I was asked this awhile back via email and realize I didn’t reply.  I thought maybe it would be good to answer it here.  The problem is time.  So I’ll do this in installments.  Please feel free to leave questions in the comments so that I can address everything.

No Impatient Rebellion Against the Status Quo

First of all, Christians can live as Christians with all sorts of slavery.  Christian slaves are supposed to serve their masters diligently and cheerfully according to the teaching we find in the New Testament.  That would apply to slaves in the Mediterranean world in the Roman Empire and it would apply to conquered countries that had to serve the Roman Empire.

If I tried to get the story of Joseph made into a movie, Hollywood would want Joseph to acquire a weapon and kill Potiphar, escape back to Canaan and avenge himself on his brothers.  The story in the Bible has Joseph working hard and faithfully so that he rules and saves the world.

(One might ask about Southern culture teaching slaves to obey their masters but not feeling the same quiet piety when they had to submit to a political regime they didn’t like.)

So it doesn’t demand that we be obstinate in a rigged market situation.

Private Property is Fundamental

But the Bible does affirm private property.  The Eighth and Tenth Commandments together clearly spell this out:

You shall not steal…  You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

And consistent with these two basic commands in the Decalogue, there follow other laws about honest weights and measures and impartial justice favoring neither the poor nor the rich.

So that’s the basic “blueprint”: private property, equal justice, honest trade.

Israel & Jubilee

Of course, Israel was a special case.  It didn’t acquire territory through individual homesteading like much of the American West was settled.  Rather, the twelve tribes came into the Land, killed everyone else (or were supposed to) and gave every household unit an equal parcel of usable land, through casting lots as the way of knowing which part of the Land God wanted to give that family forever.

This may have affected wealth differences, but it was not meant to end them.  Some people rented out their land for others to farm.  Some worked it well and made a fortune, while others were reduced to poverty.  The book of Ruth shows some of these dynamics and shows family being the main way that these circumstances, when they arose, were alleviated.  Likewise Paul says that any Christian who has a needy relative needs to take care of them so that the Church is not burdened.  Otherwise, they are worse than unbelievers.

TO BE CONTINUED