Dependence

Imagine selling yourself into slavery to survive.

If any of your kin fall into difficulty and become dependent on you, you shall support them; they shall live with you as though resident aliens. Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you. You shall not lend them your money at interest taken in advance, or provide them food at a profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God. 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. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold. You shall not rule over them with harshness, but shall fear your God. As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness. If resident aliens among you prosper, and if any of your kin fall into difficulty with one of them and sell themselves to an alien, or to a branch of the alien's family, after they have sold themselves they shall have the right of redemption; one of their brothers may redeem them, or their uncle or their uncle's son may redeem them, or anyone of their family who is of their own flesh may redeem them; or if they prosper they may redeem themselves. They shall compute with the purchaser the total from the year when they sold themselves to the alien until the jubilee year; the price of the sale shall be applied to the number of years: the time they were with the owner shall be rated as the time of a hired laborer. If many years remain, they shall pay for their redemption in proportion to the purchase price; and if few years remain until the jubilee year, they shall compute thus: according to the years involved they shall make payment for their redemption. As a laborer hired by the year they shall be under the alien's authority, who shall not, however, rule with harshness over them in your sight. And if they have not been redeemed in any of these ways, they and their children with them shall go free in the jubilee year. For to me the people of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 25:35-55

When it comes to controversial topics in The Bible, the subject of slavery has to be right up there.

God prohibits Israelites from treating their fellow countrymen as slaves.  That's a good thing.

If your kin, meaning anyone of the family of God, servants of God saved from oppression in Egypt, are in need of help, you should accept them into your family and treat them fairly.

That makes sense.

But then God goes on to make a distinction about foreigners, who can be taken as slaves.

This is where we have difficulty.  Our views about slavery of any kind today are quite different.  No one should be treated as a slave, even if, as we read here, they can be freed in a jubilee year, or 50 years.

That's a long time to be enslaved.

And to think God would allow them to be treated as the Israelites were treated by the Egyptians is really upsetting.

So, as Christians, we tend to ignore these laws and rules, writing them off as outdated.  But that leads us to think that God is harsh and Jesus is good, which may lead us into temptation.

Consider the instructions about selling oneself into slavery and purchasing one's freedom from slavery.

These are serious concerns in a society where help is not from the government, but from the wealthy among us.  Imagine, if we had no means of support and needed a benefactor.  Would we commit to serving that person in exchange for shelter and food?

That is not how we think of slavery, but it was a practice at the time, a way out of despair.

Our forms of economic dependence sound better.  We create a safety net for people who don't have enough income to support their needs.

But they are locked in to poverty.  There is a gap.  If they make too much money the support ends, leaving them worse off.  So, they remain economically enslaved.

I guess that isn't as bad, because we don't label it the same thing as selling oneself into slavery to survive.

More to come...