Slavery Part 5: Slavery in the World Today

There are forms of bondage in the world today that you might not think of as being slavery.

You may recall that in the first part of this series I talked about how the Egyptians put themselves into bondage in exchange for food during the seven years of famine. Joseph agreed to allow the people to live on their land and take the Pharaoh’s grain in exchange for 20% of their crops indefinitely. This was considered bondage. In our society, most of us pay much more in taxes than 20%, even though we or our ancestors were never in the position where we needed to make such a deal to save our lives as these Egyptians did.

In part 2 of the series, we also discussed the ways that a person could “sell himself” into slavery if he needed to for lack of means to meet his families’ needs. In doing so, he gives up some (but by no means all) of his rights as a citizen. Likewise, in our society, when a person declares bankruptcy, he gives up some of his usual rights in exchange for protection from creditors. Similarly, once a person commits a crime (including a war crime), and is convicted, he gives up some (or all) of his rights as a person and he is not given a choice in the matter.

You may have heard about proposals from the Bush administration about a Guest Worker Program. You may not know that Bush’s proposed program is an expansion on an already existing program. Though it is limited, this program employs foreigners at wages often less than minimum wage, and once the worker chooses an employer, he must stay in the program for the agreed amount of time and is not allowed to work for anyone else. This is about the same thing as temporary slavery under the Mosaic Law.

For other forms of modern slavery, see Greg’s post on the subject. In my next post, I will talk more about spiritual slavery.