I have been spending a lot of time in the book of Joshua this week. Joshua is a complicated book. There are some tough theological questions about genocide and the will of God in this book. But, I haven’t really been concentrating on those issues. What I have been thinking about and wrestling with is how to stop thinking like a slave.
The people of Israel spent generations as slaves in Egypt. Their whole lives were predetermined. Where they lived, what they did, when they could worship, all of these things were dictated to them. As a slave your mentality is shaped by such forces. You don’t think about self determination. You don’t learn to trust or to have faith. You simply learn how to survive in the midst of a system meant to crush your spirit and contain you.
So as they wander in the wilderness, following Moses, learning to be a people of faith and to go into the unknown, they continually long to go back to Egypt. God had just delivered them from Pharaoh, why would they want to go back? They wanted to go back because it seemed easier to go back to the life they knew as slaves than to press forward and become something different. The evil they knew was less scary than the unknown.
In Joshua we find a new generation of Israel, one that didn’t grow up as slaves, but instead grew up as wanderers. And now their leader is gone and God is calling them to settled down in the Promised Land. They are scared too. They don’t know how to live that life. They are unsure of stepping into their future.
We are all slaves. We are slaves to sin, slaves to ourselves. And like Israel, even after we have been freed from slavery to sin and set on the path of the righteous, we struggle not to long for our previous life. Life freed from sin is unquestionably better, but it isn’t necessarily easy. It is full of tests of faith, and moments of growth, and increasing levels of clarity as to our ineptitudes and brokenness. But, in order for us to reach the Promised Land we will have to leave behind this life we have known and step out in faith into the promise of God’s future for us. We have to learn to stop living as slaves.
July 11, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Perhaps we should not stop thinking like a slave but reconsider the nature of being a slave; slave a true and just master. We can be freed from sin and then be captivated by a new way of living…under authority of Christ rather than of our own or that of someone imposed upon us.
This is one of those ideas that is difficult to grasp unless we experience the beauty of submission to God, the King. A new yoke…one that fits…one that is light but still a yoke. This is casting our crowns before the throne…every day. This is being in chains for the gospel. This is joyful obedience. Beautiful! This is upside down stuff. Thy Kingdom come on earth…
I do not believe we need to stop living as slaves but must learn a new thing…be a slave to a new master…slaves of Christ. Then we may find mind boggling freedom, peace, love and joy…here on earth…every which way…holy ground…all around.
July 15, 2008 at 1:07 am
I didn’t ignore your comment, I just hadn’t read it yet! As if I could ignore you Maggie.
I like the idea of reconsidering the slave mentality and becoming a slave to Christ. I like the imagery of the servant the image of Christ washing our feet better than the image of slaves. Servants seem more willing than slaves.
Beautiful images though, both of them, of the completeness of our commitment to Christ.
July 15, 2008 at 2:39 am
Oh, please. You can ignore me like the best of them.
This is not slave like Roots. It’s not like being dragged off to a foreign land and made to pick cotton.
Slaves in ancient times had great possibility of gaining freedom. Slave notes ownership or claim on someone. If I am a slave to Christ I belong to him alone. There is great willingness involved in being captured.
July 17, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I’ve been wrapping up a study on 1 Corinthians, and spent a little bit of time reading about how the Roman provinces practiced “slavery.”
It was not uncommon for people to actually sell themselves into slavery, especially if they had previously acquired a trade skill: doing this was a very efficient way for one to move up the social latter, so to speak. Once a slave was released with manumition, he could actually run for public office, and slave owners took full advantage of this fact. A slaveowner who had previously owned someone running for office also became one with considerable social clout, and the synergy between the former slave and his previous owner often lasted a lifetime. As time went on, slaveowners actually began investing in pre-manumition commodities, and this too became a high-charge and competitive status symbol, to the extent that Augustus Ceasar himself actually passed an edict limiting the benefits to be had, on the grounds that these were slaves, after all, not areas of property. Nearly anyone who’s studied this period of time will point out that Paul’s slavery metaphor was primarily based upon the exchange of commodity between hands (i.e., one having a new master), and less about inferiors being subject to his master (which we Americans, still living in the shadow of 18th Century slavery, tend to emphasize). Said differently, being a Slave to Christ suggests more about who your owner is than your vertical proximity to Him: the latter is a noble and somewhat ready illustration, but not exactly Paul’s intention.
S
July 21, 2008 at 2:18 pm
JJ,
Thanks for painting a clearer cultural picture of Paul’s use of slave imagery. It is even more appropriate for us to leave behind a slave mentality that is foreign to Paul’s concept.
It is so important to learn submission as the key to discipleship.