Most people I meet are perplexed about the Bible’s teaching on slavery. Is God okay with slavery or not? Since we are made in God’s image, the answer is CERTAINLY NOT!
But if God is against slavery, why does it go on?
Slavery, including every form of human bondage, like every other evil, is a consequence of contradicting God’s design in creation. Experiencing those consequences is a necessary element for working repentance, honesty about dependence, and everlasting grateful contentment.
Understanding what the Bible teaches, like understanding what is going on in the world around us, is dependent on worldview. In a one-dimensional Red Pyramid worldview, where human life is only a body in time, a person is either slave or free. Yet even those who insist they are free in this worldview are bound by the appetites of the flesh, from simple cravings for foods that undermine our health to more complex ambitions for power and fame that undermine our relationships with others.
In a three-dimensional Green V worldview, our essence is an eternal soul, animated by a spirit that experiences life through a body. From a regenerate soul’s perspective, the corruption of our human nature imposes bondage on that body one way or another, whether of our own craving or that of others. But when the essence of our being is a soul regenerated in the image of Christ and inspired by His Spirit, we are perfectly free and cannot be enslaved – no matter what physical conditions are impressed upon us. So Jesus said, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
More on human bondage and divine freedom in the weeks to come.