It is unbelievably ironic that America ever fell susceptible to the sin of slavery. The golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and Jesus articulated this very sentiment in Luke 6:31.
The irony lies in the fact that America was trying to get out from under the oppressive thumb of the British monarchy, but turned right around and subjugated blacks as slaves. One of our founding fathers, Samuel Hopkins, recognized this contradiction when he wrote regarding the American Revolution that:
The occasion of the present war is such, as in the most clear and striking manner to point out the sin of holding our blacks in slavery, and admonish us to reform, and render us shockingly inconsistent with ourselves, and amazingly guilty if we refuse. God has raised up men to attempt to deprive us of liberty; and the evil we are threatened with is slavery. This, with our vigorous attempts to avoid it, is the ground of all our distresses … The very inconsistent part you act, while you are thus enslaving your fellow men and yet condemning and strenuously opposing those who are attempting to bring you and your children into a state of bondage, much lighter than that in which you keep your slaves.
Even George Washington weighed in on this when he said that England chose to, “make us as tame, and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.”
Trying to fight for one’s own freedom while oppressing others in the same manner is the kind of attitude that is roundly condemned in Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant in Matt. 18:23-35. Frightening stuff, and if it isn’t enough to scare us all into a state of obedience, I don’t know what will. Ultimately the Golden Rule points not just to neighbor-to-neighbor behavior, but God-to-us-to-neighbor behavior. Really, this is a theological not a political point – if we are not merciful to others, why should God be merciful to us?
