Fundamental differences exist between the wholly economic exploitation of the mainly African slaves of recent centuries, and the slavery of early Christian and pre-Christian times. The cruelty and grinding poverty which were so much a feature of the former, are largely absent from first century Romano-Greek culture, where slavery was not so much a vile oppression, as a means of organising society, and which, bizarre as it may sound, approximated to the social security system of the day. Indeed, many free men sold themselves into slavery in order to avoid starvation for themselves and their families. On this point, it was not unknown for slaves to buy themselves out of one form of slavery (e.g. heavy agricultural work), and then sell themselves into slavery within a domestic household. As a result they would become a family retainer, often developing a discrete skill or trade to the mutual benefit of themselves and their new masters. It was certainly the case that some people actually sold themselves into slavery in order to climb socially. Moreover, in the Roman paterfamilias, the Roman head of house(hold) treated his slaves and his own sons exactly alike, having in fact, the (legal) power of life and death over both. Against this background, Paul’s exhortations to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 7:22) become a little clearer, especially when it is understood that very little difference existed between a slave and a freedman, since both owed exclusive duties of service to master and patron respectively. It is my belief, therefore, that slavery is part and parcel of the Christian life, and that my servility in Harlech was a needed, indeed essential part of the conversion act.
The whole thing became clearer still when I later realized that the Christ or Messiah was a king, and thus Christians were kingsmen or vassals. The word ‘vassal’ brings the argument full circle, since it derives from the Greek, basileus, (king). This seems odd really, until you realize that to our English ears, the Greeks, and indeed the Spaniards (but the other way round), mix up their ‘v’ and ‘b’ sounds. Moreover, all the great covenants or deals (for that is what a covenant is) of the Old Testament involved vassals. The great covenants of the faith recorded in scripture, are said to be modelled on suzerainty treaties, in which a Suzerain or regional super king offers his protection to lesser vassal kings, in return for tribute, as was the case with Nebuchadrezar’s first incursion into Judah in 605 BC. Usually, these treaties were very workaday affairs, enabling life to go on in a normal fashion, and especially allowing cross-border trade to be conducted in an orderly manner.
Despite my overwhelming feelings of despair on that day in Harlech, I remember being consciously aware that the deal I had done had that same workaday feel about it—I had had the nerve to approach Almighty God with a proposition and He had accepted it without fuss. The realisation didn’t dawn on me until much later on, that He has been doing this kind of thing for a very long time, and as with many others before me, it involved my trading everything that I was, or could become, not for my social security—as in Roman slavery, but rather for my eternal security. Following our return from Wales, I began to pray regularly, prayers which were short and to the point. I would usually pray kneeling beside the bath for the sake of privacy, since I had not spoken to anyone of this event, Chris included. Soon, things began to change.
4
Early Prayers
Our return from the Christmas break in Wales was to a situation that had worsened further, and this centred upon the business premises we occupied at that time. Seven years after opening our office, we had been persuaded by our eloquent accountant to join him and another (bookkeeping) business, in renting a large Victorian house. The stated intention was the joint operation of a “financial services centre,” by our two resident businesses and which would involve a kind of symbiosis, in which each firm would actively introduce business to the others. What actually transpired was very different, and eighteen months on from that decision very little new business had come our way. As the recession of the early nineties deepened, the atmosphere in the premises changed, and we realized that our role was a very different one to that discussed at the outset. The truth was that we were viewed simply as subtenants, intended to provide a useful subsidy towards the high rent of the property, and to bring an air of “busy . . . ness” to the place as a result of our much larger, established client base. Our offices were on the second floor, fully two flights of stairs removed from the ground floor reception desk, which was manned by the accountancy staff. Resentment, it seems, had been building up because of the need to sort the high volume of mail we received, and also because most of our visitors were insurance office inspectors requiring direction up the stairs to our offices. But a much more sinister reason lay behind the poisoned atmosphere which prevailed upon our return to work that January.
On the first day back I discovered that during our short, holiday absence, our offices had been entered, and the computer server had been turned off. Although this might seem inconsequential, we had been advised not to turn the machine off, because to do so (especially in those early days of office computing) could cause hard disc failure through what was called “cold booting.” Confrontation with my antagonistic landlord now seemed inevitable and duly arrived one hour later. During that encounter I was advised that I had no rights to privacy, especially so, since my rent payment was (ten days) overdue. I realized that this heated exchange had been set up to raise this very issue of a missed rent quarter day, and the heinous crime of taking a Christmas holiday in such circumstances. If I had expected sympathy on account of Chris’s illness I was to be disappointed, for in that same exchange she was accused of fouling the shared ladies toilets, and afterwards, it took us a full week to piece together the full import of what was going on. Throughout the previous year, Chris had been dragging her emaciated frame past reception, up those stairs and into our office under the gaze of our landlord and his staff, and they had been frightened by what they had seen. Fear, it turned out, was the motivating factor for all the antagonism we were receiving, and the name of that fear was AIDS. Chris’s mysterious affliction had been labeled in ignorance, and she had been blamed for some unconnected incident in the ladies toilets, because of her anorexic tendency to use the toilets more frequently than is ‘normal.’ Events moved rapidly from this point on, and by the end of the week the toilets had been segregated on the basis of ignorant fear rather than gender, whilst the heating was cut off pending our payment of the rent. Such an irrevocable breakdown in inter-office relationships seemed to offer no prospect of an end to these frustrations, and our forced vacation of the premises seemed inevitable.
Every day, in the privacy of the bathroom I had been praying, praying for an end to this insoluble, and now worsened situation of trying to carry on working at the office. In circumstances where one’s very spirit is being sapped by the hopelessness of continual illness, I prayed for help as I set my plans to vacate the offices. The first answer to prayer came in the form of a visit from a man who had just set up in the business of office relocation. It was a quite literal ‘Godsend,’ he dealt with everything from telephones to office furniture removal, and by the middle of February we were out of that place. Importantly, the actual move was achieved in complete secrecy across a single weekend—in order to avoid unpleasantness and perhaps further harassment—and we were able to leave those offices on Friday night, beginning work in our new location on Monday morning. On that morning, I found myself working in the huge attic room of our home; exactly the same place where in Victorian times, a previous owner of the house had operated his silk weaving machine. If our evacuation from the office in ‘Dunkirk’ style had been a second answer to prayer, then the wrath of our erstwhile landlord, seeking legal restitution for his perceived losses, would require further supplications to our new Helper.
Help