People - or things?

Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven. Colossians 4:1

Last Wednesday our older son was an officer with P and O Ferries. Today (it’s Saturday as I write) he’s at home with his wife and children wondering what comes next, having been unceremoniously dumped by P and O along with 800 other employees. No preparation; no warning; just clear off.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) famously defined a slave as “a thing, a living property”, a “tool”. Well, our son wasn’t exactly a slave of P and O: there is, of course, a world of difference between slavery as practiced in the Roman empire and being an employee in our modern world. But in the light of what’s happened it’s hard not to see a distinct resemblance. As thousands of people are now protesting, this is no way to treat human beings, who are, well… people.

The subject of slavery – one group or class of people treating another as essentially property – is a tricky one when we come to the New Testament.

Jesus never condemned it or called for its abolition; indeed, some of his stories seem to regard it as simply a fact of life to be accepted. The early church treated it much the same, judging by Acts and the letters.

The explanation usually given for this – and surely correctly – is that the whole structure of the Roman empire depended on slavery, and any attempt to dismantle it would have led to the collapse of society as a whole, including its many good features - not to mention the destruction of the rebels at the hands of the Roman army (think Spartacus, who lived roughly 100 years before Jesus). It would have been futile.

No, the abolition of slavery was a reform that would have to wait its time. That time, in many parts of the world, still waits; and even in Britain it took a shamefully long time to arrive - the era of William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury and others (many of them Christians), in the nineteenth century.

But the New Testament contains many glimmerings of the change that will one day come, and Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:5-9, and especially Colossians 4:1, are just such a glimmering: “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair”.

Probably that seems pretty small beer to us, pretty feeble stuff. But we need to remember the cruelty and complete injustice with which slaves were often treated in Paul’s time. Those words were in fact quite revolutionary – be nice to your slaves, indeed!

Better still, we need to notice the way Jesus treated those who were despised in his day - his willingness to touch sufferers from leprosy (horrific!), and to welcome women who were outcasts of society (shocking!) being the most obvious examples.

The little letter to Philemon is relevant. It’s the story of a runaway slave and his master, where Paul tries to tread a delicate balance between the eternal truth that all people are of equal value in God’s sight on the one hand, and the need to not come across in an inflammatory or revolutionary way on the other.

Not to mention the stern words of Jesus’ brother in James 2:1-13… In the ancient world, where else but in the church would you find masters and slaves sitting side by side?

But back to P and O and our son…

What this all comes down to is that God is concerned for justice. In his eyes every human being is of equal value, and is to be treated as such, and thus every time an injustice is done it’s right that there should be a burst of outrage in any healthy society. Never mind P and O - what better example could we seek than what’s going on at this moment in Ukraine?

Someone once said, “Any time you see someone sigh, shake their head and say ‘Oh well, business is business, I suppose’, you can be sure they are about to do something they’re ashamed of” (and that applies even if the proposed course of action is perfectly within the law). Those words imply that they are about to go against the demands of conscience, and that is always a disastrous thing to do.

Here are some words from Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who lived some 350 years after Jesus: “The rule of justice is plain, namely, that a good man ought not to swerve from the truth, nor to inflict any unjust loss on anyone, nor to act in any way deceitfully or fraudulently”.

It’s easy for us to condemn P and O; they’re sitting ducks at the moment. But of course the demands of justice apply to us all, and who can claim never to have drowned the voice of conscience? Not me, I’m afraid. Let’s each of us commit ourselves afresh to act only according to scrupulous honesty and integrity.

And if, of course, you are someone who occupies a position of power over others, in however small a way, let this be a prompt to keep a clear conscience – at whatever the cost.

Father, thank you that in every society there are powerful men and women who maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity. May I be challenged and inspired by them, however lowly my place in life. Amen.