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f you take the coastal highway out of Cotonou, Benin, and drive west toward Togo, after an hour or so you'll see the sign to Ouidah. It's just off the highway ---- a dusty, rundown, one-buffalo little town, where it looks like not much ever happens. An unlikely location for what my guidebook called an "African Auschwitz." Truth Sets Us Free
Because most of us have never been imprisoned, it is hard to identify with slavery or captivity. And, consequently, to fully appreciate freedom, Christ once said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (Bible verse John 8:32). If we've never known captivity, some of the power of these words of Jesus is lost on us. The truth sets us free? Free from what?
It's a remainder that this part of the world was once known as the slave coast. Quidah, Benin, was one of the main ports from where slaves were shipped to New World plantations. For hundreds of thousands of human beings, it was a place of horror and despair. There's not much to see now. The old Portuguese fort has been restored and is now a museum. A few rusty muskets are on display, as well as some grim-looking neck and leg irons.
Also a faded print of that famous diagram showing slaves packed like sardines between decks of a slave ship.
My guide made the most of the few exhibits and then led me out to the courtyard. "Here," he explained, "they waited. Maybe days, perhaps weeks or even months, for a ship to carry them away." The courtyard is quite pleasant now. It has several big shade trees and some vegetable plots belonging to the museum staff. I tried to imagine this place crammed with captive men, women and children, waiting out their last days in Africa.
They would have been wrenched from their villages, perhaps hundreds of miles inland, and forced to march, yoked together, to the coast. They would have seen their homes destroyed and families and friends killed, or die from exhaustion. Now they cowered under the tropical sun, awaiting an uncertain fate.
The slaves could smell and hear the ocean, just a few hundred yards away. For me it was refreshing, and a reassuring link with the world I knew and terrifying element in the horror their lives had become. They had nothing to look forward to but exile, more suffering, cruelty and hopelessness.
I tried to imagine what it was like. But I couldn't. Like the preserved Nazi concentration camps, Ouidah cannot really recreate the horror of it's past. I knew my response to the African Auschwitz was inadequate.
Freedom's Price
The slave trade between Africa and the New World lasted several centuries. But eventually the world's conscience asserted itself, and slave trade was declared illegal. British warships prowled the waters off West Africa's slave coast, impounding the slave ships and liberating the captives on the nearest shore. But this "freedom" often became a cruel joke. |
The people who first heard these words didn't appreciate them either. They were Jews----descendants of God's chosen people. They firmly believed that, at least in the spiritual sense, they were already free. So they answered Jesus, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? (Bible verse John 8:33). Willing Captives
How do you free people who refuse to admit they are captive? Or who have accepted their condition of slavery? This, tragically, is what can happen to those who become slaves. Newly captured slaves thought only of escape and freedom. But if the forced march and the months at Ouidah, or the horrors of the slave ship didn't break their will, the first years of plantation life did. Slaves of Sin
Is it any different with the slaves of sin? "All have sinned," says the Bible. Jesus was talking not to self-righteous first-century religious bigots only, but to you and me. Today, most of us wouldn't react as angrily as they did. We probably wouldn't react at all. Our culture is more tolerant of human frailty, and most of us don't feel is necessary to defend out level of righteousness. Sure we sin, but so does everybody else. "I'll Say Good-bye Here"
Earlier this year, I visited a friend who is serving a long prison sentence. My friend is a trustee, and he pretty much has the run of the place, inside the fence. For several hours, we almost forgot where we were. Just two men, enjoying each other's company. http://www.towards-success.com/amazingpicsofmiracles
Jesus replied, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Bible verse John 8:34). His audience became angrier, and some even seemed ready to kill him----this man who offered to set them free.
New slaves went through a breaking-in period. Branded, beaten and dehumanized, all but the strongest resigned themselves to their fate.
We'd probably think Jesus was overstating things a bit. Slaves of sin? Helpless captives trapped in sin? That's putting it a bit strongly. Sin, like slavery, is something we learn to live with. But there is a problem. The Bible says sin will kill us! If the penalty of sin is not an occasional guilty conscience, but death, it is something we need to be freed from. Sinners need a savior.
That's why the good news Christ brought was a promise of freedom, and life. Early in his ministry, he announced he had come to "preach good news to the poor," "proclaim freedom for the prisoners" and "release the oppressed" (Biblr verse Luke 4:18). We can become so accustomed to thinking of Christ as "our Lord and Savior" and believing he "died for us" that we can lose sight of what this wonderful truth really means. Christ came to show us a way out of being held captive in a destructive way of life, the ultimate penalty which is death.
Perhaps we struggle with alcoholism or drug addiction. Or we are the helpless victims of an abused past or racial prejudice. Or we are homosexual and want to quit the life-style. All of us live with the effect of vanity, jealousy, lust and greed. These are the results of sin----yours and mine. Sin holds us prisoner just as surely as iron bars, stone walls and razor wire.
But if we accept that prison as a part of life, the good news of freedom from sin seems unrealistic and irrelevant. Or even a threat. And so the good news of promised freedom doesn't seem to be good news about anything we need, or at least want to be bothered with right now.
Perhaps we remember all too well our failed attempts to overcome our faults. We don't want to go through that again. Maybe one day, when we are older, we'll have time to think about these things. For now, we may as well resign ourselves to living with the burden of being what we are. Like slaves, we accept and quickly smother any stirrings of spiritual reawakening.
Then it was time to go. For me, the bars, the locks and razor-wire fences held no threat. I was free to walk through them. But as we strolled toward the perimeter fence, my friend stopped suddenly and said, "I'll say good-bye here." A yellow line crossed the road, perhaps 15 or so feet from the gate. "I can't cross that," he told me. It was just a painted line, but for him it was a very real barrier.
Sin is like that. It traps us with barriers that we impose on ourselves, or allow to be imposed on us. It is a very personal prison, but no less real. Christ has said he can free us from these dungeons of the mind. He paid the price. He served our sentence. He stands there even now, on the other side of our line, with the promise of freedom.
But this offer of freedom demands a response. We must listen to the gospel and think about it. Then, if we believe it is truth that we can set us free, we must trust it and walk across our line to freedom from the slavery of sin.