Racism and Slavery in the Bible

Racism and Salvery

Racism has always been an issue in this world ever since the fall. The pride of people’s hearts stirs up in them and for some reason, they think they are better than others. Slavery has been a pitiful thorn in our society, which goes back thousands of years. One clear example we see people who are oppressed is in Egypt. The Egyptian ruler of the time oppressed the people of God (Israelites) into forced slavery to build their empire (Ex 1:8-13). Some people today who call themselves Christians say that the Bible advocates slavery and use verses like Genesis 9:18-27 to prove their case (Newbell, 2013). What a poor interpretation of the text! In context, this is where Noah curses the Canaanite people (descendants from Ham) for exposing Noah’s nakedness. The text reads,

Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

This is the first text in Scripture where a man pronounces a curse instead of God. The previous curse we see in Scripture is when God curses Cain (Gen. 4:11). The curse that Noah proclaims though is to a nation and not a person. The curse was given due to the wickedness and the pagan practices that the Canaanites would indulge themselves in. Matthews (1996), makes the point,

There are no grounds in our passage for an ethnic reading of the “curse” as some have done, supposing that some peoples are inferior to others. Here Genesis looks only to the social and religious life of Israel’s ancient rival Canaan, whose immorality defiled their land and threatened Israel’s religious fidelity (cf. Lev 18:28; Josh 23). It was not an issue of ethnicity but of the wicked practices that characterized Canaanite culture. The biblical revelation made it clear that if Israel took up the customs of the Canaanites, they too would suffer expulsion. It is transparent from Genesis 1–11, especially the Table of Nations (10:1–32), that all peoples are of the same parentage (i.e., Noah) and thus are related by ancestry. This we find at the outset by creation’s imago Dei, which is reaffirmed in God’s covenant with Noah and his sons, including Ham (9:1, 5–6). The blessing that befalls all peoples is carried forward by the Abrahamic promises, which counter the old curses by the blessing received by all peoples in any era who acknowledge the Lord. “Any attempt to grade the branches of mankind by an appeal to 25–27 is therefore a re-erecting of what God has demolished” (cf. Col 3:11; Gal 2:18; 3:28). (p. 423)

The curse was fitting for the descendants of Ham because the greatest of all of Israel’s enemies would derive from Ham: Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon (Gen 10:6–13; Sproul, 2005). Anyone who reads the Bible should quickly understand that the Bible is descriptive of slavery but it never is prescriptive in regards to slavery. We see God opposed to the very idea of slavery when He sends Moses to free His people from the oppression of slavery when they are bound in Egypt (Ex. 3:7-12). Later on, in Israel’s history, they are once again subjects of slavery and God delivers them out of the hands of the Babylonians (Isa. 45:1). Furthermore, the Bible actually puts slave traders in the category or murderers, sexual immorality, and people who strike their mothers and fathers which are obviously gross sins (1 Tim. 1:10). We also know from history that people who were under the reading of God’s word lived a life in opposition of forced slavery and eventually led to the eradication of slavery in their countries (Grudem, 2018). William Wilberforce of England, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr who were all devout Christians seeking to destroy the common practice of forced slavery in their times (Grudem, 2018). Grudem (2018), makes a fantastic point that not only were Christians influential in abolishing slavery, but they were also responsible for getting rid of other gross sins,

Historian Alvin Schmidt points out how the spread of Christianity and Christian influence on government was primarily responsible for the outlawing of infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion in the Roman Empire (in AD 374); the abolition of the brutal battles to the death in which thousands of gladiators had died (in 404); the ending of the cruel punishment of branding the faces of criminals (in 315); the institution of prison reforms, such as the segregating of male and female prisoners (by 361); the discontinuation of the practice of human sacrifice among the Irish, the Prussians, and the Lithuanians, as well as among the Aztec and Mayan Indians; the outlawing of pedophilia; the granting of property rights and other protections to women;the banning of polygamy (which is still practiced in some Muslim nations today); the prohibition of the burning alive of widows in India (in 1829); the end of the painful and crippling practice of binding young women’s feet in China (in 1912); persuading government officials to begin a system of public schools in Germany (in the 16th century); and advancing the idea of compulsory education of all children in a number of European countries. During the history of the church, Christians have had a decisive influence in opposing and often abolishing slavery in the Roman Empire, in Ireland, and in most of Europe (though Schmidt frankly notes that a minority of “erring” Christian teachers have supported slavery in various centuries). In England, William Wilberforce, a devout Christian, led the successful effort to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself throughout the British Empire by 1840. (pp. 475-476)

A very crucial point to understand with the ancient idea of slavery and how it was historically practiced was due to large amounts of debt people accrued, a crime made against another party, or in other cases, it was because of war (McQuilkin & Copan, 2014). People would voluntarily submit themselves in servanthood to pay off their debts or to pay for their crimes to a family they wronged (McQuilkin & Copan, 2014). The people who were servants were treated as ordinary people instead of the mere thought of property since they were made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27; Ex. 21:20-27; Job 31:13-15).

Despite the wickedness that people have in their hearts to pervert the image of God in which God created us in, God always finds a way to paint a picture of beauty inside evil. God takes a word like slavery, and then He uses that imagery to show us that slavery has all the features of our redemption built in it. As slaves, the children of God are chosen (1 Peter 1:1; 2:9; Eph. 1:4), they are bought (1 Cor. 6:20, 7:23), the Master owns them (1 Cor. 6:19; Rom. 14;7-9; Titus 2:14), and are subject to the masters will and control over us (Acts 5:29, Rom. 6:16-19, Phil. 4:19). Believers will ultimately be called to account (Rom. 14:12); evaluated (2 Cor. 5:10), and either chastened or rewarded by Him (1 Cor. 3:14; Heb. 12:5-11).

What a beautiful and wonderful God He is to make all things good (Rom. 8:28).

References

Grudem, W. (2018). Christian Ethics: An Introduction to Biblical Moral Reasoning. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Mathews, K. A. (1996). Genesis 1-11:26(Vol. 1A). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

McQuilkin, R., & Copan, P. (2014). An introduction to Biblical ethics: Walking in the way of wisdom (Third ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 

Newbell, T. (2013). Beyond color blind: Why race still matters. Retrieved from http://christandpopculture.com/beyond-colorblind-why-race-still-matters/

Schmidt, A. J. (2004). How Christianity Changed the World. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Sproul, R. C. (Ed.). (2005). The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version. Orlando, FL; Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries.