Bart Barber

Among the great Christmas passages in the New Testament: Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus aevery knee will bow, of … [Read more...] about Slave Christmas

I've been blogging for a long time, and slavery was never something on my radar when it came to topics to discuss. I'm not the Civil War's equivalent of a "Holocaust denier." The aspects of our regional past and our denominational history that touch upon slavery are the least flattering portions of our story, and I'd rather tell other parts of the story. What changed this for me? Why have I written a series of posts on the question of slavery? Was it Ferguson? Was it Eric Garner? No. It actually didn't have anything to do with race at all. I've been writing about slavery because of the … [Read more...] about Why the Slavery Question Is Important

Our modern world economy offers options to us that were not previously available (or widely available). Some of these developments make slavery less desirable than it once was (which is why passages like Exodus 21:5 are inscrutable to us). We quite naturally take these things for granted, but they make our present wage-labor system possible: Money: Minted coinage was not in use in the Levant until after the Babylonian Captivity. The use of precious metals as a medium of exchange dates back to sometime during the lifetime of Abraham. The first time anyone bought anything in the Bible by … [Read more...] about The Dawning of Emancipation

Eliezer of Damascus was the trusted slave of Abraham. He managed all of Abraham's worldly affairs. He was, until Ishmael and Isaac arrived, Abraham's heir-apparent. We have no reason to believe that he ever tasted the business end of a whip. We have no reason to believe that he was malnourished or ill-clothed or mistreated in any way. We have every reason to suspect that he partook in the prosperity of Abraham. I prefer my life to his. Freedom is of great benefit, and I desire for all to have it (1 Corinthians 7:21). Plaguing our conversation about slavery, however, is the ill-founded, … [Read more...] about I’d Rather Be Abraham’s Slave Eliezer Than…

Few things in the Bible are more countercultural than what we read there about slavery. It runs contrary to ancient Greco-Roman slave culture. It runs contrary to nineteenth-century American slave culture. It runs contrary to twenty-first-century libertarian culture. There's something here to afflict everyone. First, the data: Jesus nowhere advocated the abolition of slavery. Search for it in vain, for there is nothing in the gospels (or anywhere else in the New Testament) that delivers to us a clear abolitionist message. If you're thinking to yourself, "Man, if I lived somewhere that … [Read more...] about The Bible and Slavery

Today I launch a series of posts on the subject of slavery. The thinking that lies behind this series has been brewing over the course of years. Only rarely do I wait so long before putting thoughts into writing. What is the cause here? This subject is fraught with difficulties that impede our discussion of it. I dedicate the initial post, therefore, to an exploration of those difficulties, somewhat in order to try to exalt every valley and lay low every mountain and hill before embarking upon the processional. It is hard to talk about slavery because we struggle to separate the subject of … [Read more...] about Why We Find It Difficult to Talk about Slavery

I'm not black, but I am a lot of other things. All of them influence my reaction to the death of Eric Garner: I am a Christian: That means I'm someone proclaiming the message of peace on earth and good will toward men. These events must trouble me, because they are moving us away from that end. And as I write, I want to write things that will move us toward peace on earth and good will toward men. I am a Baptist: For much of our history and in much of the world today (and dare I say perhaps again in our near future?), Baptists have suffered under an adverse relationship with the civil … [Read more...] about I’m Not Black, But…

Last November I went to Senegal—one trip in a series by which our church is trying to take the gospel to an Unengaged, Unreached People Group. While living among our people group, we stay in tents that we pitch in the Community Center. This building houses the offices of the rural community's President, Vice-President, and Secretary. A "rural community" in Senegal is something like a township in some US states, and they elect officers. God has blessed us with a good relationship with the President and the Vice-President of the rural community. The President is a believer, and on that very trip … [Read more...] about My Own Miracle Story

Among the more interesting books I've recently read is Miracles by Eric Metaxas. Together with several members from my church, I recently heard Metaxas at an event at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and purchased a copy of the book (which he graciously autographed). I finished it a couple of days ago. Few books have both thrilled and puzzled me as much as this one. The overall design of the book is deductive-inductive. The first few chapters propose an deductive case for the possibility of the miraculous. From the current state of theoretical physics and from the philosophical … [Read more...] about A Case for the Miraculous?

Thick, black smoke billows from a burning car in Ferguson, Missouri. A grand jury has investigated the shooting of Michael Brown and has determined that the evidence does not offer sufficient cause to indict officer Darren Wilson for any crime in the shooting. We often use the word "apocalypse" to describe events that are chaotic and destructive. Both adjectives certainly describe 2014 in Ferguson. First came the shooting. Then came the riots. Two other young black men have died in the Greater St. Louis are in the meanwhile. The Missouri National Guard had to intervene. The Department of … [Read more...] about Ferguson Apocalypse