Slavery

Today the subject of slavery came up—not once but twice.  This is not something I tend to think about.  The first time was during my pastor’s sermon about Paul.  She was talking about what Paul said concerning slavery in the books attributed to him.  My pastor noted that slavery was a normal, accepted part of society in those days.  While Paul may have talked about how to treat slaves, he wasn’t necessarily advocating the abolition of slavery—he did not feel that this was his job.  During later discussions, the subject of our own country’s history with slavery arose.  In biblical times, people often became slaves as a result of war while in the United States, the slaves were of one racial group, deemed to be inferior.  The issue of slavery was not the main focus of our morning, but it got me thinking.

Late this afternoon, I picked up a book I recently borrowed, Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  This book starts off talking about the sexual slavery of young girls.  The stories I read were about girls in Cambodia, Thailand, and Pakistan.  These are horrific stories—their purpose in writing the book is to open people’s hearts so they will join in and work for change.  A documentary will be shown on PBS in a couple of weeks. 

All of this makes me ask why.  Why do human beings treat each other this way?  Is it something in our DNA?  To be able to enslave other people, it seems that we have to first dehumanize them or in some way make them less worthy as human beings.  We can find many examples in the Bible—God favored the winners of a battle making the losers unworthy.  Hence they were killed or made slaves.  White Americans did not consider black slaves equal or even people, therefore they could justify enslaving them.  The same thinking comes through in the stories about young girls kidnapped and sold as sex slaves across borders.  Authorities look the other way because they are just poor, uneducated girls who satisfy their young men, thereby keeping their educated, middle class girls safe.  These poor young girls simply don’t matter.

Throughout time there have been brave people willing to stand up against slavery of any kind.  However, nothing happens until enough people in a society become enraged and are willing to say “no more!”  In our time, are we willing to educate ourselves about the slavery that still exists in this world and do something about it?  How can we say no?