Does Your Message Set People Free?

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What does faith say about human dignity, liberation, the value of each person and each people group? does it condone or condemn bondage, manipulation, and exploitation?

Does it create a ruckus because it liberates people? Does it threaten power structures and tyrants? If so, that is a good sign.

When Paul's entourage showed up in one village, they found a girl being used as a fortune teller and abused as a means of wealth by some greedy men. They spoke a word of liberation to her soul and with her new found freedom, she became useless to them. This enraged them.

Pimps do not like that sort of thing.

"When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods."

This little slave girl had powers, but she was powerless. Paul and Silas spoke deliverance to her and she was released from the powers that possessed her. That did not sit well with those who profited by keeping her in bondage.

She had special "gifts" that brought them benefits, but it was at her expense. Now she was free and they did not like that.

There are people in the world who profit, knowingly or, sometimes, unknowingly, from the oppression of others who are in bondage.

When the message of faith, as good news, starts to liberate people, the systems that oppress go into spasm.

It is not universally popular to set people free. It has economic consequences that threaten the oppressors.

This has been a reality from day-1 and has its manifestation in every generation and context.

The details change, but the reality is always the same.