In this post, I expand my previous post on the image of God by relating it to the work, “The Complete Autobiographies of Fredrick Douglass,” pages 41-57 in which the author shares his history as a slave.
In Douglass’ autobiography, he narrates his experience as a slave in the United States. As a young man, he spends time working for a series of owners. First, he works for Mr. Covey who treats him and all his slaves with cruelty and intentionally finds reasons to beat and harass them. Outside of his work as a slave-owner, Covey is known as a very religious and well-to-do man who holds worship and prayer at his place with his family and slaves. Douglass was neglected and beaten so badly that he took to pleading with his previous owner, Mr. Thomas, who denied him respite and sent him back to face his owner. Douglass continued to receive beatings until he finally stood up for himself and almost killed Mr. Covey. This led to his being sold to another man, Mr. Freeland. Freeland was not religious but treated the slaves with a little more dignity than Covey. Douglass even gained the passion to begin teaching his fellow slaves how to read. In the coming years, Douglass would conspire with some of his friends to secure their liberty by running away. They ultimately failed in their attempt to escape and Douglass was gripped by the fear, not of death, but of being separated from his friends. This happened, and Douglass was returned to Baltimore where he began.
Douglass’ autobiography points out some implications of the image of God and what happens when that image is minimized, denied, or ignored. As stated in my last post and as Scripture makes clear, all human beings are made in God’s image. This gives all humans equal value before God and before each other. Unfortunately, this equal value is often minimized, denied, and ignored. In Douglass’ context, the doctrine of the image of God had no implications for how slaveholders treated their slaves. Likewise, the doctrine had no implications for the public view of slavery as a whole. At the time, this was justified in a variety of ways. Scripture was either interpreted as not applying the image of God to black people or only applying a partial image of God status to black people. This is a poor interpretation of Scripture. As pointed out earlier, the image of God cannot be possessed in part, but only in whole. Another way slavery was justified was by arguing that black people were better off in close proximity to ‘civilized society’ than they were in ‘barbaric’ Africa. This only highlighted the common view that whites were the keyholders to ‘civilized society,’ ‘superior culture,’ and ‘God Himself’ and their job was to impart these superior values to the rest of the world, by whatever means necessary. Douglass rightly recognized that the religiosity of his Christian slaveholders was fake. But Douglass didn’t blame religion; instead he blamed the people who twisted religion to justify their cruel and oppressive behavior. One of his greatest lessons was that change would not occur without his participation. His circumstances only improved once he stood up for himself and fought back. Likewise, he learned that slavery was perpetuated by keeping slaves uneducated, intellectually and morally deprived, and rationally deficient. He knew education would help slaves rise above the dehumanized state in which white people placed them. This speaks to the primary lesson we can glean from Douglass’ experience as a slave. When people are shown how much value they have as humans created in God’s image, they are more likely to live like it. This is encouraging today for people who are stuck in economic and social systems that disadvantage them. Truly, we should fight against these systems and advocate for their topple, but we also need to help form disadvantaged peoples’ vision of themselves as fully human, fully valuable, and fully embraced by God. This encourages my mission as I attempt to re-marry spirituality and theology in Christian cultures. People tend to see God as either indifferent to the suffering of oppressive systems or directly involved in keeping them going. But neither of these are true. Instead, God is passionately and directly opposed to these systems. God also rules over all systems of oppression, and God’s ultimate judgment over these systems is based on the truth only God possesses. Likewise, the church needs to be engaged in directly opposing these systems just as God is. In my mission I want to be clear in my affirmation of the humanity of all people and the implication that all humans have the equal power to rule God’s creation in their own spheres of creational ability. No human has the God-given right—or any right—to take this ability from another human being.
Douglass, Fredrick. The Complete Autobiographies of Fredrick Douglass. Wilder Publications. 2008.
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