For centuries, people who called themselves Christian lived happily with slavery. We were discussing this extraordinary blind spot in a class I taught recently. How could people point to the Bible to support slavery for so long? And then, how could they change their minds, so that even those most thoughtless of the vulnerable poor today condemn slavery?
My students looked up the many Bible verses, which specifically refer to slavery. Especially in the Torah, God shows blessing to certain people by giving them gifts—like female and male goats, and female and male slaves! And in the New Testament, slaves are told to obey their masters and not worry about being slaves.
Well, that’s clear! The Bible says it; I believe it; and that settles it. According to a certain literal way of reading scripture, God approves of slavery.
Why the shift? Did the Bible change?
Some Christians (known as abolitionists) saw the Bigger Picture in the Bible. The realized that—more important than certain verses—God had delivered his chosen people from the slavery of Egypt. They remembered God’s repeated call to care for all; Christ’s judgment based on care for “the least of these.” They recognized Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor (which presumably means not enslaving them). Abolition happened because people became convinced that God calls to liberation, not “biblically supported slavery.” They realized that they shouldn’t “put a period where God had put a comma.”
“That’s interpretation,” some might say. But all of us inevitably interpret—we read and think with certain lenses. This “interpretation” is only dangerous when we don’t recognize our lenses, as the slave supporters didn’t. We might all be tempted to support something because it’s familiar or pleasant—if you own someone who makes your bed and cooks your breakfast, you will be tempted to say, “the Bible says I can have slaves.”
The Bible didn’t change, but some people started reading the Bible with the Bigger Picture in mind, and they acted on that.
Speaking of the Big Picture: What does the Bible say about immigration and refugees? A lot, and it’s not, “Keep them out!” Or “Build a wall!”
Over and over, the Bible says this: Welcome and care for the stranger in your midst. Remember that you were once outsiders. A contemporary version: Welcome and care for refugees— remember that your forebears came through Ellis Island.
Human sin is almost always rooted in a sense of scarcity: fear wants to lock the door behind us, to keep others out. People often choose some group who are different—very often by some trait like skin color—and create a group of “others” to shut out or bully.
Left to our own devices unregenerate humanity tends toward a sense of scarcity, but God calls us to abundance, and in that plenty, we welcome the outsider. The pattern of God throughout the old and new testaments is ever-increasing circles—Abraham to the chosen people, to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.
We are called to open our doors for the sake of the outsider: but also for ourselves. We see, in several places in scripture, God using an outsider to bring the word to insiders (Melchizedek, Balaam’s donkey, the Syrophoenician woman, Cornelius, etc.). In many monastic traditions, the stranger who comes to the door must be welcomed as Christ, because that stranger might well have insights that insiders needed to hear. We invite a fresh voice and a new perspective.
What does Jesus say more than anything else? “Don’t be afraid.” We have a choice: we can say no to the fear that sends others to internment camps, separates families, wants to build walls and ostracizes difference. We can say yes to God’s widening circles, yes to welcoming people who will refresh our ways of thinking and our lives.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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