![]() Since the canon of Scripture is closed, the soil of Christian faith is unchanging. ![]() Christianity is not a slave to the Bible - Christianity is a slave to Christ! Out of the soil of Scripture grows a mature Christian faith that is not only able, but required to oppose all forms of slavery in the name of Jesus. So if the Bible assumes that slavery is both a tolerable and inevitable institution, even explicitly saying that slaves are the property of slaveowners, that doesn’t mean this is the Christian ethical position on slavery. They are connected, but they are not the same thing. Yes, they are connected, but they remain distinct. Put most simply, the Bible and Christianity are not synonymous. You cannot remove the tree from the soil in which it is rooted and expect it to survive but neither are we to think that the tree and the soil are the same thing! They are not. This is what I wanted to prevent happening to the teens attending my talk on the Bible.ĭuring the course of my talk, which was held outdoors in a grove of tall pine trees in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, I walked over to a tree and said this:Ĭhristian faith is a living tree rooted in the soil of Scripture. It’s possible for people to lose their faith by reading the Bible in a wrong way. At that point the Bible, instead of being a nourishment for Christian faith, can become a deadly toxin to Christian faith. If we suggest to serious-minded, good-hearted people that the Bible is a word-for-word, verse-by-verse perfect revelation of God and God’s will, thoughtful readers will eventually run into some serious problems. To love the Bible for a lifetime it’s important that we do not imagine the Bible as something it cannot be. What was my objective in this talk? To give young people a way of loving the Bible their entire lives. This is how I began an hour-long conversation with a group of Christian teens on “What’s the Deal with the Bible?” For more on this see Mark Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.) (This posed a problem for both Southern and Northern Christians in the years preceding the American Civil War. ![]() In Ephesians we find Paul saying, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.” (Ephesians 6:5) The truth is that neither Testament of the Bible has a vision for the abolition of slavery but simply regards it as a fact of life. I also pointed out that the problem cannot be solved by simply appealing to the New Testament. They all raised their hands, to which I made the observation that when it comes to the subject of slavery they all had a superior moral vision than the Bible. I then addressed one of the youngest, saying, “So you disagree with the Bible?” She responded a bit cautiously, “Yeah, I guess so.” To which I said, “Good! You should!”įinally I asked the teens how many of them knew that slavery is an unmitigated moral evil that cannot be justified by any means and must always be condemned as incompatible with God’s justice. (I say slowly and hesitantly, but I do remember some African-American teens shooting their hands up instantly and confidently!) Then I asked the teens, “How many of you disagree with this?” Slowly and a bit hesitantly every teen raised their hand. Why? Because, as the Bible says, “the slave is the owner’s property.” But if the slave clings to life for a day or two and then dies, there is to be no punishment. ![]() If a slaveowner beats a slave and the slave dies immediately, there is to be some form of unspecified punishment. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment for the slave is the owner’s property.” (Exodus 21:20, 21)įirst I made sure the teens understood what this Bible passage said. “When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. I began my talk by reading this passage from the Bible. My assigned topic was, “What’s the Deal with the Bible?” This summer I spoke to a group of teens at our youth camp. Christianity: A Tree Growing Up From the Soil of Scripture
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |