“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.’
Tons of thoughts on that. You?
Not to in any way denigrate the horrors of the system of chattel slavery that we’re examining, there are many forms of slavery.
Starting of course with us being slaves to our own passions, and our own appetites, and our own sinful condition...a condition that can only be overcome in much the same way Frederick Douglass overcame his condition, which is by reading and appropriating in ourselves the truths contained in God’s Book.
In this sense it seems to me that the slaveholders themselves were slaves. Miserable ones at that, even in the lap of luxury.
In the bit of reading I’ve done on the subject I seem to recall that one of the points made by the abolitionists was that chattel slavery not only made wretches out of those who were held captive, but also hideously degraded those who held them captive.
I think this is true.
I think that those who are held in physical bondage can in fact be more free, in a very real sense, than those who possess the riches and power of the world.
Again, not to play down the horrors of chattel slavery. It is far better to be the wholly-free man that God intended us to be: physically, morally, intellectually, and most importantly, spiritually.