A Slave By Choice?
Do you work like a slave?
A few years back the BBC produced a documentary highlighting the views of a nineteen year old woman who refused to work for anyone, saying work is slavery.
Instead, she lived on public assistance and that suited her fine.
When we hear the word "slavery" we don't often think of selling oneself into it. It usually brings up images of people being taken from their homes against their will.
To this day, there are parents who sell their daughters to make money for the family, and that is the type of crime the word conjures up. But a search on slavery will bring up a variety of worker abuse accusations in jobs from fast food restaurants to farm workers.
Some people who are desperate for work will take anything, even if it means subjecting themselves to conditions some may consider sub-standard or sub-human.
If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. - Leviticus 25:39-41
In Leviticus, we see that situations like this were common in ancient times. But we also see something else, a path to restitution or release from slavery every fifty years, in the jubilee year.
Now fifty years is a long time to be a slave, so one would probably not want to sell themselves into such an arrangement early in the jubilee cycle. That said, how many of us have worked at jobs for twenty, thirty or more years, hating what we do and longing for retirement?
There is really no comparison between slavery and working in a sub-standard job, so don't think I am making light of the situation. What I am focusing on is the instruction in Leviticus to free the slaves and return them to their ancestral property.
There is a lesson to be learned from this planned restitution, and it is a lesson for all who hire people into service of any kind. While there will always be people who refuse to do any work, looking for handouts and assistance, the majority of people in need of work will do whatever it takes to land a job that can help them support themselves and their families.
Those of us who have work for them are in a tempting position, one that enables us to take advantage and pay little for hard work. With so many jobs outsourced to cheaper labor markets, the temptation to underpay for services is even greater, so today's lesson is a timely one.
What I hear is a need to look ahead, to recognize that times will be better and those who stand by us and work hard for us when we can't afford to pay well should earn real benefits in the future when the situation improves. They should be freed from the tight bonds and given a chance to enjoy the more fruitful employment better economic times affords.
Will that happen?
Not automatically, or at least not all employers will reward those who stood by them in difficult times, but some will, and those are the preferred employers, the ones who see themselves as benefactors and not masters.
More to come...
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