothing that I read talks about setting them free...yet every Christian I meet agrees that we should. Help please?

51 comments

old comment by checkmate

but how does the bible say we should handle labor slavery? ... Help please?

And yet again we meet the assumption of non-participation in the issue at hand, the assumption that one is standing outside of the problem looking in and not a part of the problem looking out.

Does labor slavery exist today? Hell yes!

So, if you really want an answer to your question, a really honest answer, not some third party bullshit, then become one of those labor slaves yourself.

Having done so, I believe the answer to your question will become very, very clear to you. Instantly and without any doubt.

Think about it when you go jogging in your Nikes, or buy a rose for Valentine's Day, or sip your coffee, or eat a banana, ... you hypocrite asshole.

old comment by Tempus

Well, there's two basic approaches you can take to this.

First, you could decide that while parts of the Bible are aimed at everyone, even larger parts of it were aimed at people who lived in a vastly different and alien time, place and culture than we do now. But that would require you to accept that parts of it are invalid for the present time, which also leads to the notion that, yes, Virginia, you must pick and choose which parts of the Bible you are to follow and which parts you won't--meaning that you are required to exercise your own powers of moral and ethical judgement. Which will mean, by extension, that you will have to accept that to one degree or another, ALL ethics are situational. You will have to accept that the Bible contains parable, legend and myth, and commentary as well as history, and was written from a variety of radically different viewpoints by flawed, imperfect people all struggling to understand the nature of God, the world they lived in, and their place in it. You will no longer be certain of anything--but, you might be able to salvage some humanity out of it.

Or, you can do what so many others have done in your place, and decide that if God's commands are inviolable, universal and timeless and that we are to follow every jot and tittle precisely as written and "situational ethics" do not exist, then God has no problem whatsoever with slavery. Or innocent deaths (feel free to put innocent in quotation marks, if you'd like--after all, a lot of other people in your situation have decided that no one is really innocent, thus avoiding the whole problem altogether). Or torture. Or that, yes, God will randomly pick people to make examples of, simply to settle a bet. Or that he holds people equally responsible for the crimes of their forebears generations ago. You will simply have to come accept that human notions of fairness, or compassion, or justice, or morality, or basic good and evil, or even human pain and suffering are all laughably meaningless and irrelevant to God. And if they're completely meaningless to God, then why should they have any more meaning or relevance for you?

And with such luminaries as Bryan Fischer, Kevin Swanson and James Dobson taking the latter view, I guarantee you'll be in good company. Oh, and you'll be like this guy:

If God tells His people to enter into a new land and kill every native man woman and child than killing every man woman and child is the right thing to do. You don't necessarily have to enjoy doing it but it is the morally right thing to do. When God says to do something, you do it. Period. Attempting to declare God unworthy of worship because you do not fully accept His command is blashpemous.

So the question then becomes: what do you really want? Humanity? Or cold, inhuman certainty?

old comment by Gloria

Here's the thing a lot of fundamentalists miss, reading Paul: He wasn't writings books, for inclusion in some planned version of the bible. He was writing letters of advice and theology to churches he had planted. We come into them in the middle of a conversation - context, relationships, previous conversations and correspondence, are all absent. What we know, or think we know, is extrapolated from what he does mention, and from trends reaching between letters.

One such trend is well summed up in the phrase "I have become all things, to all people, that by all means, some might believe." (1Cor 9:22b) Paul is big on conformity to social standards, not because he considers the standards themselves inviolate, (see his downright vitriolic comments on legalism in several of his letters) but because it's good evangelism.

I see this as a running theme with Paul. From what I can tell, and the impression I've gotten, he's saying something like: 'Look, you can break the rules if you want. You're under grace. God is your master - not your husband, parents, slaveowner, human government, whatever. You have a right to leave, or defy them, if you want. But I'm going to ask you not to. In fact, I want you to go one further. Go above and beyond; give them more and better than they could ever have asked of you before. Do for them a little of what Christ did for you, not because they deserve it, but because you are their window to see it. You're free: now use your freedom to bring others into the light."

Obviously there are other ways to read Paul's epistles - See above about how we have something like 1/4 of a conversation here, not an instruction manual. For that matter, see the multitude of churches that treat Paul as a revamp of the old-testament law, to be followed to the letter. But in my opinion, Paul wouldn't be advising modern day survivors of slavery to go back; the situation is more than a little different. Take the spirit of the advice, and be nicer to people than you need to be. Tell the cops to have a nice day after they pull you over, or offer to do something extra or unpopular at work, or whatever is the equivalent in your life. Don't try and apply first century social norms to a totally different reality - it doesn't work well.