[Vision2020] FW: slavery, Bible, 10 commandments

[keely emerinemix]

Not sure this came through, so trying again.  Sorry!

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/




From: kjajmix1 at msn.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: slavery, Bible, 10 commandments
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:20:57 -0700








I'll try not to get us further off topic, but a few points I'd make:

1.  Ralph is correct.  The Old Testament does condone and regulate slavery, and the New Testament, while presenting a Gospel that is incompatible with slavery or any other form of social hierarchy or oppression, does not explicitly condemn the practice.  It is important to realize, however, that Hebrew slavery was not only more beneficient than that of the pagan cultures around the Jewish people, but that it was radically different than the race-based, permanent, violence-controlled, man-stealing, hate-based slavery of the antebellum south, which could not be justified, period, under any circumstance for these very reasons.  Hebrew slavery was not race-based, not permanent, and more correctly what we would likely call, even as we properly find it abhorrent, an indentured servitude.  The New Testament slavery discussed by Paul was basically of the same sort and, again, an improvement over slavery practices of other non-Yahweh-worshipping cultures (this is how I'm using the term "pagan").  The Gospel of Jesus Christ had as one of its inevitable outcomes the eventual end to the slave practices of the day among Christians -- again, a slavery entirely different from the inexcusable slavery of the antebellum south.  The movement of the Spirit in Christiandom, and, later, the work of thousands of Christ-worshipping abolitionists (including my great-great-great grandparents, both ordained ministers) brought about the end of slavery in "Christian" America and the understanding, finally and comprehensively, that the "owning" of another person's labor and security, not to mention the attempt to rob them of body, soul and spirit, is wrong.  Why God moved incrementally in abolishing any form of slavery, I don't know.  But it's foolish to pretend that the OT doesn't lay out strict regulations of an accepted practice, and equally so to pretend that the NT either encouraged slavery or specifically condemned it.  The NT church, instead, affected society by adopting in itself the egalitarian spirit of the Holy Spirit.  The Apostles weren't social reformers, and we might wish they were, but they preached a message that believers came to understand, and not as rapidly as we wish they had, was incompatible with the Kingdom of God among them.

2.  Nowhere in either OT account of the Ten Commandments does it say to love your neighbor as yourself.  It shouldn't need to, and nothing in the Decalogue makes it possible to legitimately not love your neighbor.  Rather, the Ten describe how to love God and how to live lovingly amongst humanity.  It's nonsensical to claim that "love your neighbor as yourself" is part of the Decalogue -- it isn't -- and it's absurd to claim that the idea of loving one's neighbor isn't the whole point of the Ten.

3.  Yeah, I said Christ-worshipping abolitionists, and to claim that the slavery of the antebellum south was somehow in any way Godly is only a bit more offensive, and wrong, than claims by Wilsonites that those who worked to abolish it were motivated by hatred of God (Southern Slavery As It Was/Black and Tan, Wilson and Wilkins).  And, further, the Gospel message is an egalitarian one, and Federal Vision, patriarchy, "complementarianism" and any other male-favoring message is at odds with it.  

Period.

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/



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