Private Property

November 4, 2019 - Monday after Trinity 20

The earth is the LORD’S, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters (Psalm 24:1-2).

The ownership of private property is an important concept to Americans. It might even be argued that they concept of private property ownership is fundamental to the development of Western Civilization. Property, and the money and currency we have developed to help us keep and dispose of our property, represents our time and effort, our work. A certain school of economists are fond of describing money as “frozen work”. We trade our time and effort doing a job and we receive money in compensation. We can then trade that money for other property we need or want, property some other person owned or created. God is the author of the idea of private property ownership; He commands us through Moses not to steal. In order to steal something from someone else, that other person must first have a legitimate claim on that property. He may have produced it, or he has the power to dispose of it as he wishes. To steal is to deprive the property owner, then, of a piece of their time; of something they gave up a portion of their time either making, or working to get money so that they could buy.

Socialism, what the dictionary calls the transition phase between capitalism and communism (though Karl Marx used the terms “socialism” and “communism” interchangeably),[1] subverts private property ownership. Indeed, it must. The goal of socialism is the collective, or governmental, control of the means of production. The means of production is just a fancy way of saying factories - the way “property” is produced. In this system, the State (the government, the “collective”) would decide what things were produced, how many of these things were produced, who has access to those things, and how those things could be used. As Marx wrote, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

This isn’t intended to be a lecture on economics. It is, however, important to understand, at least broadly, these two ideas of capitalism and socialism, and their relationship to the concept of private property. In real capitalism, individuals, through their voluntary interactions and commerce with each other in the market, decide what property is produced, how, and to what degree; in a socialist system, the government does all that. The economy is centrally planned. 

Why the economics lesson? It is important to understand that God created the world. It is His property. He may dispose of it as He likes. As the psalmist writes, “The earth is the LORD’s and all it’s fullness.” The “fullness” would be us. We are also His creatures, whom He made out of the dust of the earth, into which He breathed the breath of life. We confess the creation in the words of the Venite:

For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth, the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.[2]

This means He can dispose of us and this world as He sees fit, since it is His property which He, through His Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ Created:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.[3]

If this is not true, then God does not own us. If God and the creation are the fairy stories that modern atheists say they are, no one owns us or the world, which means that we own ourselves. It means that the things we have learned called Christian morality, do unto others as you would have others do unto you, is not a divine creation given to us, an absolute moral system written on our hearts by God, but rather a creation of man. If morality is not absolute, not created by God, but relative to man, then there is no reason, except a personal desire to submit to it, or compulsion by a stronger human force. Right and wrong, rather than being concrete and unchangeable things, become abstract ideas, relative to the dominant culture. Every culture dictates their own “right”, the one that is appropriate for them. Different cultures, with different ideas of “right” might come into conflict, but the stronger will prevail, and whatever is synthesized out of the clash of those two opposing ideas is “right”. 

Modern atheists, living in the afterglow of Christendom, where Christian values are still widely known and kept, even by people who are not Christians, think they like this idea. They like the idea of owning themselves. It means that they don’t have to answer to anyone except themselves, which is quite convenient, since they are in charge of making up all the rules now. In an interview, comedian Stephen Fry was asked what he would say to God if he were called before God’s judgement seat in order to get into heaven. He answered that he would turn the judgement back on God. To Mr. Fry, God was the one who was sinful and immoral:

“I’ll say: bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault? It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? The god who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our lives on our knees thanking him. What kind of god would do that? Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind...I wouldn’t want to [get into heaven]. I wouldn’t want to get in on his terms. They are wrong.”[4]

There is a lot to digest in Mr. Fry’s statement, and not at all entirely unreasonable questions to raise. 

Of course, the fact of the matter is that Mr. Fry does not believe that there can be a God, because of the existence of evil. We get into trouble when we assume that the misery isn’t our fault. In reality, God, sin, death, and the state of the universe do not have their existence based on whether or not we humans approve of them. God does not cease to exist because we selfish people, who worship ourselves, don’t understand Him, and subsequently reject Him, much as a petulant child doesn’t understand that the doctor who wants to vaccinate him is working for the child’s good. The doctor doesn’t disappear because the child hates him and, in the end, the child gets the shot.

Or, to put it another way, just because we don’t like what God says or does, how He disposes of His property, doesn’t change anything. It isn’t as though we get let out of the judgement because we don’t like the rules. When Job asked similar questions of God, God showed up in a whirlwind and answered Him:

Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it.[5]

Job’s response, his speechlessness and subsequent repentance, is the reality of what will come of any man standing before the Almighty God.

I suspect it is for this reason atheism and evolutionary theory go together so well. It takes away ownership of the earth and it’s fullness from the Creator, and gives it to the creation. More importantly, it removes any obligation for man to abide by God’s morality - Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...You shall love your neighbor as yourself - and allows man to make up his own. But we all know this is nonsense. Creation itself bears witness to it’s creator; God’s law, written on our hearts bears witness to the fact that we are evil, fallen and sinful creatures. 

There is also another way in which God has claim of ownership over the earth and all it’s fullness: through Jesus, God in human flesh, second person of the Holy Trinity, Redeemer of the world. Jesus bought back the property that He created, after it had been stolen from Him. Adam and Eve plunged mankind, and all of creation, into sin by their disobedience to God, and their selfish desire to become like Him. The entire creation was put under the curse, now utterly corrupted, and subject to sin, death, and Satan, who was responsible for introducing sin into the world. But God knew that, before it’s foundation, He would redeem the world through the blood of Jesus. God promised Adam and Eve that they would be redeemed, and that Satan’s head would be crushed by the woman’s offspring, even as He sent them out of the earthly paradise. He spent hundreds and hundreds of years preparing and gathering to Himself a people, whom He would set apart from all the other peoples of the earth, through whom this offspring - this Seed - would one day come. He gave them peculiar civil laws and religious worship, so that they would be reminded of the Seed to come, and keep them set apart from the rest of the world; He hammered into their collective heads just what kind of a God He was, as C. S. Lewis wrote:

Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process. Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.[6]

Jesus, God in human flesh, took on human nature and lived the sinless life that it was impossible for man to live. Born of the Virgin Mary, born sinless, He was born under the Law. And He kept the Law perfectly, as mankind could not do. Then, He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, as the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. He was executed as a criminal and a blasphemer in our place, taking the punishment the world deserved, according to the scriptures. He rose again from the dead on the third day, again, as written in the scriptures. He is the propitiation for our sins, the ransom for many. And He will come again with glory, to judge the quick and the dead, and to take possession of His creation as King, once and for all; He will remake it, purging it of sin and death forever. 

It makes no difference if we like this or not. In fact, we don’t like it, none of us. He has to prepare us. He sends His servants, pastors, into the world to preach His Word; they call people to repentance for their sins, and announce to them the forgiveness Christ has won for them on the cross. He connects us to His death and His resurrection in Holy Baptism, where He saves us and washes away our sin. He feeds us with His very body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, nourishing, sustaining, and increasing our faith, so that no matter what misery and injustice we must endure while we live in this fallen creation, it will be for our good. Even the ultimate evil, death, will ultimately be for our good, if we are in Christ. The worst thing that the devil can do to us is kill our bodies. But Jesus tells us not to fear the one who can kill the body, but rather the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell - God Almighty. So, even though we may not understand or like the things that happen to us in this life, we strive to live according to the new creation, His own possession, that He has made us in our Baptism; we love the Lord with all our hearts and we love our neighbors as ourselves, showing our faith by our works. And when we sin, we repent, knowing that we have been baptized into Christ, and that He died for the forgiveness of our sin, and rose for our justification. He also gives us gifts to possess. His death and His resurrection are ours. His life is our life. Because He lives, we shall live. In this world there is trouble and injustice. Christ has overcome the world. He is the ultimate justice.

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1. “Socialism: Definition of Socialism by Lexico.” Lexico Dictionaries | English. Lexico Dictionaries. Accessed November 12, 2019. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/socialism.

2. Lutheran Intersynodical Hymnal Committee, and Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. 1941. The Lutheran hymnal: authorized by the synods constituting the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. Saint Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House.

3. Colossians 1:15-18

4. Independent Staff. “Stephen Fry 'Blasphemy': Comedian's Remarks about God That Prompted Police Investigation in Full.” The Independent, May 7, 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stephen-fry-blasphemy-god-ireland-police-investigation-quotes-in-full-a7722256.html.

5. Job 40:2

6. Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity (version alt.binaries.e-book 2002), 1953. https://www.dacc.edu/assets/pdfs/PCM/merechristianitylewis.pdf.

Thou Shalt Not Kill... but why not?

Derek was a British television series starring Ricky Gervais.

Derek says to be good, and I agree. How does one do that? By what standard does he measure his goodness?

Some New Atheists will rely on convoluted arguments to try to prove that man can have absolute morality (right and wrong) without an absolute source (God). One might suspect that the argument behind this meme is not quite so complicated. Ricky Gervais, whose character Derek gives us the sage advice to “just be good,” seems to be like so many average people who are de facto atheists; they say they don’t believe in an absolute system of right and wrong, but live as though they do. This standard of “good” which Derek calls his fellow man to live up to is supposed to be understood by all people. Indeed, I believe it is understood by all people; I simply disagree with the New Atheists regarding the reason why that is the case.

This is one of the problems with New Atheism that people don’t seem to want to acknowledge: We are supposed to accept the conflicting ideas that 1) there is no absolute truth or morality, decreed by God and built into mankind, and 2) everyone automatically knows what “good” is. For all the talk of the irresolvable paradoxes of Christianity, this problem of morality is significant for the New Atheists. If there is no absolute standard by which to judge morality, then all morality must be relative to the culture out of which it arises. Even if there are similarities between cultures, one cannot claim that there is an absolute standard. How, then, can one say that a given thought, word, or deed is good inter-culturally? How can one society apply its standard of “good” to another society, absent a universal standard? At least the Christian points to God, and says that He ultimately understands the religious paradoxes, if we cannot.

Or, looked at another way, how can we judge any given thought, word, or deed as “bad” if there is no absolute standard of morality? New Atheists like to point this out to Christians who condemn sin and call people to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of those sins; the point applies equally to them. And, contrary to how it may seem based on the circulation of internet memes, the New Atheists condemn quite a lot as bad. Christianity, for starters. Richard Dawkins believes it is child abuse to teach children the Christian faith;[1] so did the late Christopher Hitchens. In fact, they despise all religion as evil. This includes Islam.

Their hatred of religion made for some strange bedfellows during the war on terror. After the September 11^th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center some leftist atheists, like Christopher Hitchens, supported aggressive war against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside the likes of, well, me. This was because terrorism is bad. The oppression, abuse, and subjugation of women is bad. Murdering political and religious minorities is bad. Oppressing and murdering homosexuals is bad. All these things are bad according to the New Atheists, and I agree. I must again, however, ask the question: by what standard? Clearly, the Islamic terrorists don’t think those things are bad. Why is their standard different? Where did it come from? Do they not have the innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil, which all men are supposed to have? Absent a universal standard of right and wrong, what makes them evil?

The Christian has an answer: the God who created the universe has set an immutable standard of right and wrong for mankind and expects us to keep it. We cannot. In fact, we ignore and suppress it. We turn away from God and His moral standard. We fail to keep it. And, when we do not keep it, that is called sin. And, because we cannot keep this moral standard perfectly, He took on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, so that He could destroy sin, its inevitable result – death, and the one who brought it into the world – the devil, once and for all. He accomplished this by the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. He did it by living up to the standard, and dying as the sacrifice for sin on man’s behalf. Then, after dying on the cross, He rose up from the dead. We benefit from this sacrifice when we are brought to penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the means of God’s Word and Sacraments. That is our explanation. What is theirs?

Their explanation for morality seems to be that morality has developed in man’s psyche as a product of evolution. The late Christopher Hitchens said:

I think our knowledge of right and wrong is innate in us. Religion gets its morality from humans. We know that we can’t get along if we permit perjury, theft, murder, rape. All societies at all times, well before the advent of monarchies have forbidden it. Socrates called it his daemon; it was his inner voice that stopped him when he was trying to take advantage of someone… Why don’t we just assume that we do have some internal compass?[2]

This view is almost comically simplistic. We just all should know what good is, because good comes from inside man. I see much evidence in man’s history that, far from being innately good, man is innately evil. Mr. Hitchens sets up this straw man: religion teaches that men only do good things, return lost property, give blood transfusion, etc., because they fear divine punishment and, if they didn’t have that threat hanging over them, they would act like the worst psychopathic criminal.[3] Perhaps other religions teach this idea; Christianity does not. In fact, Christianity teaches that, outwardly, and because of the conscience, men can and do live outwardly good and decent lives. Men can choose not to steal, rape, or murder their fellows, but this civil righteousness does nothing to justify a man before God. The Book of Concord has this to say on the issue:

Our churches teach that a person’s will has some freedom to choose civil righteousness and do things subject to reason. It has no power, without the Holy Spirit, to work the righteousness of God, that is spiritual righteousness… This is what Augustine says in his Hypogonosticon, Book III: We grant that all people have a free will. It is free as far as it has the judgment of reason…It is free only in works of this life, whether good or evil. Good I call those works that spring from the good in nature, such as [sic] willing to labor in the field, to eat and drink, to have a friend, to clothe oneself… For all of these things depend on the providence of God. They are from Hm and exist through Him. Works that are willing to worship an idol, to commit murder, and so forth, I call evil… Although nature is able in a certain way to do the outward work (for it is able to keep the hands from theft and murder), yet it cannot produce the inward motions, such as the fear of God, trust in God, chastity, patience, and so on.[4]

Christianity also teaches that this innate morality is objective and immutable, created by God. It is perfect, and requires perfection. And, no matter how many good deeds one may do, no matter how “good” a person may be in the eyes of the society, it is impossible to keep this moral standard perfectly, as God requires. Our relationship with God, therefore, must be repaired in some other way than by being good, or doing good deeds. On the contrary, our relationship with God is repaired by the death and resurrection of Jesus, who died as the propitiation for the sins of the world; and we receive those gifts of forgiveness and life eternal through the gift of faith, which God creates in us through the means of His word.

I see man, when left to determine what is right and wrong for himself, holding his neighbor to a separate, higher standard than the one to which he holds himself. This phenomenon manifests itself from the individual level to the societal level. The Godless [sic] principle that the strongest is always right has been openly declared as recently as the twentieth century in Mussolini’s Italy and operated in practice in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and many other states.[5] The evidence shows us that, unless man’s moral code is instituted by an authority higher than himself, he will, when it is advantageous to himself or his societal group, alter it. The unregenerate individual says to himself: it might be wrong when other people perjure themselves, steal, murder, or commit rape, but when I did those things, I had a good reason, and am therefore justified. Man can always reason out why their bad deed was not bad, but his neighbor’s was. Christopher’s brother Peter Hitchens, makes this point:

Left to themselves, human beings can in a matter of minutes justify the incineration of populated cities, the mass deportation – accompanied by slaughter, disease, and starvation – of inconvenient people, and the mass murder of the unborn. I have heard people who believe themselves to be good defend all these things and convince themselves as well as others. Quite often the same people will condemn similar actions committed by different countries, often with great vigor.[6]

You see, morality cannot be absolute and relative at the same time. We cannot say that the sense of good and evil it is innate in all of humanity, and at the same time, say there is no absolute source of that morality other than ourselves. If all morality is relative to the individual and to the individual’s culture, and there is no absolute standard for it set by God, the only way to determine right and wrong, good and bad, is ultimately by the sword. Might makes right, as they say. And why shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t the unarmed give way to the lightly armed, and the lightly armed give way to the heavily armed?[7] Should not all societies, from the primitive to the advanced, decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong? Should not every individual decide for themselves their own religious beliefs (which is just another way of saying the same thing as morality)? This all sounds high minded and enlightened until you put it into practice. If what was just described was actually the type of world in which we lived, on what basis can one group of people condemn another group of people for, well, anything?

We look back at the Nazis and their systematic, state run genocide of the Jews and call it horrible. It was horrible. But on what basis can we condemn Nazi genocide of the Jews if there is no absolute truth that, “Thou shalt not kill”?[8] There is none. You may appeal to the innate sense inside of man that it is wrong to murder all you like; the Nazis would not call what they were doing murder. The only alternative that remains is that their actions were no better or worse than any other actions; we were simply stronger than they, and wanted to end their social, economic, and cultural system because it conflicted with our own, and so we did.

But it is wrong to murder people, especially on account of their race! Why? Says who?

Our culture takes a dim view of killing a person, generally speaking, unless one has a reasonable belief that one is in imminent danger of receiving great bodily harm, or death from them. In Nazi Germany, Jews were considered to be sub-humans, and therefore exempt from “normal” moral considerations. To turn a Jew in to the state, and thus mark him for persecution and death, was, in that society, to do a good work. But who are we to judge the society that has a different view of this matter? The National Socialists (Nazis) were quite deliberate in creating their society and culture, all based on the philosophical beliefs of Adolf Hitler. Are those beliefs, and the resulting consequences, not just as valid as our society’s contention that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights? If you say they are not equally valid, you must answer why, and relative morality does not help your case. If you say they are equally valid, you are ignoring that impulse inside of mankind that does tell us that murdering another human being is wrong, and that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. It isn’t so much that religion gets it’s morality from man, as Christopher Hitchens contends; rather, the New Atheism, living as it does in the afterglow of the western Christian society, benefits from the fact that Judeo-Christian morality has served as the foundation for western society and culture and remains, for the time being, dominant and familiar to the vast majority of people.

In the afterglow of western Christian society, Peter Hitchens writes, where God’s moral standard served as the basis, it is convenient for the New Atheists to speak of an innate morality, which has its origins in man through evolutionary processes.[9] Morality is indeed imprinted on the heart of man. It is there because God put it there. It is His law, or at least a shadow of it; it convicts us of our sin when we transgress it, but it has no power to help us live up to its rigorous, unalterable standards. If we, as the New Atheists do, usurp God’s place as lawgiver, we become the one who sets the standard, if only in our own deluded mind. And, if we set the standard, we can change the standard. We can set the bar just high enough that it looks rigorous to other men. We can set the standard to define our behavior as good, and change it when we deem it expedient. We can do nothing, however, to hide our deficiency in living up to God’s moral standard from He, who is the true and only judge between right and wrong. We can only repent of our sins, because God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.[10]

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[1] Hitchens, Peter. 2010. The Rage against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] “Christopher Hitchens: The Morals of an Atheist.” 2007. Broadcast. Uncommon Knowledge. PBS. https://youtu.be/b6DW0e70DF0.

[3] “Christopher Hitchens: The Morals of an Atheist.” 2007. Broadcast. Uncommon Knowledge. PBS. https://youtu.be/b6DW0e70DF0.

[4] McCain, Paul Timothy., et. al., eds. 2005. Concordia: the Lutheran Confessions: a Readers Edition of the Book of Concord. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House. AC XCIII 1-9

[5] Hitchens, Peter. 2010. The Rage against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. p. 145.

[6] Hitchens, Peter. 2010. The Rage against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. p. 141-142.

[7] Hitchens, Peter. 2010. The Rage against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[8] In the Fifth Commandment, thou shalt not kill, God forbids us to take the life of another person, or our own life. This includes murder, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide.

[9] Hitchens, Peter. 2010. The Rage against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[10] Acts 17:31-32

Slavery in the Bible

In a fortune cookie I once read what was purported to be a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. In these current interesting times, everything one says or does, no matter how innocent the circumstances, seems to cause offense. Particularly, everything the Christian says or does; particularly on social media.

A friend of mine at work came to me seeking some advice after a nasty exchange on Facebook with one of his militant atheist friends. My friend, who is a Christian, but could not be considered a “Bible-thumper” by any stretch of the imagination, had posted a rather popular meme on his Facebook page. The meme elicited such a vigorous response in the form of comments attempting to “refute” Christianity that my friend was confused and troubled. 

The meme (pictured above) depicts the thin blue line, and a Bible verse. The thin blue line is a symbol used by law enforcement around the world to commemorate fallen law enforcement officers and to symbolize the relationship of law enforcement in the community as the protectors of fellow civilians from criminal elements. The Bible verse was Romans 13:4, “…for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Anti-police sentiment in today’s political climate is hardly surprising, especially to most police officers. The comment which bothered my friend the most, however, was one which misused another verse of Scripture:

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly (Leviticus 25:44-46).

The commenter went on to say how despicable it was for the Bible to advocate slavery, to instruct God’s Chosen People to oppress their neighbors, and that we certainly shouldn’t heed anything it has to say because we have evolved to become more enlightened. 

My friend was unaware of such a verse in the Bible, and did not know how to respond. He came and asked me what I would say to his friend. Well, here goes…

First (addressing my Christian friend), when speaking with people such as this, we must always remember that the sinful mind in hostile to God, and it cannot submit to God. No amount of clever debating will ever reason anyone into the faith. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. That being said, St. Peter instructs us to always be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks from us a reason for our hope.

That being said (addressing the militant atheist), slavery is absolutely in the Bible. There is also murder, adultery, homosexuality, incest, theft, war, lying, and all manner of other evil described in the Bible. Just as no sane person who has a command of the English language would try to make the case that the Bible supports any of these other evils (let’s call them sins, in keeping with how the Bible refers to them), no one who has seriously studied the Bible would ever try to make that case regarding slavery.

Slavery in the Bible is something completely different than the slavery a 21st Century American thinks of when they hear the word. We have images of oppressed blacks being hunted and captured like animals, transported against their will to work on large cotton plantations in the antebellum south. According to Lenny Esposito, Christian apologist, president, and founder of Come Reason Ministries, most slave situations were not primarily due to a person being taken against his will, but because poor people either sold themselves or their children into slavery.

Slavery was designed to pay a debt to a debtor, and once the debt was paid, the person was free. A slave could buy his own freedom from the profits of his selling his property. It is noteworthy that many people became bond-slaves (pledged to remain in his master's household for life) because their situation was better as a slave than as a free person. We sometimes assume a modern frame of reference when we talk about these things, but one must remember that life was extremely hard during these times, and to be free meant you had no guarantees that you would have enough food to eat or even a decent house to shelter your family. Add to that taxes from the ruling governments, no protection from raiding parties or foreign invaders and the expense of buying tools to accomplish tasks and you can see how being part of a larger organization could be inviting. You would share in the collective efforts of many people and have access to the resources of a rich master - much the same way the feudal serf system was constructed in the Middle Ages (Esposito n.d.).

In fact, some theologians, such as John Nordling, suggest that slavery in antiquity, at least during New Testament times, may have been viewed by society as a morally ambiguous institution. Nordling goes on to make a connection between the New Testament type of slavery and the Christian doctrine of vocation.

Usually emphasized are certain undeniably negative aspects of slavery to which slaves were subject, such as violence and sexual exploitation. Although one may not dispute these findings, I find problematic the idea that gratuitous violence, disgrace, and degradation were endemic to ancient slavery as such. That opinion cannot abide the possibility that slavery—at other times and amid other peoples—may have existed far differently than it did among Americans in the antebellum South, for example. The first Christians offer a case in point: for them, slavery was arguably a morally ambiguous institution. One might say that slavery for them was neither completely good nor uniformly bad but simply the place where untold numbers of Christians demonstrated their faith in Christ by engaging in service to the neighbor. If this is approximately the role that slavery played among the first Christians, then one could reasonably argue that biblical slavery remains pertinent for Christians still today and so should be studied for its applicability to actually being a Christian in concrete situations (Nordling 2009).

19th Century American slavery accounted for the slave as property to be exploited by the owner for his profit, without any further regard to the slave than one would give to a valuable piece of farm equipment or farm animal. This debate regarding whether or not slaves should be counted as persons or property was one which was argued from before the beginning of the United States, and was immortalized in the US Constitution by the famous Three-Fifths Compromise. In somewhat of an ironic twist, southern slave states wished to have slaves counted as person when determining a state’s population for representation in the House of Representatives and for taxation purposes. Northern free states, in an effort to limit the power of the slave states, argued that slaves should not be counted as persons. The compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person. This insured that the slave states would not have overwhelming representation in the House, and they therefore could not block anti-slavery efforts. In the Bible, however, there is no such debate. A survey of the laws of the Bible shows that they guard the rights of each individual and his family (Packer and Tenney 1980).

Each slave kept his dignity as a human being. No Israelite could be forced into slavery. Even if he signed a contract to become another man’s servant, God’s Law cancelled the contract at the end of 7 years (Exodus 21:2-6). A slave became a member of his owner’s family. He enjoyed the rights of any other family member (except the right of inheritance, of course). If the slave was a foreigner, his owner could circumcise him and invite him to worship with other Jews (Exodus 12:44; Deuteronomy 12:18; 16:10-11)…Even though the Bible allowed slavery, its regulations reminded the Israelites that every person was created in the image of God – including the slave (Packer and Tenney 1980).

In fact, the Bible tells us that we are all slaves. Mankind, since the Fall, is in bondage to sin. What’s more, we are bound to self-centeredness, doomed to death, and blind to our slavery (Engelbrecht 2009). We are only set free from our slavery to sin and death by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:15-23).

Americans can be fiercely independent, and we prize our rights. Essentially, however, we are all slaves. Either we are slaves to sin, death and the Devil, or slaves to righteousness. Those of us who are slaves to righteousness are called to be slaves to our fellow men, serving them through our vocations. The editors of the Lutheran Study Bible put it this way:

Although many people consider freedom to be the ultimate human right, no one is truly free spiritually. We were slaves to sin and bound to death. Knowing this, Jesus came to serve us by giving His life on the cross and rising for us. Freed from sin, we can now serve God. Only when we are “slaves” to God will we have freedom to be the people he created us to be (Engelbrecht 2009).

Finally, race had very little to do with slavery of the type during Greco-Roman times. The type of slavery chronicled in the Bible has great application for us today to show us how we are to relate to our bosses and fellow men as we serve them in our vocations. Substitute “employees” and “bosses” for the Greek words for “slaves” and “masters” respectively, and there remains still today essentially the same relationship as obtained long ago in the assemblies of the New Testament[1] (Engelbrecht 2009).

Works Cited

Engelbrecht, Rev. Edward A., ed. The Lutheran Study Bible. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009.

Esposito, Lenny. "Does the Bible Aprove of Slavery?" Come Reason Ministries. http://www.comereason.org/slavery-in-the-bible.asp (accessed March 12, 2016).

Nordling, John G. "A More Positive View of Slavery: Establishing Servile Identity in the Christian Assemblies." Bulletin for Biblical Research, 2009: 63-84.

Packer, J. I., and M. C. Tenney, . Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980.

End Notes

[1] John G. Nordling, Philemon, CC (St. Louis: Concordia, 2004), 43, 44, 59, 69-70, 138.

Happy Winter Solstice from the Christkindlemarkt!

So, we went to the Christkindlemarkt in Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago this afternoon after church. I was terribly disappointed, as there were so many people crammed into the plaza that no one could move. We couldn't even press our way through the crowd to get a mug of Glühwein. I was ticked off about this, and then I came across an interesting display on the east side of the plaza, near the nativity scene

It's a big wire-framed "A" lit with red "holiday" lights (calling them Christmas lights seems somewhat inappropriate). It says "Happy Winter Solstice". It says that Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) is the reason for the season. The display brightened my day, even though about half of the lights were dark, and I had to take a picture of my kids in front of it.

The display was placed by the atheists of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. You can read a short news article about the "A" here. They make a big deal saying that there can be no freedom of religion until government is completely separated from religion and it's influences. I agree. Sadly, as those on the political left often do, this group attempts to equate the public expression of religion and public displays of religious symbols with the government sanction and/or establishment of religion. We Christians often try to duck this argument, opting to go along to get along. If we allow what the Establishment Clause means to be redefined, however, we will wind up without the freedom of religion or the right to express our religious beliefs publicly.

Much is made of the fact that there is a “separation of church and state” built into the U.S. Constitution. This is not exactly true, at least not in the way those on the left purport it to be. The phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. The term is an offshoot of the phrase, "wall of separation between church and state," as written by Thomas Jefferson in a now famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. The original text of President Jefferson’s letter reads, in part:

"... I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

The Danbury Baptist Association wrote to Jefferson of their concerns regarding the lack of explicit protection of religious liberty in their own state constitution, and against a government establishment of religion. As a religious minority in Connecticut, the Danbury Baptists were concerned that a religious majority might establish a state religion at the cost of the liberties of religious minorities. Jefferson assured them that the U.S. Constitution would in no way permit such an establishment, and that “…religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions…” This separation of church and state, as understood by Thomas Jefferson at least, had nothing whatsoever to do with public expressions of religion. To Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists, separation of church and state had everything to do with the establishment of a national/state religious body, and avoiding the national/state oppression of religious minorities.

It wasn't until 1947 that the Supreme Court, albeit nebulously, defined just how the “wall of separation” was to be built. As a result of Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), Neither state or local government can: 1) set up a church, 2) pass laws that aid one religion, all religions, or favor one religion over another, 3) force a person to attend or stay away from church, or believe in any religion, 4) punish a person for holding or professing religious beliefs, 5) levy a tax, in any amount, to support any religious activities or institutions, 6) openly or secretly participate in the affairs of any religious organization, or vice-versa.

A second important test established by the Court, known as The Lemon Test, is taken from the case Lemon v. Kurtzman 403 U.S. 602 (1971). The test consists of three parts: 1) whether the law or conduct has a secular purpose, 2) whether the law or conduct has as its primary or principle effect advancing or inhibiting religion, and 3) whether it fosters an excessive entanglement of government with religion.

To the chagrin of the New Atheist movement, The Court has ruled that public displays of religious symbols, such as the Christian nativity scene or the Jewish menorah, do not constitute a breach of the Establishment Clause when they are all displayed together, and along with secular holiday symbols, in celebration of the national holiday of Christmas (yes, it is a national holiday, believe it or not).

The Christkindlemarkt (Christ child market) which is set up in Daley Plaza every year in Chicago is clearly a Christian event, complete with nativity scene. Alongside the nativity scene during Hanukkah each year is a large Jewish menorah. Any citizen or group who wishes to exercise their freedom of religious expression in this public space may do so (as the atheist group has demonstrated by the presence of their display) and the event is not in breach of the Establishment Clause. Should any religious or secular group be prohibited by government from exercising that freedom of expression at the Christkindlemarkt, however, it would then violate the Establishment Clause.

To say that there is no place in American society for public displays of religion or religious symbols, strictly because they are by nature religious (the so-called freedom "from" religion), is simply not justified by the U.S. Constitution, or by case law.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion to the McCreary County, Kentucky, ET. Al. Petitioners v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky ET.Al. case, observed that the same week Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate. Justice Scalia goes on to remind his fellow justices that, “The same Congress also reenacted the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, 1 Stat. 50, Article II of which provided: ‘Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.’” And, it should not be overlooked that the First Amendment itself accords religion – and no other manner of belief – special constitutional protection. I am sure that the atheist activists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation would not agree that these early actions of Congress are equally valid today, since those on the Left generally consider the U.S. Constitution to be a “living, breathing document”, meaning that its interpretation changes as American society changes, and that moral values simply evolve along with society and culture and are therefore not absolute.

The views of American citizens, however, have not changed significantly where this issue of public expression of religion is concerned. Justice Scalia rightly points out that our Presidents continue to conclude their oath of office with the words, “So help me God.” The Congress opens each session with a prayer; those prayers are lead by official congressional chaplains. The Supreme Court opens its sessions with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court”. We have the phrase “In God We Trust” on our currency. When we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States we corporately acknowledge that we are one nation, under God. Justice Scalia finishes his thought with these words:

“As one of our Supreme Court opinions rightly observed, ‘We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.’ Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952), repeated with approval in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 675 (1984); Marsh, 463 U.S., at 792; Abington Township, supra, at 213.”

I have no problem with the atheists, secular humanists, and free-thinkers exercising their right to free expression. I tolerate their "A". Whether they like it or not, the atheists have to tolerate my public nativity scene. It establishes Christianity as a national religion about as much as their half-hearted display establishes Sol Invictus as America's supreme being.

The Happy Atheist...he has Issues (ETC)

Below is the text of a letter I wrote to Rev. Todd Wilken, host of Issues ETC, following the fascinating interview he conducted with P.Z. Myers, author of The Happy Atheist. To hear the interview, click on the link below. This is a great exposition of the doctrine of the "New" Atheism, in the words of one of their own:

Issues ETC Interview 

The Happy Atheist - PZ Myers

08/29/2013

Dear Pastor Wilken,

I listened to your interview with the Happy Atheist today and am thankful that you took to time to interview him. The so-called "new" atheists have attempted to cover their hostility toward God with the veneer of reason, science, "reasonableness", glued in place with the bonding agent of elitism. I believe that your straightforward conversation with Dr. P.Z. Myers exposed that, and helped to illustrate that New Atheism is nothing new. It is the same hatred for God and defiant opposition to God's moral standard written on the very fabric of human kind that it has always been since man's fall into sin.

I realize that you had a limited time with Dr. Myer and to address specific issues would have had the potential to turn the interview into debate. That being said, a few points from the interview did stick in my mind, and I would have liked to have heard Dr. Myers' answers.

At the beginning of the interview Dr. Myers asserted that there is absolutely no historical basis for the New Testament documents. I'm sure that you had to bite your tongue to let that one go by, as we know from the very best and most recent scholarship that the New Testament documents are supremely reliable as historical record. As stated numerous times on Issues ETC, archaeology continues to support the validity of the New Testament accounts.

You asked Dr. Myers how he would react to all of the positive contributions to the world which seemed to have sprung from a Christian ethos, citing abolitionism, hospitals, orphanages, universal education, etc. Dr. Meyer said (I paraphrase) that it was a revision of history to talk about Christianity/religion as a force for good in history; He specifically attacked Christianity's role in the abolition movement and the position of slavery within the Christian worldview in general. He did not, however, answer the other examples you raised. I have seen Christian, Jewish, and Muslim hospitals, schools, and orphanages. I cannot recall seeing, or ever hearing of any such charity founded by a movement of secular humanism. I'm sure humanistic charities exist. They do not, however, exist as the norm of compassionate giving and human care and relief - they are the exception. Christian, and other religious charity, however, is the rule.

Dr. Meyer also stated, echoing the position of others within New Atheism, that there is no absolute moral authority. All morality is arbitrary, and to be based on "man's interaction with man" as man must live in community to survive. He conceded that different communities would come up with different community rules and standards, and that destructive "community moralities" (my own term) should be discouraged. Who is to determine what is destructive and what is constructive? Do opposing forces inside the community battle it out until one side or the other is dominant? The National Socialist worldview was considered constructive by those people who believed and implemented it. This worldview, justly implemented by a community of people (according to the argument made by Dr. Myers), is responsible for the destruction of millions of people considered to be sub-human, and a world war was fought to bring about it's end. Is Nazism simply wrong because the Allies were stronger than the Axis and won a war (ie a higher/stronger community standard)? Without some kind of absolute moral standard, what right did the Allied powers have to deem the Nazi's worldview as destructive and impose their own will instead. This seems to revert to the axiom, "Might Makes Right".

In the most ghastly segment about human rights and abortion, Dr. Myers stated that, "...personhood emerges gradually..." This view seems to echo that of Dr. Peter Singer, professor of Bioethics at Princeton who believes that right to life is tied to a beings capability to hold preferences, and that killing a newborn baby is not equivalent to killing a person because babies lack the essential characteristics of personhood. If "personhood" does indeed emerge gradually as Dr. Myers states: 1) Who determines when someone has achieved personhood, or when someone has lost the personhood they once possessed? 2) If a newborn baby is not immediately a person at birth (as Dr. Myers implied) but rather develops into a person at some indeterminate time during it's physical growth and cognitive development, what implications does this have for so-called women's rights? Would a mother have the right to "abort" her "non-person" newborn just as she had the right to abort her "non-person" fetus when it was in the womb? 3) Do human rights apply to human beings, or only to persons? If human rights apply only to "persons" then the application of those rights depend on whether or not that human being is a person. That determination is made according to the human beings size, level of development, environment, and/or degree of dependency and is essentially arbitrary, being totally subject to the "community", which could change its standard as it desired, unless some other "community" that developed was stronger and asserted its dominance.

Fortunately, the world does not function this way. God's law is written on our hearts. There is no one righteous, not one. What's more is that we know our state, and how helpless we are. Thanks be to God that he has provided redemption, pardon, and peace to us through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. The Happy Atheist is nothing more than a real world example of what St. Paul writes about the depravity of unregenerate humanity in Romans:

"Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them," (Romans 1:28-32).

Thank you for straightforwardly exposing Dr. Myers' beliefs and letting his words show the depravity of New Atheism. God bless you also for firmly confessing your faith to him toward the end of the program, and rightly proclaiming law and gospel to him as you did so.

God's Richest Blessings to You in Christ!

The Hodgkins Lutheran