Jesus gave this teaching about masters and slaves in Luke 17:7-10
What is clear here is that Jesus gives a teaching that referenced the life experiences of his listeners. He reminds them of the way in which they themselves treat their servants and encourages them to work in service to God without waiting for pats on the head.
What is not so clear is whether Jesus can be seen as endorsing slavery. He clearly acknowledges the practice among his disciples. I find this quite different from Jesus instructing his disciples on how to own slaves. If, in fact, the disciples were in the habit of treating their slaves in a more friendly manner, say as hirees or brothers, Jesus would have drawn on another example.
Of course, that still leaves the passage as a difficult reading. Clearly eliminating slavery was not Jesus mission on earth. I can say that there is in Luke 17:7-10 a lesson that transcends our cultural rejection of slavery.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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