Collateral Freedom

It is an interesting fact that the United States, which is still struggling with the national disgrace of slavery, was the first county in the world to pass a governmental decree, The Emancipation Act, to eliminate it.  The basis for its banishment is the Christian belief that "all men are created equal."  The belief that the God of the Bible made us all to be of equal worth, was the sword that cut the head off the beast.

An even more interesting fact is that the Bible nowhere directly condemns slavery, even though Bible-believers led the charge against this scourge in our past and the Christian world is appalled at the slavish treatment of women in Islamic countries and is outraged at the world-wide Black Market slavery going on today.

How is it that the Christian Faith has been the fulcrum of outlawing slavery, when the very Bible we hold so sacredly does not condemn it?  We do so because the biblical mandate of common regard.  Listen to Paul's word on slaves and masters: "Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people,...And masters, treat your slaves in the same way....since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism" (Eph 6:7-9).

The Bible calls both masters and slaves to regard each other as co-servants of the Lord, of equal worth in His eyes.  The natural outcropping of this kind of regard is equality and compassion with our co-equals under God.  While slavery was common throughout the world at the time and had been for millennia - even Africans took other tribes as slaves just as Native Americans did on this continent - it was this country, built on judeo-christian principles, where the stake was driven through its heart.

The freeing of the salves by national proclamation was, in truth, a collateral freedom that occurred when Christian principles of compassion and common regard under God are taken to their natural conclusion: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" (2nd paragraph of our Declaration of Independence).  Jus' Say'n.