Slavery and Myth

Here is a link to a remarkable speech from Joseph D'Souza, a leader in the church of India. In a little over eight minutes, he speaks on the largest source of modern slavery, the caste system and the degradation of the Dalit people. D'Souza gave this speech at the Third Lausanna Congress on World Evangelization, held last month in Cape Town, South Africa.

Reconciliation - Exploited and Oppressed People The Lausanne Global Conversation

Two of his points stand out to me as related and devastating.

Slavery is Founded in Creation Myth
At the base of the evil that causes a person to enslave another person is a belief that each person is created with greater or lesser value. If race is seen as a biological difference that reflects God's value on us, then we are not far from dividing ourselves along the same lines we believe God percieves. And the worst part of this sort of thinking is that our devaluing of another person can then be defended as reflective of our Creator's own design. This is what is happening in India. American slaveholders used the same myth.

The Church is Susceptible to Functioning Under the Same Myth
The consistent message of the Bible is that all humans are made in God's image and this high value in the eyes of God is modeled among his people, who live together and value each other in counter-cultural ways. There is no line that divides us one from another in value. Paul makes this point very carefully in Galatians 3:28-29. God certainly makes us different from each other with differing roles to play, but the value of each person is not determined by role.

And yet, the church gets this wrong so often. I found it chilling to hear D'Souza describe the church graveyard where the dead were divided by caste. Those graves now stand as a permanent reminder that the church can profess equality at the feet of Jesus and yet not allow the Gospel to shatter the sin endemic in so many cultural norms.