Paul, slavery, and women.

Christian morality seems a little bit wonky

Would a Christian slave go to hell if they disobeyed their slaver? The answer, according to scripture, seems to be yes. It may sound incredible, but slavery under Christianity used to be cash money. And why wouldn’t it? An objective reading of the Bible, without any imputation of our moral fascinations today, wouldn’t find anything explicitly saying that it’s bad to enslave someone. In the Old Testament, the good Lord God released ten sacred commandments, and in exactly zero of them did he tell anyone not to enslave their brothers and sisters. Did it skip his godly mind? Or was it just not important enough? Or perhaps it was too obvious to mention! Let's see.

He mentioned that you shouldn’t sleep with neighbors wife. And you shouldn’t steal. And you should obey your father and your mother. And you should remember to laze around on Saturdays, actually. And you should not lie or make idols. But what about enslaving another man and selling him for profit? And working him like he were a beast of burden? That was either not evil or important enough to get on the Big Guy’s list, or, as Christians are wont to argue now, was permitted because Jews were too stubborn and wouldn’t have obeyed anyway. Did they end up obeying any of the Ten Commandments God gave them then? Maybe those were easy enough for them to follow? No, of course not. The entirety of the Old Testament is the Jews breaking every law God ever gave them in the most brazen ways you’ve ever seen.

That doesn’t mean God totally ignored slavery. He told Jews how to deal with slaves. For example, if you beat your slave and they die within two days, you should be punished. If they die after two days, then that’s okay actually. Because the slave is actually your money. Who can blame you? Sometimes slaves die. What can we do about it? It is what it is, as the church would say. Therefore, by any honest reading of the Old Testament, God didn’t think slavery was such a grand evil. He didn't think it was evil at all.

What about the New Testament? God surely saw his mistakes in the Old Testament and fixed it in the New one, right? Ah, let’s see. Jesus, who lived in Roman times and saw the ubiquitousness of slavery, probably had a lot to say about it right? When I was younger, I used to watch movies about slavery and wonder how everyone carried on with it. I used to think that If I had been alive at the time, I probably would never have accepted such insanity and would have spoken very openly against it. Anyway, Jesus probably did the same, right? Wait, he didn’t? No, that cannot be true. If there is one person we can count on to be on the right side concerning slavery, it would have to be Jesus Christ the embodiment of God in the flesh. So what did he actually say about slavery?

Nothing much. He made absolutely no mention of the act of enslaving someone itself despite speaking about other institutions in great detail. He spoke about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and the institution of marriage, and he even criticized wealth inequality! Sharp tech bros in their Nikes may not like this, but our Lord Jesus Christ was actually somewhat of a dirty Marxist himself. But not a single peep about the fairly common Roman practice of buying and selling slaves. However, he gave us enough to work with that we can probably guess — maybe? — that Jesus did not like slavery. For example, he told us to love our neighbors like ourselves. So if you don’t like being enslaved, you should not enslave your neighbor. If that sounds like a stretch, it is because it probably is. Would you refuse to take payment for a service you render because you also would have liked to get the service for free? What if a masochistic fellow, who also wants to be enslaved, gets into the business of enslaving others? Would that be dandy and nice?

Be that as it may, Jesus made no mention whatsoever to anything alluding even a bit to slavery afterwards. He healed the servant of the Centurion and did not even tell the Centurion to release his slaves. He spoke and met many wealthy men, who no doubt had slaves, and didn’t ask them to sell their slaves. When he met the wealthy man and he was asked how could he have eternal life, Jesus did not ask him about the slaves the man no doubt had. Instead he asked him if he lied, or stole, or committed adultery. Those are bad sins, yes, but don’t you think owning a slave is even worse than that? Anyway, the man said he has obeyed all of those laws. Then Jesus asks the man to sell all he has to give to the poor and follow him. Even in the end, Jesus makes no mention of the man releasing his slaves and following him. He asks him to sell them instead!

If Jesus made no mention of the institution of slavery, then the rest of the New Testament at least did, right? Here is what Paul had to say about slaves.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Many people use this quote to make the point that Paul was against slavery, but that doesn’t seem so obvious. It only meant that he believed that God did not discriminate in his offer of salvation, not that it was immoral to own a slave. To make his point even further, Paul asked slaves not to rebel, but to instead obey their earthly masters. He never told their earthly masters to release them, even though he met and preached to a lot of slavers. He told the masters to treat their slaves with kindness and not to threaten them, which is kind of psychotic if you really think about it. He didn’t argue that owning a slave would take them to hell. Instead, he argued that treating ones slave badly would be the sin, not the actual act of owning one. When Onesimus fled from his master, Paul did not humor him and say that he was right to run away from an enslaver. Instead, he said that a good Christian slave returns to his master and serves him diligently and as a brother in Christ.

Paul didn’t think slavery was such a moral ill that he ought to waste any serious time on, and was instead interested in telling the Corinthians to cut it out and stop attending so many orgies! He didn’t tell the slavers amongst them to release their slaves; instead, he told them to stop bringing their slaves to the church orgy. That seems like a massive misplacement of priorities, right?

Anyway, Christianity endured for centuries alongside slavery. In antebellum America, Christians defended their practice of owning slaves with the Bible. And why shouldn’t they? Here is what the Lord God had to say about the act of enslaving foreigners.

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.

Peter also had this to say.

Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

Not only did the Lord God give Christian slave master “Jack Andrew” the authority to wield the whip over African “Adebowale”, he also asked “Adebowale” to submit to master Jack no matter the punishment! Doesn't this mean there are many Christian slaves suffering in hell because they chose to be disobedient to their masters? Imagine that! Going to hell for being a disobedient slave! Is there a worse tragedy that can befall a soul?

The letter of the Bible clearly tolerates slavery and does not consider it to be some great evil. The fact that Christians today oppose slavery is a position that they seem to have arrived at by themselves — not by any serious following of the law of God. Today, the Christian is the one most likely to accuse you of high evil if you kidnapped a doe-eyed boy of 14 and kept him as a slave, when even Paul would have asked the young lad to keep quiet and serve you with all his might. Are they more moral than Jesus, and Paul, and all the other prophets? It seems so!

But slavery isn’t the only issue where the scriptures and our present moral fascinations differ greatly. What does Jesus think of racism? The truth is we simply don’t know. Anyone who did not think slavery was an important enough evil to clearly condemn, is likely not too care too much about slur words and the likes. Jesus would probably be against hate, as his commandment was for us to love one another, but racists don’t always hate another races. I certainly think humans are superior to chickens, but I am not sure I hate chickens, despite the fact that we commit the equivalent of ten thousand holocausts against them every single day. So Jesus would have probably not cared about racism either as long as the racist didn’t hate other races. After all, he told his followers that he was sent to Jews alone, and wasn’t going to give their food to dogs. Dogs in this context means anyone who wasn’t a Jew. I don’t think it gets more racist than that.

What of the Lord God? He was a proper racist alright, and he didn't hide it. The racist “atrocities” of our heavenly father are too many to mention, but we have to note the cold blooded murder of the Egyptian first born kids. Christians today call it an example of the might of God. One preacher, hopelessly drunk on Aba-made London dry gin, says that the murders were a demonstration of the mighty and fearsome power of God. We know that he would undoubtedly call it pagan wickedness if witches orchestrated the same in his hometown. The drowning of everyone else but Noah and his family is the first genocide and ethnic cleansing in scriptural history, and who can count how many innocents the Jews killed to get to their promised land? The walls of Jericho fell down flat, and the Jews, much like they are doing today, walked proudly into another man’s land and slaughtered every man, human and child. Except for traitorous Rahab, of course. Even the most crazed white supremacist would never think of performing the extraordinarily bloody feats that our Lord God performed against other nations and races on behalf of the Jews. In every manner that counts, the Lord God, at least until the birth of Christ, was a complete and utter racist.

What of democracy? We all love our sweet democracy, don't we, folks? Even the body of Christ, that you would expect to be more circumspect about current year traditions, is taken wholly in by the sacred rule of the people. This past year, the Nigerian Christian community transformed from mere Christians to democratic-Christians. Every other day, some youth pastor with a hundred thousand tweets arrived on the pulpit to tell us the God-sworn truth; people of God, when the righteous rule, the people prosper! And you wouldn't guess that I know exactly which righteous needs to rule for the people to prosper! And don't we all know, as written in the book of Democracy Chapter 1 verse 10, that the best way to bring the righteous to power is through free and fair elections? Oh wait, that isn't actually in the Bible? Must be a mistake.

If we followed the letter of the scriptures as we should, we would find out two things about God's opinion of politics. The first is that he doesn't trust people to choose their leaders. He is the most anti-democratic force you can imagine. He doesn't believe whatsoever in elections, and consequently couldn't care less about what the people actually wanted. Every single time anything resembling a democratic method was employed in choosing leaders in the Ancient Israel, the leader turned out to be the worst choice possible. When Moses went up to the mountain to get our sacred ten commandments, Jews approached Aaron and chose him to lead them. And he led them into hell. What of Abimelech that convinced people to make him king? How did it end? It seems obvious that God is a monarchist who doesn't care for democratic processes at all. Given his staunch hate for elections, we should suppose, as good Christians, that the method least suited to bringing the righteous to power is a democracy. Yet, the opposite is the case!

The second thing we would find out is that God is the final maker of kings, and everyone who gets into power was allowed to by God. Yes, that includes satanic Samuel Doe and imbecilic Idi Amin.

Paul was at least more circumspect than Christian leaders today. When asked about the political leadership of his day, he wrote that it was all in God's hands, and Christians should always support whatever leader was in power. Jews weren't even led by their own kings at the time. They were under proper colonial control. That is obviously worse than anything the Nigerian Christian suffers beneath today — yet Paul asked Christians to accept their leaders with equanimity and obey them with the understanding that they were in fact selected by God. Does the Nigerian Christian obey this obvious command? Do they seriously go about their day knowing that Tinubu was hand selected by God? And Buhari was also hand selected by God? Even Hitler, the great boogeyman of modern politics, had to be hand selected by God! Every other day some pastor arrives on the pulpit to curse our leaders, despite knowing that these leaders were actually selected by God. Or maybe they forgot. Or haven't read that part of their Bibles. Who can tell?

What of sexism? Would Jesus have been a sexist? Well, he was definitely not a feminist. He made sure no woman was part of the chosen 12 disciples he sent into the world, and he gave none of the women around him a special assignment to spread the gospel. God was also definitely not one. For instance, here is what he said about rapists.

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her, and they are discovered, he shall pay the bride-price for her and she shall become his wife.

(Deuteronomy 22:28–29)

And who can forget that in the beginning of the world, the very first thing God says to womankind was that she would be ruled over by her husband. In Leviticus, God says that a woman who gives birth to a man will be unclean for seven days, and one who gives birth to a woman will be unclean for two weeks. There is no mention of equality between men and women anywhere in the Bible, and Israel never had a male king despite the fact that it had at least one female judge.

The New Testament is much of the same. In Timothy, Paul had this to say about the position of women.

Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

(1 Timothy 2:11-14)

The chain of thought makes it obvious that Paul was making a general rule — because he repeats this injunction in Corinthians — and wasn’t merely talking to the people of the time. His argument is that men came first and women were deceived by the Devil, so it is kind of dumb for men to listen to women lest they fall into temptation once more. And I completely agree with Paul. You can knock the assumption, but it is coherent, given the priors that the scripture offers us.

What is the point of all this then? What is the use of deconstructing scriptural morality and showing the pages for what they are? Am I suggesting that we begin to enslave others, or begin to rape women, or begin to humor vengeful racists? No. The point is that the source of our moral ideas don’t seem to be as clear cut as we probably imagined them to be. Our moral establishment is fairly new and in many ways untethered from the moral assumptions of our fabled pasts. As a Christian, you have two ways to deal with this. It is either you accept that Paul and every other good Christian hero was right not to prioritize matters like slavery, racism and the likes. And that you should follow their lead by equally not prioritizing it in your own affairs. Or you believe that morality really is subjective, and God doesn’t care much about the given moral rules of the day, but about your general standing with men. In other words, God commands us not be upright and holy, but to be upright and holy in whatever fashion the present day desires.

On the first side, you stand with Christian fathers such as Origen and St Augustine of Hippo who owned slaves. And on the other side you stand with gay Bishops, lesbian priests, and porn-star-church-goers-with-only-fans who say that times are changing, and our understanding of what is right and wrong ought to change with them too. Both positions seem like needless gymnastics to fit in with a truly worthless moral order, but it is your mind to twist, not mine.

I believe that morality is subjective. It has to be! God probably told Eve not to eat of the apple of good and evil because even he understood that it would do nothing but give humankind vivid hallucinations forever. Five hundred years ago, it was okay almost everywhere on earth to enslave an odd looking fellow and sell him for profit. Even one hundred and fifty years ago, it was okay, in much of the world, to batter your wife after a good day of drinking. At the same time, a good Christian American could get a good shot of edifying cocaine in his morning Coca-Cola, and after which he could attend a one shot-duel and lose his life or kill another at a moment’s notice. Then they could attend a well deserved lynching of a wry white, or even more distressing, a burdensome black. Afterwards, they could attend church and sing sweet hymns to God our father. Any man who does that today would be seen as a scoundrel, a racist and a criminal who ought to rot forever in jail. In previous years, his mates would hoist him up on their shoulders and call him king of the hill after the execution of someone in a honest duel! Today, he would be bundled to jail as a despicable murderer. Just two centuries ago, an Ijebu man could attend the sweet murder of tens of his kinsmen, and hope to God that the murders are good to give him victory in his war. Today, he would be harangued by any right thinking man if he dreamt such despicable dreams. Redbeard put it best.

It is not very long ago since Catholic and Protestant idolators, mutually roasted each other alive ‘for the glory of God and the uplifting of his Holy Name.’ Each side proclaimed themselves right, with rack and thumbscrew, and other little instruments of persuasion. Protestants still think it a crime and a scandal to worship the mother of their God; but Catholics consider it right and proper to deify the Hebrew maid, who remained a maid (what a paradox?) after borning a son. To eat pork and beans is frightfully wicked for a Jew, but passable for a cultured Bostonian. To drink whiskey is iniquity to a Turk, but exhilarating to a Scotlander. Roast beef is a goodly dish to an English ‘barbarian,’ but famine-stricken orthodox Hindoos die rather than taste thereof. Duelling is honorable in some countries but dishonorable in others. So also pugilism, private revenge, tyrannicide, bull-fighting, regicide, and warfare. The Quakers, Anarchists, and Young Men’s Christian Associations, are unceasingly railing against ‘war and all its horrors,’ whereas there are not a few benighted infidels, (including the author) who regard war as nature’s Greatest Prophylactic. Polygamy is ‘wrong’ in England and America, but monogamy is righteousness, and polyandry ‘right’ (being licensed by the State); whereas in eastern Europe and among all ‘savage’ tribes, polyandry is iniquity; polygamy — blessedness; and monogamy — vileness.

Morality is subjective — it has to be! If Paul were alive today, do you think he wouldn’t condemn, in the strongest terms, slavery? Of course he would! He condemned all the obvious evils of his age, didn’t he? Why would this age be any different? The difference between the edicts of the New Testament and the Old Testament is the strongest testament to the transient nature of moral fashions.

In the Old Testament, it was horrible to eat so-called unclean animals. Happy Roman citizen, Paul the Apostle, suddenly came upon a fascinating vision that made all the delicacies on his travels holy for him to eat. And there we have it, Christians can eat whatever they want, no matter what. The Old Testament asked everyone to be circumscized. What pain! Would any love for Christ force you, in your adulthood, to cut off a part of your penis? No sah! I will see you in hell, if that is what heaven takes. Clever Paul recognized this and quickly put paid to that injunction. Your faith in Jesus delivers you, was his argument, and no one ever spoke of it again. Eye for an eye? No, God forbid, says Jesus. Now, if you get slapped, turn the other cheek and go on your way. Abraham and several others married more than one wife, but Roman Paul disagrees. If you want to lead the church, you must have only one wife.

Even the Old Testament (or Torah) and the New Jewish Talmund differ in many ways. The Old Testament insists that it's eye for an eye, but clever Jews have now decided that “eye” here means nothing but cold hard cash. The Torah argues that you can murder a persistently rebellious son and get a pat on the back in return, but the Talmund makes it legally implausible to do so if the son in question isn't the anti-christ of a certain age! Christians often say that the New Testament is the reason they no longer sacrifice doves, goats and lambs and it's unique in that aspect. Jesus created a new covenant that doesn't require the spilling of animal blood, so praise be to his name. But if they had waited for a few centuries, they'd have seen that the requirements of modern life would force Jews to abandon even those requirements as well. Jesus was merely ahead of the curve. The Talmund also created a new legal contract, and today's Jews also don't have to sacrifice cattle. And so on and so forth.

It follows that the only choice the good Christian brother has, save a private revelation from our Lord Jesus Christ, is to follow his own moral compass carefully calibrated by the customs of his society. If his moral compass says Paul was stupid and ignorant for not allowing women teach men in Church, then he has to follow it. If, by that same moral compass, he can excuse his serial philandering with the minor next door, then even better! And isn’t that what they already do? Can we seriously number how many brothers and sisters do the devil doggy dance at 5AM before heading to church on Sunday to cast and bind the demons stopping their independent marital progress? Can we seriously number how many famed Daddy G.Os have been caught crawling beneath the belly-button of some expensive whore? How about the ones banned from traveling to different countries because they are simply too gifted at the sacred arts of financial film-trickery? Don’t they all do it because that is where their moral compass points to? But this Christian brother has to understand that the subjectivity of morality does not (and indeed cannot) render consequences moot. If his moral compass follows him somewhere society is too uncomfortable with, we can make the glorious day where he meets the our Lord Jesus even closer.

The subjectivity of our moral positions, no matter how dearly we hold them, should offer us some humility when we judge the actions of our ancestors. Today we follow the moral fashions of the many. Who says we wouldn’t have followed those same moral fashions if we lived in fabled times? We are wont to believe that we would have sold all we had to follow Jesus, but isn’t it more likely that we would have sneered with the Sadducees as he bled to death on the cross? The truth seems obvious for anyone with eyes to see.

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