Anonymous Asks (419)

“How should Christians think about making reparations for slavery?”

Scripture appears to give a qualified nod of approval to efforts to compensate one generation for the losses of another, but I’m not sure it’s the type of compensation any modern, Western government should feel terribly comfortable emulating. I’m thinking of the time the Gibeonite survivors in Israel raised a legitimate claim against Saul’s family for unsuccessfully attempting to exterminate them.

The “reparations” requested and received by the Gibeonites involved hanging seven relatives of Saul for the sins of their family.

Dodgy Options

Perhaps we should consider lynching the descendants of slave owners. Or not. It’s a bit dodgy to use random incidents from Bible history as policy for a secular, modern government.

A few other things are worth pointing out about that questionable precedent for discharging intergenerational corporate guilt. (1) The reparations David made for the misconduct of Saul’s family were not monetary. (2) As Saul’s kin, some or all of the men he hanged may also have participated in the Gibeonite massacre, and thus got exactly what they deserved. (3) Not many years had passed between the wrong and its compensation, so that some or most of the people compensated had actually incurred the loss personally.

All these factors make the Gibeonite story incompletely analogous to the question of modern US slavery reparations.

Limited Analogies

Another possible biblical precedent for righting intergenerational wrongs may be the seventh of seven woes in Matthew:

“Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”

Again, however, there are distinguishing circumstances. The generation about to pay the price for all these historical wrongs was actually the worst of all generations. In almost forty years of persecuting the early church, the religious Jews of the first century proved they were not only the children of their fathers but true demon seed, fully deserving of the punishment meted out by the Romans on Jerusalem in AD70. Also, once again, the “reparations” were not monetary, compensating the victims. They were very much punitive, dealing with the guilt of the offenders. The only real commonality seems to be corporate guilt un-dealt with over time.

In some respects, then, it may be a good thing that secular governments rarely cite Old Testament history or the dealings of God with the nation of Israel as their precedent for attempting to right ancient wrongs in the present. However, I’m not sure making financial reparations to the distant relatives of former slaves from the public purse has any kind of legitimate biblical precedent either.

Questions, Questions

There are solid reasons to question both the fairness and practical utility of any proposed formal reparations package for slavery in America. An all-knowing God can justly punish anyone he pleases. A largely ignorant human government is wholly deficient in the necessary wisdom to do the same.

The US abolished slavery in 1865, when its population was 31.4 million. That means that 10/11 of the current US population were born in or immigrated to America post-slavery. These had nothing personally to do with the American slave trade and bear zero responsibility for it. Only a tiny fraction of these folks received any benefit from the proceeds of slavery in the form of inheritances. That alone makes slavery reparations from the US public purse a fundamentally unfair proposition. The vast majority of its citizens bought into the “American Dream” without being advised that its credit was a bit overextended.

Furthermore, we are now more than six generations downstream from abolition, assuming a 25-year generation. Whatever terrible things may have happened to my great-great-great-great grandparents, wherever they may have lived, compensating me for their losses today is about as superfluous a gesture as anyone can conceive. I did not know them, could not have known them, and I have never felt their pain or even its most distant echoes. Hypothetical reparations made to me do not in any way remedy the sufferings of others long ago. My right to collect on debts owed to people who lived a century and a half ago is contestable in every possible way.

Frankly, don’t we all need to take a step back and stop responding to the race-baiters, who are really only interested in whatever grift they can rake in from the race wars?

Vexed and Daunting

Of all the positions it is possible to take on political issues, reparations is one of the most vexed and daunting. Of course Christians will disagree about it. I have only to spend sufficient time with my black brothers in Christ and that discussion is bound to come up. I have lost at least one Christian friendship over race issues, and I have no definitive answer to how Christians should think about this particular aspect of the subject. I only know it’s an incredibly divisive issue that the Bible does not unambiguously address.

Whenever NT scripture does not address any subject directly, Christians tend to differ. Understand, I am not calling American slavery a minor evil, but the moral and spiritual value of so-called reparations for it six-plus generations downstream is a debatable matter in the nth degree. I believe the Lord cares more about how we behave toward each other in responding to the question than about any answer churches may come to, especially because for many Christians the issue of slavery reparations is no more than an abstract discussion. After all, governments will do what they do no matter what we may think about it. They will not be seeking my opinion.

Let us not differ to the point that we lose track of whose we are and with whom we really belong.