Slaves

49.6 million. According to the Global Slavery Index that's the latest estimate for the number of slaves in the world today. It could be just another number in a blur of facts that fly by our faces in a day, but this nearly 50 million number has a face. It includes women and men, boys and girls who are held in bondage as sex slaves, domestic servants, and child soldiers.

Of course, that is only an estimate since slavery thrives in darkness. But another news item gives this statistic an even more horrifying angle. A British paper shared a story about “Daniel” (not his real name) who was brought into the U.K. for what he had been told was a "life-changing opportunity.” He thought he was going to get a better job. Instead, it was then that he realized there was no job opportunity and he had been brought to the UK to give a kidney to a stranger.

"He was going to literally be cut up like a piece of meat, take what they wanted out of him and then stitch him back up," according to Cristina Huddleston, from the anti-modern slavery group Justice and Care.

Luckily for Daniel, the doctors had become suspicious that he didn't know what was going on and feared he was being coerced. So, they halted the process.

Daniel was not free of his traffickers though. Back in the flat where he was staying, two men came to examine him. It was then he overheard a conversation about sending him back to Nigeria to remove his kidney there.

He fled, and after two nights sleeping rough, he walked into a police station near Heathrow, triggering an investigation that would lead to the UK's first prosecution for human trafficking for organ removal.

Despite international and domestic efforts, about 10 percent of all transplants worldwide are believed to be illegal—approximately 12,000 organs per year. For example, according to the World Health Organization as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world. While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs, and livers, kidneys are the most sought-after organs … The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation, and the salesman who trades the organ.

The first missionary from North America was George Liele, a former slave who left the American colonies for Jamaica in 1782 and began a ministry of preaching in 1783, nearly a full decade before William Carey sailed for India from England. Liele was born a slave (circa 1750) in the colony of Virginia. He launched his preaching career in 1773, and a year later he gathered slaves for what could be considered the first African-American church in America. After the Revolutionary War, the recently freed Liele fled to Jamaica to escape being re-enslaved.

George Liele arrived in Jamaica as an indentured servant, but would serve as a missionary-evangelist to the island. Liele became the first Christian to win a significant number of slaves on the Island to Christ, and the first to plant a church composed of slaves. He preached in private homes and public settings drawing crowds of slaves. In a letter written in 1791, Liele reported 500 converts and 400 baptisms. In 1789 Liele's congregation had organized and by 1793 they had completed the Windward Road Chapel, the first Baptist church on the island.

Liele achieved these successful evangelistic and church planting efforts despite opposition from a powerful constituency on the island. White slave owners feared the impact upon the slave population if the slaves were to embrace Christianity. Concern arose that "if their minds are considerably enlightened by religion, or otherwise, that it would be attended with the most dangerous consequences."

Despite Liele's numerous efforts to appease the slave owners, he still faced stiff opposition. He was charged with sedition and jailed on numerous occasions on trumped-up charges. Despite these obstacles, Liele was able to baptize new converts as well as plant and organize new churches. His evangelistic and church-planting efforts led to the establishment of the Baptist denomination on the island, with slaves, freedmen, and whites joining churches started by Liele. The impact of Liele's ministry continues to this day; however, Liele himself is buried in an unmarked grave in Jamaica.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation in 1822. As she grew up, she was made to work driving oxen, trapping muskrats in the woods, and as a nursemaid. Harriet's owners frequently whipped her. And she endured the pain of seeing three of her sisters sold, never to be seen again. But when her owner tried to sell one of her brothers, Harriet's mother openly rebelled. The would-be buyer gave up after Harriet's mother told him, "The first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open."

Her mother's actions likely implanted in Harriet the idea that resistance to evil was right—and could sometimes be successful. As a child, Harriet herself … would run away for days at a time. But there were rays of joy in her life, as well. Harriet's mother told her stories from the Bible, which developed in her a deep and abiding faith in God.

When Harriet was about 26 years old, she learned that she might be sold away from her family. The time had come to try to escape. She made her way some ninety miles along the Underground Railroad. She traveled at night to avoid slave catchers, following the North Star, until she reached Pennsylvania, and freedom. Once there, she dared to make a dangerous decision: She risked her own freedom in order to give others theirs.

For eight years, she led scores of slaves north to freedom. During these trips she relied upon God to guide and protect her. She never once lost a runaway slave. As Harriet herself later put it, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

She gave all the credit to God, explaining, "'Twant me, 'twas the Lord. I always told him, 'I trusts to you. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,' and he always did." Her faith deeply impressed others. As abolitionist Thomas Garrett put it, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul."

Pastor Kevin DeYoung responds to the assertion that Christians can no longer hold to traditional views of homosexuality. The argument usually goes like this: "You Christians are on the wrong side of history with regard to homosexuality. Look at slavery, for instance." DeYoung writes:

While it's true that Christians in the South often defended chattel slavery, this was not the position of the entire American church, and certainly not the universal position of the church throughout history. Unlike slavery, the church has always been convinced (until very recently) that homosexual behavior is sinful. There are no biblical passages that suggest the contrary. There are, however, passages in Scripture that encourage the freeing of slaves (Philem. 15—16) and condemn capturing another human being and selling him into slavery (Ex. 21:16; 1 Tim. 1:8—10).

Furthermore, it's not as if Christians never spoke against the institution until the nineteenth century.

As early as the seventh century, Saith Bathilde (wife of King Clovis III) campaigned to stop slave-trading and free all slaves. In the ninth century Saint Anskar worked to halt the Viking slave trade. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was a sin, a position upheld by a series of popes after him. In the fifteenth century, after the Spanish colonized the Canary Islands and began to enslave the native population, Pope Eugene IV gave everyone 15 days "to restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands … these people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without exaction or reception of any money." Slavery was condemned in papal bulls in 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741, 1815, and 1839. In America, the first abolitionist tract was published in 1700 by Samuel Sewall, a devout Puritan.

Clearly, the church's opposition to slavery is not a recent phenomenon. We do not find anything like this long track record when it comes to the church supporting homosexual practice.

There's a story that has been told from Civil War days before America's slaves were freed, about a northerner who went to a slave auction and purchased a young slave girl. As they walked away from the auction, the man turned to the girl and told her, "You're free."

With amazement she responded, "You mean, I'm free to do whatever I want?"

"Yes," he said.

"And to say whatever I want to say?"

"Yes, anything."

"And to be whatever I want to be?"

"Yep."

"And even go wherever I want to go?"

"Yes," he answered with a smile. "You're free to go wherever you'd like."

She looked at him intently and replied, "Then I will go with you."

[Slavery in the Greco Roman cultures of the New Testament] is more like indentured servanthood. It's not what we think of as slavery. When you and I see the word "slave" in the Bible, you immediately think of 17th, 18th, and 19th century New World slavery: race-based, African slavery. When you do that, when you read it through those blinders, you aren't understanding what the Bible's teaching.

Historian Murray Harris … wrote a book about what slavery was like in the 1st century Greco-Roman world. He says that in Greco-Roman times, number one, slaves were not distinguishable from anyone else by race, speech, or clothing. They looked and lived like everyone else and were never segregated off from the rest of society in any way. Number two, slaves were more educated than their owners in many cases and many times held high managerial positions. Number three, from a financial standpoint, slaves made the same wages as free laborers and therefore were not themselves usually poor and often accrued enough personal capital to buy themselves out. Number four, very few persons were slaves for life in the first century. Most expected to be manumitted after about ten years or by their late thirties at the latest.

In contrast, New World slavery—17th, 18th, 19th century slavery—was race-based, and its default mode was slavery for life. Also, the African slave trade was [started] and resourced through kidnapping, which the Bible unconditionally condemns in 1 Timothy 1:9-11 and Deuteronomy 24:7. Therefore, while the early Christians, like Saint Paul … discouraged [1st century slavery] … saying to slaves, "get free if you can," [they] didn't go on a campaign to end it. [But] 18th and 19th century Christians, when faced with New World-style slavery, did work for its complete abolition, because it could not be squared in any way with biblical teaching.

So the point is that when you hear somebody say, "The Bible condones slavery," you say, "No it didn't—not the way you and I define 'slavery.' It's not talking about that."