I am a pedant with a red pen in hand. As much as I moan about marking, there is something satisfying about standing OVER someone’s work, making corrections, suggesting improvements. Before I was an English teacher I was obviously an English student, and there too I got to critique texts, pull them apart.
Maybe that’s why I find it so hard to switch to standing UNDER the wisdom of the Bible? I like to read it with a mental red pen, thinking, “They really need to edit that bit!”
Recently at home we were reading a Psalm a night, and I did a lot of red pen editing (or rather white-washing?) as I read aloud, mostly by focusing on nice bits about praise and skipping over nasty bits about enemies.
I’m not suggesting that we don’t apply critical thinking skills to Bible-reading, or that it’s not ok to select which bits are suitable for younger children (we’ve not really covered rape and incest narratives yet!). But I do think that if my default starting position is one of superiority, if I stand OVER the Bible deciding which parts are acceptable to me, then I can easily become unstuck.
The line above is well-known for reminding us of the Bible's authority. But "All"? Some bits of the Bible are just weird, right, and not that useful?
At church we are working through Exodus and it was all going well as God led the people out of slavery in Egypt into the desert, gave them the ten commandments, and then - wham! – we are in some hard to understand and fairly random-seeming instructions, including some on the treatment of slaves.
“How do we approach reading this?” asked the leader at Bible study on Thursday. “Which bits are problematic?”
God obviously knew I’d need a helping hand in advance to avoid a knee-jerk reaction of, “Well this just proves the Bible is just wrong!”...
Very coincidentally the circumstances contrived that this week I was asked to support in a Year 8 History lesson on slavery (to put this into context, I have never before been asked to TA in a History lesson in 16 years of teaching). I tried not to be miffed about losing 100 minutes of mock-marking time, and was pleased that the lesson was on something I was familiar with, the transatlantic slave trade. I have in fact had to teach on this myself as background context for texts like Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” (totally harrowing book – really not for the faint-hearted). But the focus of this particular lesson (and the history teacher was really doing a fantastic job) was, how was the transatlantic slave trade distinct from other types of slavery? Some part of my brain was already aware, for example, that modern day slavery whereby people are coerced into working in cannabis farms in England, is quite a different kettle of fish than the mass kidnapping of West Africans to work on plantations in the Caribbean 250 years ago ie slavery is broader than just a shackled, mistreated person of colour. But this lesson put the transatlantic slave trade into a whole time line of slavery, indentured slaves, Europeans being taken to work in the Islamic Empire, etc. So basically reminding me that my view and understanding of slavery is way too small and ill-informed.
Back to the Bible study and the question about what is problematic about the passage… Well, plenty. God has freed the Israelites and then wastes little time in establishing practices for the treatment of slaves. Surely God is anti-slavery? Surely the Bible teaches us about love and respect for people, and surely the transatlantic slave trade was made illegal in Britain thanks largely to the campaigns of Bible-believing Christians like Quakers, and William Wilberforce, and John Newton (the former slave-trader who converted, renounced the trade, and penned the famous hymn “Amazing Grace”).
The relationship between the Bible and slavery is too big and thorny for me to do justice to here, but this is clearly an example of my standing over the Old Testament and wanting to correct and edit it. I with my superior wisdom and modern sensibilities know that God should have outlawed slavery and not regulated it, which makes it sound like He approves (to be fair, He does regulate other things we know He dislikes, like divorce – He clearly knows what we are like).
Thankfully we have a wise Bible-believing leader who didn’t let us stop at that point, but gently helped us to think about the context and the alternatives. There are always inequalities in society, and in a society which relies on subsistence farming, the risk of starvation is never far away. At the time of Exodus, there were no modern system of benefits, not even the safety net of a handy Victorian workhouse, so your basic choices are: 1) for you and your family to die or 2) to become an indentured slave (there are some arguments the word would be better translated as ‘servant’), which would at least provide work, food, and security, and a place in a local community. I have no idea what it is like to face such desperate choices (the amount of food the five us plus visitors get through each week is ridiculous; I shop with big blue Ikea bags), but even I can guess that seven years of service (with an option to stay on if mutually agreeable) is preferable to starvation. And so God follows the ten commandments with a focus on the most vulnerable and desperate in society, and measures to ensure they are not badly treated. For example, in the next chapter it states that if a master beats and damages a slave, the slave must be set free.
Slavery is obviously an out-dated system. We now have modern systems to provide for our poorest. The transatlantic slave trade is one of the most sickening examples of man’s inhumanity to man in human history. But even Wikipedia is fairly positive and generous about the Old Testament’s regulation of slavery; it compares VERY favourably to other contemporary practices. It's time-limited, and comes with legal protections. I was even feeling a bit squeamish about the piercing of a slave’s ear if he chooses to remain with a master, perhaps because of the over-riding image in my mind of the branding of the transatlantic slaves. But ear-piercing was a widely-practised and a handy sign of a contract in a situation without legal papers, and if no one on Wikipedia is that bothered, then probably I shouldn’t be either. To be fair, I even have pierced ears!
But why do I turn to Wikipedia? (I mean, I do love Wikipedia!) But why start with the assumption that I with my very narrow understanding know better than God, and I can add weight to my opinion with modern sources of knowledge like Wikipedia. Except in this case, even that’s on the Bible’s side.
I have a lot to learn about indentured slavery. I have a lot to learn about how we best provide for the most vulnerable in society today. But I also have a lot to learn about standing under the Bible as a learner, and not standing over it with my mental red pen in hand. And I am so very thankful to belong to a church where I am well-taught about the Bible, and encouraged to stand under its authority.
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