Slavery in the Modern World

We ended the previous Cross Point saying, “In the end, the experience of a slave depended entirely on the master.” You might question that. Isn’t slavery always bad, regardless of the master, you might ask? Again, our thoughts about slavery in this country rely too much on the American experience. But the truth of the matter is, we are all slaves to something. From a biblical worldview perspective, we are slaves to whoever we obey. “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Romans 6:16). From a religious perspective, if the person is Muslim, they are slaves to Allah. If the person is Buddhist, they are slaves to Buddha. From a non-religious perspective, if the person is an atheist, they are slaves to the thinking of people like Karl Marx, Carl Sagan, or Robert Ingersoll. None of us are truly free of such influence, even though we might like to think so. But even if we claim total independence, we are then merely slaves to self, with all our own limitations. One way or another, we are slaves. And back to my first sentence above: the experience of a slave depends entirely on the master. The Israelites found themselves in slavery to Egypt for many years after the time of Joseph. Were they totally free once Moses got them out of Egypt? Of course not. In theory they became slaves to God. In reality, they struggled with who they wanted to obey. The evils of slavery in Egypt took on a new look once they struggled to survive in the desert. So called freedom came with responsibilities they were not accustomed to, and in addition, they were being called to obey this new Law that Moses provided. Such restrictions did not appeal to many, even though preferable to what they had left. They reminisced about “the good old days” as slaves in Egypt, memories failing them. God’s way was not easy, but it came with promises and blessings that were not always immediate. What about slavery in our modern times? Unfortunately, forced slavery still exists, in fact has become a major problem around the world. We now call it Human Trafficking. When we were in Prague serving with Open Door Libraries in 2021, we befriended a gentleman who volunteered at the library. He was a lawyer and had moved to Prague from Houston, Texas to help with the legal challenges faced by those seeking to remove themselves from such bondage. Rexanne and I are now involved with Ends of the Earth Cycling, a ministry that raises money through cycling events, and the one we did in March 2023 was to help kids come out of sex trafficking in SE Asia, creating safe houses for them. And this goes on in the United States also. These slave traffickers’ prey on young people they determine will not be missed, but sometimes go beyond such borders to snatch any child alone and vulnerable. Again, such slavery has no good side to it. It is forced on people, taking advantage of the weak or those without resources to aid them. But we must gain a bigger picture of slavery, realizing how it impacts all of us in some fashion if we wish to appreciate the spiritual choices that we all must face. In the next two article of this series, I’ll seek to give us a picture of slavery in the Roman world of Jesus’ time, and the view of slavery that incorporates the choice we make to follow Christ.

Cross Point: God spoke to Moses: “For the Israelites are my slaves. They are my slaves I brought out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 25:55).