First, I assume this video dates back (2012) to the release of John's book, "Slave." The book is about our slavery to Christ and the video, in part, promotes the good and right nature of the Christian's voluntary enslavement to His loving Lord who voluntarily died for them.
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So, if we listen to this with the biggest grains of salt, we can see what John is saying.
However, several other things really must be said in critique of this video.
1. It's irresponsible editing to sandwich together misinformed comments on human slavery w/ slave to Christ
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However, several other things really must be said in critique of this video.
1. It's irresponsible editing to sandwich together misinformed comments on human slavery w/ slave to Christ
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It must also be said that John simply gets human slavery wrong. Slavery is not an inherently good institution comparable to parent-child or employer-employee relationships. The problem w/ slavery is not that its a good system with abuses. The problem w/ slavery is it IS abuse
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In fact, a biblical appraisal of the kind of man-stealing that made up American chattel slavery is biblically defined as "contrary to sound doctrine" (1 Tim. 1:10). Slavery is ANTI-GOSPEL. It is pastoral malpractice to speak of it in glowing terms as if it's a neutral system.
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Moreover, as @JemarTisby shows so wonderfully in The Color of Compromise, the chattel principle of US slavery reduced enslaved persons to the level of property (chattel). It was dehumanizing and defaced the imago Dei nature of human beings. We're still dealing w/ that today.
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@JemarTisby To speak of human slavery as "the best possible" world/life if "you have a good master" simply repeats the tropes and talking points of slave masters who were anything but good. It assigns benevolence to evil and pretends a wicked system is not unjust.
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@JemarTisby By this logic and his statement, we should not regard slavery as theft of person, labor and life. We should not regard forced enslavement as violation of liberty. Instead, we should valorize the slaveholder and placate the enslaved. This is not Bible; this is garbage.
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@JemarTisby For the Bible says plainly, "if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity" (1 Cor. 7:21). Freedom, that supposedly highest of American values, seeks opportunity to be free. Freedom-loving people stand firm and resist the yoke of slavery (Gal. 5:1).
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@JemarTisby Given the 250 years of American chattel slavery--racist and evil to its core--and another 100 years of Jim Crow segregation and sharecroppoing (slavery by another name), God's preachers cannot be unclear about this. We can muddle and collapse categories.
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@JemarTisby It is the province of false teachers to call light "dark" and dark "light," good "evil" and evil "good." John knows better and is better than this. He should speak and teach better lest he hurt, wound and mislead God's people on so basic a moral application.
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@JemarTisby I exhort @gracetoyou to remove this video and issue a new one with clearer statements of the truth. To fail to do so is to propagate error and to undermine the very claim of extending grace to others.
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@JemarTisby *cannot muddle and collapse
