“Slavery”, A Different View From A Different Perspective

So often when we hear the word slavery, immediately our hearts and minds reflect on America’s history during that horrid time when many horrors were perpetrated upon African Americans. Because of that time, when the word “slavery” is spoken today, that word brings with it all manner of horrible images connected to slavery in America.  The atrocities connected with slavery were so horrible that, for this writer and any person to consider a different perspective of slavery may seem asinine.  For a black man like me, to have a different perspective on slavery can make me seem insensitive and out of touch.  I get it. I really do get it, yet there is another perspective that we absolutely must consider.  This different perspective is alive and vibrant even as I write, yet it is not one that we tend to consider. The perspective is simple.  We are all slaves to something or somebody whether we want to believe that or not.  Slavery is alive and well in the hearts and minds of all people.  Our normal view of slavery is rooted in our history.  Our history of slavery in America is just a microcosmic picture of true slavery.  Paul said this in Rom 6:16 & 19.   Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?    “… For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.  In the history of slavery in America, plantation owners used slaves to plant and harvest their fields.  Many slaves were treated harshly. They suffered humiliating actions from their masters.  They were dehumanized in many, many ways.  Lest we get our anger up, sin does us the same way the plantation masters did their slaves but even to a greater extent.  Sin makes men to dehumanize women in women trafficking and prostitution.  Sin makes men leave their families unprotected, hurt, and broken.  Sin makes people work in its field planting seeds of hurt, disappointment, immorality, violence, and human brokenness far too numerous to list.  Sin commands its slaves in one country to attack its slaves in another.  Sin enslaves those who do not know Jesus.  The person who accepts Jesus as Lord and savior chooses Jesus and righteousness as his or her master.   We all are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness.  Paul said that we are in slavery to the one to whom we present our members.  Every day we are servants /slaves of whomever or whatever controls us.  We are all slaves either to sin or righteousness.  Through the cross we are set free from the power of sin.  Because of our faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, sin is no longer our master.  However, the only freedom we get after being freed from the power of sin is the freedom to choose.  We now get to choose who will be our master.  If we become bond servants of Jesus, which is another name for a slave, we become free from sin but slaves to righteousness.  If we never accept Jesus, we remain slaves to unrighteousness.  Here is the bottom line.  You will serve somebody! The questions that each of us must answer is this. To whom will we be a slave?

This is a different view of slavery from a different perspective.  We are all slaves!

Rev. Lawrence Robinson