A response to Matt on Slavery in the Bible

This is a work in progress, just spent some time and would love some feedback.

Matt,

Thank you for your email, I would love to sit down and talk about how we can teach our campus about the horrific nature of slavery. I would also love to know more about Shared Hope. I would like to help with the article on explaining the presence of slavery in the Bible.

I have spent the last couple of hours mulling over your question. In studying marxist criticism I have come across a very interesting aspect of capitalism that I had not thought much about before. Just so you know I'm not a complete advocate for Marxist theories, just feel that there is some truth in what Marx talked about. There were a couple of points that became very intriguing. The first one is the ideas of use value, exchange value, and sign-exchange value. Use value is something that has value in its use and in its use alone. Like for instance a loaf of bread, its only value is in it being used for nutrition, most basic food items are in this category. Exchange value is something that is bought solely for the purpose of selling to make a profit, i.e. the idea of 'flipping houses' buying a house, fixing it up, then selling it for more than you bought it for. The only value of the house in this situation is the prospect of selling it. Sign-exchange value is the idea of buying a $100 pair of sunglasses. The value is not in the use or the resale of the product but in the symbol it represents, which in a capitalist community, is the representation of wealth. Connecting these ideas to the idea of commodification has some interesting connections to modern slavery and even the trans-atlantic slave trade. Commodification is the process in which an object or even person is transformed into a commodity through the apparent placement of exchange value, or sign-exchange value. The process of commodification has been deeply influential and has become a norm of capitalism. Where as in the barter system use value is paramount, people traded for the value of the product. Exchange value and sign-exchange value are held to specific arenas in a barter system, i.e. traders/merchants, and the government leadership, respectively exchange value and sign-exchange value.

From here you can easily make the logical leap to the difference between biblical slavery and more adverse forms of slavery. Trans-Atlantic slave trade, modern day slavery, and even Egyptian slavery of the Hebrew people. You can see that in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and in modern day slavery, the major value of a slave was and is in exchange value. There is a deep rooted connection to the commodification of a person as slave. Specifically the sex industry, the person has become a commodity to be bought or sold for hope of profit, or personal gratification, a touch on sign-exchange value. Beside this is the possible connection between the alienated worker and the type of work a modern slave is forced to perform. An alienated worker is someone who works to create a product that has no individual connection to the worker, therefore the worker has lost individuality and has become a commodity, the only value assigned is in exchange value, or possibly sign-exchange value. I do believe that any type of slave trade could be considered adverse, at least when applied to this formula. However, when looking at Exodus 21:7 specifically you have to look at cultural norms as well. In "The Two Princes of Calabar" by Randy Sparks, there is a cultural norm where if a male slave was let go, allowed his freedom, it was because he was untrustworthy or lazy as a worker. When this happens the male slave is then unable to find work and is reduced to becoming a beggar, because it is considered a disgrace to be 'let go'. This may seem strange, yet in this culture a slave is considered almost as if they were family. If this was also a practice in the middle east, which I am unsure of, it would make sense that God would command that a female slave is not to be let go, it would be for her protection instead of her oppression.

Well this is what I have currently as far as biblical slavery. I'll let you know what else I come up with. It would be good to collaborate on an article sometime, or write articles to compliment.

Caleb

p.s. I am not saying that capitalism is at fault for the commodification of people, what I'm saying is that like many ideologies that may have had a strong chance to produce a lot of good, it has been corrupted in the past and sometimes currently, into creating pain and evil.

Thank you for reading!

Desperation

There are things in this world not seen and things in this not wanting to be seen. What happens when we allow God to turn our world upside down? What will we see? Will the actual people we are fall out of the masks and the bodies we hold onto to float in a strange progression to our actual feet? Will we be able to see people struggling to let go of their confused masks and bodies? Will we be able to help them be free of the emptiness of an incomplete existence?

I don't know. I don't know what it will look like when the world literally turns upside down. Maybe because I have the faith that is so small I can't see it. More likely I'm afraid of what I'll look like without my masks and my armor of a body. I'm afraid of who everyone will see, I guess I maybe afraid of what my reflection will look like in a still cup of water. Why am I afraid?

I've been f-ing convinced that I am ugly, I am weak. I have been told for years that all that I care about is nothing important. I hate that voice that pounds against my imagination like the ocean against a cliff.

It was a night ago when I heard that voice escape from an actual mouth, a real person voiced all the things I have been afraid of. "You are a chump for believing that your life could have any affect on the world. You are an imbecile to believe that you can rescue children from slavery. YOU ARE NOTHING."

F that! F that!

I've seen demons, my own and others. I've seen angels. I've seen a real God do real things. I have seen a real God reach into my life and wrestle to the point of death for me. I've been the prodigal son, I've seen pain, personal and others. I am not nothing because MY GOD IS EVERYTHING.

What happens when God turns our world upside down? We get to live the hardest and real existence to be experienced.

I met a man who saw nothing but the worst in the world, he was so concerned with expressing how horrible it all was that nothing else existed. I was so mad at him! I was pissed. Part of my was pissed because the of the hate and the racism. Although I was also pissed because he didn't allow me to speak. He retorted to any type of objection with 'blah, blah, blah.' I was pissed because he didn't respect me enough to listen to what I had to say.

Who am I? Who am I to assume that I have anything worth saying? I know I am an adopted son of God.

But does that give me the right to assume that everyone has to listen when I speak? No. It means He has given LOVE and grace. But it doesn't mean I am in any way more than the man who I was so angry with. No. Me being an adopted son of God means I'm forgiven. FORGIVEN.

Words, words, and more words. How can I ever assume to explain this in words. I can't.

But watch. The pain of a life. Ugly, ripping, horrific pain. The pain of life. Some inflicted on me, more because of me. A giant fog, dense fog, you can't see a hand in front of you. You begin to question if your eyes actually work. You begin to question if you ever exist in this world. The fog is so thick that everything you are seems to be lost in it. Then, you look up, to the right behind your shoulder. A faint change in color. Is it really there? Only the whispered hope of still being able to breathe convinces you that possibly something could really be there. You turn slowly, the change in coloring is a faint yellow. As you ponder this new existence beyond yourself you realize that it could be what everyone has always called light. A deep sense of desire comes over you. A desire different from what you would later realize was only lust. A desire to be, not to have. A desire to actually see something. To actually SEE something!

You begin to feel your feet leave the ground, you slowly feel the fog around you become less heavy. A moment later you begin to realize that the fog is lightening. You are leaving the fog! The moment your eyes break through the fog you are overwhelmed by a warmth never known in the fog. You can see! The world stretches before you! The world is beautiful! Amazing! All things are possible, not only possible but capable as well!

You look toward that light that had sought you out and realize that it hangs low in the sky, it actually seems to emanating from the top of a large mountain. As if all the fire's in Zues' castle were burning, only much brighter, making Zues' castle look like a glint off a fly.

Words, words, and more words! How can it ever be written, the GLORY OF OUR GOD!!

So I've stood and been in awe. I only saw a distant hill where God may reside, distant, farther than any type of algorithm could equate. Yet it was more personal and perfect than any detailed study of a hand.

How can I, a man lost in a fog for more than 4/5th of his life assume that I personally have the strength of character and will to break this mans hatred and cynicism? How can a fog born man like myself assume that others must listen to my great wisdom? I really shouldn't but I do.

What would it look like if my world was turned upside down? What would it look like if I allowed the world to be turned upside down? Where I spent my time allowing the bright wisdom of God to flow through me? Words, words, and more words? What would it look like if I washed the feet of the bigot? Made supper for the sex offender? Denied anything that would desert another to misery? What would a world look like where the assumption was that people were loved? What would it look like if I actually cared enough about those around me to forgo what I think is best for them and truly discover what is best for them.

Now to deal with the fear.

Aw fuck it, forget about the fear. Courage my brothers! Into the breach once again!

(I wouldn't recommend loving people if you want an easy life.) (I highly recommend loving people if you want a real life.)

Forgiveness, the past, and Grace

I read a post by my good friend Jeremiah today. (www.humblevision.wordpress.com) It has really got me thinking.

I have had a strange painful past, I have had deep a seated worldview that expressed God as either indifferent or not fully the God he claims to be. Either way, it was pretty much a wound that had closed yet closed with some shit in it. This situation, an open wound gets shit in it, then starts to partially heal. Basically a tree enveloping a barbwire fence. That was it. I was no longer bleeding but I was sick.

I was sick. Then I was given the choice and power to let go of the pain, the shit, the pride of being someone.

I grew up with a certain type of pride, I grew up with a deep sense of sexuality, a sick sense of sexuality. The issue that Jeremiah raises is that there is sometimes too much emphasis put on past pain in order to gain freedom. That somehow the fact that I being molested at 4 or 5 is the reason for the shitty choices I make now. That somehow God failed me and therefore I have a right to tell him off and do whatever I want? Right? This pain caused me to do bad things growing up.

Thats bullshit.

I don't mean to say that a persons childhood pain is simple or inadequate, what I say bullshit to, is the fact that I have for a long time defined my worth by that pain, I spent years building up this person that could seen as either martyred or deeply wounded. Somehow thinking that if could be that Christian who was either good or that Christian who was bad then became good I would have the respect and love of those around me. I used my past to measure my present. I said, "I used to do that, I don't anymore." Or I have said, "even though I do this, I don't do that."

The interesting thing is.

Pain sucks. It really sucks, being sick blows! There is nothing in this world to compare with being in pain or sick. Its everywhere I know, but its unique in that it is the direct opposite than how God created the body. It is the everpresent evidence that we are dying, that we are sick, that we are sinful. We? I am sinful! I have sinned! This is what is important, I HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN. So being that I have been forgiven, made whole, pure, righteous, am I still sick? Am I still in pain? In an emotional, mental, physical way, I suppose I am. My body is still gonna die. I am still angry when I shouldn't be, I still lust when I shouldn't. (I just had the urge to say "I lust less than I used to.") I still think about things I shouldn't I still connive, plot, and build conspiracies against those I profess to love. I still and fucking full of myself. So yeah, I'm still sick, and I'm still in pain.

Yet I am not.

Its as if I have gone from being my past and continually building on that, its like I've been taken to the middle of the ocean (and I can walk on water) and all the shitty things I do and say and pursue are the building blocks of a life moving away from God. So I tell my roommate to get bent for not loving me more. I set that on top of the water, laying the foundation for a nice little fortress where he will never be able to touch me with hate or love, nor I him. As I turn to parents and ignore their wanting to show me love and set down that little bit of foundation I notice the roommate piece has sunk. Huh.

So, I'm still sick, I'm still in pain, yet my sin, the sin that I committed, sins that would probably have been committed in one way or another despite my injured heart. That sin, all of the sin just keeps floating to the bottom of the ocean to be crushed and never seen again.

Then again, I think there is a difference between setting down the foundation of sin and holding it, never expressing to anyone how you're drowning because I can't seem to let go. I know full well that life at the bottom of the ocean isn't really that great. In fact it fucking sucks, I still hold on. Building walls around me as I sink twenty thousand leagues.

So I am sick and I am in pain, yet I have been made buoyant, some kind of breath has been breathed in the soul of me. I think the breath was something like this: Yah-weh. So its not so much that I have a past thats painful, its that I have a life that can be painful and I can choose to not sin, choose to let go of my underwater construction projects and float to the open air, float to where the sun will never stop shinning, and if it does it is only to give its sister moon a chance to perform on that beautifully decorated stage.

Jeremiah, I think I maybe more in agreement with you than I had thought, maybe more than you are yourself.

ODW - One Days Wages

I am truthfully irresponsible when it comes to things we all need to be responsible for. Like for instance, I smoked for two to three years (can't remember when I actually started) and when I thought about quitting six months ago I had a hell of a time doing it. In fact I didn't quit until the beginning of December. All that time between July and December I actually started smoking more. I know why I did it, but that is something I'll relate to you later. I also have been bad, and still have occasions where I am pretty lame, about being responsible with money. I have spent so much money on things that don't matter at all. I have bought expensive meals when I can't afford gas, I bought seven dollar packs of smokes and had to buy another two days later when I couldn't afford it. I have been, on top of all that, relationally irresponsible. I used people for my own gratifications, not so much because I wanted to hurt them or because I was obsessed with ruining peoples lives. Naw, I did it because I wouldn't think about what my actions meant to them. I would feel bad all the time afterwards. (I'm talking about being the kind of guy you warn your female friends about). These things have had deep control over my life. They have had.

They do not anymore. There are a few things that have driven these scum covered desires for the chaos all duress creates, duress in my experience can be created by the person under it. I have been freed! Very freed! I still have trouble with the money thing, I am getting better, but I have been so frickin freed from the other things, it is amazing. It has been a three and half year battle and I have been up to my ears in the lifeblood of demons slain. (I write poetry once in a while.)

About three years ago, after my beautiful God really shook me and created in me a clearer vision and showed me a deeply loving and ridiculous grace driven heart, I discovered the truth about Human Trafficking. Having just been shown, for the first time it seemed, a God whose heart was bigger than any I had ever heard about, bigger it seems than any possible logician could account for. I had, under impeccable logic and understanding begun to emulate his heart. (I'm just kidding about the impeccable part, logic seems to be a problem for me when it comes to faith. Either I have to have logic in order to understand the concept of God, or I can have faith and forget about logic and begin to know God.) Well I spent a lot of the first month with Human Trafficking as a point of sorrow, a point I didn't want to point out to anyone. I didn't talk about it for a long time. The place I discovered Human Trafficking was through a website for men called 'The Deadly Viper" or something cool like that, they even had a sweet website. Well on the bottom of the site they had links to other sites that the men of God who visited the vipersite would be interested in. Being that I was beginning this whole man of God stuff I thought I'd check it out. Little did I know that the Not For Sale Campaign website, i.e. http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ (btw this is a really long url), was on this list. I didn't even know what it was. I sat there and looked at the banner at the top that read '27 Million People Are Enslaved in the World Today'. When I read it, I kind of chuckled, I honestly chuckled, I didn't think it was true, I thought it was a marketing gimmick for some sales pitch. It couldn't be true, there was no way I could be a little over 20 years old and there could be slaves. That ended a long time ago when our ancestors fought the great Civil War and the great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln took that fateful humanitarian step to free all the people of African descent from slavery. I spent half an hour looking through the site trying to find out what they were trying to sell. By minute 29 it began to dawn on me that this could possibly be real. By minute 30, my life began to be rocked with emotions I was not equipped to deal with. I sat there struck dumb for a long time, don't know how long, no one knows in those moments. Eventually I closed the firefox (I have since switched to Safari for easy rss access) and walked through my pastors kitchen to my bedroom in the lower portion of their house. (I lived at their house for a year and a half after being asked to move in for a month of recovery.)

It has been three years since I began to know about Human Trafficking, the polite term for modern slavery. I spent some of those months in bitter anger at all those who could possibly sell another human being, especially when it came to sex slavery. I became bitterly sad with the realization that girls as young as 5 were being exploited up to 30 times a night by johns, the polite term for men who visit prostitutes. I became enraged as I learned about the exploitation within my own country, I mean come on! "The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the U.S.A. annually as sex slaves, domestics, garment, and agricultural slaves." - http://www.gchope.org/human-slavery-statistics.html

After I was bitterly angry, bitterly sad, and enraged, I began a student org on my campus to deal with this issue, I did a lot of individual research. I talked to a lot of people about this problem I spent a lot of time delving the issues. I began to realize that the major factor that caused people to end up in the situation where they could be trafficked came when there was bitter poverty. Where the options were to sell themselves, or their children, or die of starvation.

One Days Wages (ODW). This is a cool place to cause great change. There are a lot of organizations out there combating poverty and I highly recommend ODW. The founders are Eugene and Minhee Cho. They have decided to donate one years wages, an amazing thing! I am so proud of the human race when I hear about people like Eugene and Minhee! Check out their site, they ask that we donate one days wage, a day of work to end poverty, to make an impact on taking away a cause for slavery. Go to http://www.onedayswages.org/ to learn more. This is an awesome opportunity to be part of something that demonstrates the new philanthropy of a new empowered generation. Btw, one days wage is only .4% of a persons annual wage.

"It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." - St. Francis of Assisi