November 11th, 2009
5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
According to Ephesians 6, slaves are to obey their masters as they would obey Jesus. Upon reading all of the chapter, we find that it starts with telling children that they should obey their parents, then it moves right along to slaves. Paul suggests that they shouldn’t just appear to obey them to win their favor but to really do what is asked of them in all honesty. The passage is clear that they should fear their masters and that this is part of their obeying them. For some reason, this is suggested as a good thing.
Next, it suggests that masters should also treat their slaves well and that they should not resort to threats. They wouldn’t have to resort to threats if they were good and obedient little slaves, as they would respect and fear them with trembling as they would Jesus. The whole thing is simply a means by which the people in power can tell the slaves that while they are spiritually equal to their masters, they’ve still got to shut up and obey everything commanded of them.
I’ve got news for you. The slave masters are not gods. They are merely wicked men exploiting their fellow human beings. If God were just, he would have scorned slavery in all its forms and severely punished anyone who claimed to own another. Instead, he told us we could own slaves, that we could beat them, and that while we should be nice to them, they are commanded to obey us. What kind of all-loving god would do such a thing? It’s easy really, one who is imaginary whose doctrine was invented by men in power who wished to maintain that power.