Religion and Slavery

Religion and Slavery

In this article three of the most popular religions are being critiqued on their stand on slavery.  Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have a controversial history from their founders for not having a clear standing on objecting slavery.  Jesus never expressed his opinion about slavery but most Christians would say that he didn’t have to because the rest of his actions showed that he would never be for such an idea.  Now when it comes to Judaism, in Moses time there were many of God’s people in the Bible that had slaves but they were instructed to not mistreat them.  Did slaves back than mean the same thing as they do now; is it still the same context?  Probably not, I hope this article is not on a outsiders perspective because if one does not study the scriptures in a hermeneutics fashion they might misinterpret what is actually being said.  Same with Muhammad’s teaching, I do not know much about it but can we assume that Muhammad had slaves, not unless we have proof.  Muhammad did say that freeing slaves was an act of piety.

            Maybe the history of slavery was a very rocky slope at the time and maybe it was a symbol back then, a symbol for our slave to sin.  I mean God did say that after we disobeyed him in the Bible that life would get harder and maybe slavery was a part of that.  I do think that God knew that we could get out of it, that with his help we can learn to not be a slave to sin.  All these religion figures that we looked at had one thing for sure in common, they followed God.  So I do believe that Moses and Muhammad tried to follow God and maybe at the time slavery was not ready to be abolished yet.  Jesus on the other had since Christians consider him to be perfect in his deity then he knew exactly what he was doing when he did not say anything about slavery at least in scripture.

Buddha

Buddha

Recently an artifact was discovered from archaeologists searching through the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan.  Surprise it was a stone statue of prince Siddhartha.  If you do not know who that is, it’s the founder of the Buddha faith.  It was said that this statue was a depiction of Siddhartha before he created Buddhism.  His Dad did not want him to see what the real world looked like because he knew his son would be burdened by it.  Sure enough once Siddhartha did adventure out of the palace on his own he was burdened b all the pain people had to go through.  Apparently it was noted that when Siddhartha came back from adventuring out he was pessimistic about the world around him.   

            It is when he abandoned palace life that the real story began.  He became a poor man who only grew more and more in his knowledge of the world that many started to follow him.  Before he founded Buddhism it was said that people followed him like cult worship.  I’m assuming it was a deep respect for Siddhartha that brought people to follow Buddhism in the first place.  People are looking for something to hope in somewhat on their own terms.  Also Buddhism advertises inner strength than relying on someone else that may fail you.
link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47722249

Jewish Jesus

Jewish Jesus

This article was found again on the CNN website, see some consistency here.  The topic today is about Jews reclaiming Jesus as an important element in their Judaism.  For centuries Jews were sceptical of Jesus because other religions believe Jesus to have a divinity, whereas the Jews do not.  That is why in some ways they did not want anything to do with Jesus, and they dismissed him quite a bit from their teaching.  This generation of Jews however want to be better equated with Jesus because they see him as a good example to look at, as Jesus himself was a Jew.  They will not however still accept Jesus deity like Christians do.  A simple way to explain what Christians believe Jesus to be is this: teacher, healer, and savior (son of God).  What the Jews believe is that Jesus was a teacher and a healer but not savior.

            What really stood out to me when I was reading this article was when  this woman,  Levine mentioned that it is important to know what you believe about the religion you claim to be yours.  She said you owe it to people out of respect when you put that kind of religious label on yourself.   It is true for Christians as well, when we call ourselves Christians we need to know about what we claim, we need to know Christ!  Not just know a little about him but know his words, his actions, his commandments for us.  So if anyone asks about what we believe we won’t be stumbling for words but we will know what to say.  I think this is especially true if we are going to wear something like a Jesus shirt.  Actually the other day I saw a group of people in a museum wearing shirts that said, “You Need Jesus”.  Well I think that we don’t need to wear a shirt to say that because it’s almost like we are telling people this but we don’t care enough to just talk to them about it (I hope that was at least part of the intent).  But yes we can’t just wear a t-shirt and hope we did our job on telling people about Jesus.  No I think that shirt doesn’t tell us much about Jesus at all.  
Link:  http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/05/jews-reclaim-jesus-as-one-of-their-own/?iref=allsearch