Slavery is wrong. The Bible does NOT teach that slavery is O.K. Those are the first thing that need to be said before we can talk about this week’s text from Colossians 3:22 – 4:1. Any African-American listening to or reading these verses is bound to react in a way which I as a white person in America will not. To hear the beginning of verse 22, “Slaves, obey your masters,” has to cut deep into the heart of anyone whose ancestors were slaves and for whom the effects of slavery and concomitant color bias still shape one’s experience.
So before I blithely launch into using this passage to speak to contemporary employer-employee relationships, I have to carefully point out that the whole trajectory of God’s kingdom is toward the freeing of slaves from oppression and that if dutiful life in Christ requires a humble submission to an unjust institution, that in no way condones or justifies that institution.
What is more, it could be well to draw the analogy between ancient slavery in the Roman world and some modern employment more tightly than we might expect. That is, those factors that we imagine make today’s employment different from slavery, like being paid a wage, freedom to choose an employer, and more respect and human dignity than slaves received, are definitely not significant in the working conditions of many people in the world. For many workers today, their wage is really no more than the subsistence given to slaves; they have no genuine freedom to choose other employment; and they are treated not as human beings but as simple means to the end of profit for the stockholders of a company. That latter condition is true even of some highly-paid workers who suppose that they have a great deal of freedom. What they lack is any genuine acknowledgement of their humanity, which is evident as soon as their employment or level of compensation is no longer conducive to an expected level of profit.
Thus despite the danger of hearing or communicating in this text things that Paul, and God through Paul, never meant to say about slavery, it has much to say about how Christians in current employment situations at all levels ought to behave, even when those situations are unjust and/or unpleasant.
One other caution, however, is necessary. These directions to slaves and masters come in the context of directions for ordering of a Christian household in a time when slaves were often a part of the household. Thus, it may be stretching things a bit too far to see these directions to obey masters as applying in exactly the same way to employees and employers in work situations outside a home.
With all those cautions in mind, there is still in these verses a gracious possibility for the redemption of work from its curse in the fall. Verse 23 offers a way to labor with a spirit and attitude which gives profound meaning to our work, that it is all, no matter how menial and difficult, service to Christ. Thus ordinary work, even degrading work, becomes a holy, sacrificial offering to God, a carrying of the Cross, when it is done in the right spirit. Working conditions may not improve, but our self-perception of who we are when we work is vastly changed.