Now, ahem, as any great Bible scholar will tell you when asked about any apparent Biblical discrepancies, there's a lot to be explained here. The first two of the cited verses were spoken by Paul to the Colossians and the Ephesians, while the last one was spoken by Peter (actually in I Peter) to all Christians. These were not spoken by Jesus, though cancelling God/Jesus because of these quotes would imply that they might be. Jesus never condemned slavery, but he certainly didn't like it. He spoke about it metaphorically. The example from Luke Bill cites was advocating obedience to God and comparing it to a servant/slave, which were common. Jesus was saying that servants, or Christians, who knew their lord's (the Lord's) will and disobeyed it, will be punished.
But Frederick Douglass was not as metaphorical. He said, “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…” I think, from my interpretation of the character of Jesus and the pure evil of slavery, the Christianity of Christ does NOT include it. It's not a giant leap.
While "slaves" is an acceptable translation, there are translations of the (what, Hebrew? Aramaic? Latin? I dunno) word in these scriptures to "bondservants" or even just "servants." And as Bill Maher so rightly points out, the times are VERY important. Back in Biblical days there were servants, slaves. There just were. But it is quite well known that they were treated much better than the black slaves of America.
So how would Jesus feel about the slaves before emancipation in the U.S. or even about the Black Lives Matter movement today? Is there any clue that we know of? I think there is. A pretty good one.
Check this out:
I really like this meme! There are so many bad ones, but this one is great! I'm not going to make any jokes about black sheep either. I think this is too important an issue. I actually agree somewhat with Maher which is more often than not the way I agree with him especially when he's out of his element tackling religion, which he has far too great a bias about to maintain objectivity. What I agree with him about is the obsequious white guilt that the BLM movement tends to catalyze. I believe this to be the last behavior black people want to come of BLM. One of my favourite stories from my long ago education, one of the VERY few I remember, was penned by Flannery O'Connor, who wrote a lot about racism in the American south. It's called "Everything That Rises Must Converge." Here's a summary of it. I always seem to remember the black lady slapping Julian in the face for apologizing for his mother's racism. She might as well have, I guess. Carver don't take nobody's pennies. That should be added to BLM to make it BLMBCDTNP. Black lives matter but Carver don't take nobody's pennies. I think, as Maher does, that sometimes white people go a bit overboard with their guilt.
But back to the parable of the sheep, those in danger, the slaves of our day are not just black folks. The danger is reversed and it's the 99 who are in need of help. In fact, if you, as I do, believe Jesus to have been a truly egalitarian thinker who was interested in spreading the blessings of the earth to everyone, perhaps a more appropriate challenge to the comment, "Black lives matter," would be, "NO lives matter." Or at least almost NO lives matter. In our society only a precious few really matter. I think if we were to come at the BLM movement from a position of fellow worthlessness, the degree of worthlessness would be irrelevant, or at least far less divisive. This reality could bolster the unity needed to rectify the situation.
Okay, I don't think we're all worthless worms. I exaggerate slightly to make my point, but I can't really claim it as my own. Bertrand Russell made the same point quite succinctly when he wrote, "The morality of work is the morality of slaves and the modern world has no need of slavery." The time when he wrote this is no longer considered to be modern, but this message, due to the increase, rather than decrease in the gap between the rich and the poor all around the world, has become even MORE relevant today.
"The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own... with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization." Again the word, "modern" is all the more meaningful today.
Manipulated mentality over the years has hypnotized us into worshipping work, nay overwork, as virtue and scorning leisure as laziness, weakness, folly rather than recognizing it as the raw material from which imagination, creativity, social justice, general good naturedness and I'd go so far as to say happiness is derived. Read this whole thing if you want a better explanation with links to other good articles.
"The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of work had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry."
As I've said before, the current situation with the world pandemic will be (and is already being) blown out of proportion by the few people who matter - our owners. They're already telling us we're in a deep economic hole and we desperately need to get back to work, at which point we'll probably be worked even harder for lower wages and the old chaos will be restored and made a little worse. This has gone on forever despite plenty of evidence that we don't NEED to work this hard. This core cultural fallacy represents a monumental obstruction to equality and social justice today. Our society is driven by "continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity." It's an absurd proposition.
What makes it even WORSE, as I've also mentioned before, is that mechanization is not around the corner, it's here. Rather than treat automation as the means toward the leisure our societies have worked so very hard for, it is now feared as a threat to our almighty, all-important work.
There are so many social advances and cultural breakthroughs that have been blocked by centuries of chaotic overwork! I think it's not so hyperbolic to refer to it as a type of slavery. I yield the floor again to Mr. Russell:
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational potboilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity.
[…]
Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least 1 per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.
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