Subversive Scriptures: Colossians 3:22-4:1

22Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.

1Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.

This little gem has been used to justify some real horrors over the years. Three hundred years of slave trade and suffering was built on these words. They popped up a lot (often in conjunction with property rights arguments) in the run-up to the Civil War, to justify our 'god-fearing' country not liberating the Southern slave plantations. Now, they're virtually ignored.

The modern problem of these scriptures is that they force the critically-thinking Christian to ask "How should I read the Bible?" Should it be read as God's infallible word, every verse inspired and inerrant? Or should it be read as inspired by God, but written by very human men, whose cultures and personal perceptions will sometimes influence the verse? Both readings have their appeal, but modern Southern Baptists have often answered the question leaning more toward the first. The current Convention stance on Biblical inspiration is that it's the inerrant and utterly infallible word of God, full stop.

That's nice in theory, but verses like these make it thorny in practice. According to this, slavery is not only justified, but is the will of God! Working in the fields under horrific conditions is just like working for God! Now, sometimes you'll hear the defense that slaves in Paul's day and slaves in the Civil War South were treated very differently. I've heard people inform me that slaves in Rome were normal people, they just didn't have some of the rights of Roman citizens. This is utter bullshit. Slaves in ancient Rome worked in mines, built projects for the Empire as manual labor under the hot Mediterranean sun, and were otherwise subject to horrific abuses. Slavery is slavery. One problem of these verses, for biblical inerrantists, is that they're difficult to explain away or gloss over.

The even larger problem of these verses is their context. They sit towards the end of a passage that has become a large feature of Southern Baptist doctrine in specific, but also Protestant doctrine in general. Even people who've never read the Bible are familiar with this passage. Let's look at the verses in context. They come in a section that the NIV (New Internation Version, the most popular modern translation of the Bible) entitles "Rules for Christian Households."

Rules for Christian Households

18Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

19Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

20Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

21Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

22Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.

1Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.

Just five verses up is the infamous "wives submit to your husbands" that has become the justification for treating women as second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. It's a verse that gets preached on a lot, usually in conjunction with the "husbands love your wives" that follows. After that comes the famous "Children obey your parents". This verse is part of the curriculum of every childhood education packet that the church produces. Children will have a Sunday School lesson on it reliably once a year, sometimes more often. My point is that these are not portions of scripture that are readily ignored, because the other verses in this little group are lynchpins of doctrine. Yet there sits the slavery verse, like the elephant in the room, and no one discusses it.

The current popular line from Bible inerrantists (and notice how this involves adding content to the Bible to interpret it in a metaphorical way, since none of this is actually in the supposedly 'inerrant' scripture) is that Paul addresses slaves because they were a reality he could neither change nor ignore. Paul doesn't say anything in the scripture about regretting the existance of slavery as an institution, and here in these verses seems to accept it as part of the god-ordained household order: Children should obey their parents, slaves should obey their masters.

Modern Christians, according to the 'Paul addressed what he didn't like but couldn't help' interpretation, should look at this in light of employee/employer relationships. On the contrary, though, Paul says here in the text that the master/slave relationship is a holy one, just like the husband/wife relationship is holy. Just as the Church is the bride of Christ (you'll hear this come up as a reason for defining marriage as between a woman and a man), we are all the slaves of a heavenly master! We are certainly not God's employees, so to interpret the scripture in that way is misleading. To claim this discusses the employer/employee relationship dismisses Paul's point that this is not only how a Christian household should function, it's how the family of God functions. This little passage is about household relationships, and I doubt that very many people would call the employer/employee relationship a household relationship. Paul is discussing how Christians should relate to those closest to them, to the people with whom they shared meals and baths and beds, not those with whom they did lunch once a week to catch up on financial reports. Again, the employer/employee comparison rings false.

How should Christians discuss the passage in which the Bible condones slavery? If asked, most Christians would say that slavery is a moral wrong, yet according to the Bible this is not the case. If it is indeed a moral wrong, it's a first-class example of a way in which changing social norms have changed moral norms. Slavery was fine in Paul's day, and he doesn't address it as a moral wrong, but as an integral part of a household. Slavery today would be morally wrong, and most Christians today would look upon a person making the claim that slaves are an integral part of their household as morally deficient. Often one hears about issues like women's rights or queer rights that Christians are certain their strong morality shouldn't have to change with the times, but here is good evidence to the contrary. This verse (especially since it's so prominently placed next to verses that many fundamentalists hold dear) is a big problem for those who would call morality inflexible and the Bible inerrant. The Southern Baptist Convention falls squarely into this category. It's subversive scripture run amok and causing havoc in the placid streets of fundamentialist moral rectitude.