My Bondage, My Freedom

I recently read Frederick Douglass’s memoirs, My Bondage, My Freedom. It is an outstanding book. Written in 1855, it is one of at least three autobiographies written by Douglass, an escaped slave who became famous as a writer and orator in the abolitionist movement. Here are a few ideas that stand out to me from the book: (Read more)

1) Spiritual hypocrisy is nauseating. Douglass grew up as a slave in Eastern Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay. Many of the slave-owners and slave-drivers he knew were people who professed to be Christians. They said their prayers in the morning. They sang hymns with their families. They read the Bible every day. On Sunday mornings, they went to church. Yet many of them were cruel, vicious, hard-hearted people. They were hypocrites. (In contrast to this, one of the kindest slave-owners known to Douglass was a notoriously irreligious man.) In one chapter, Douglass described a particularly cruel master to whom he belonged for a while. This man kept his slaves on a near starvation diet and refused to provide them with enough clothing to ward off the cold. When a revivalist came to town and organized a camp meeting, the slaves were amazed to watch their master respond to the sermon by going forward, tears streaming down his face, to plead with God for salvation. The slaves rejoiced – now, at last, they would be adequately fed. To their disappointment, however, nothing about this man’s life changed. Even though he was welcomed into the church and eventually became a congregational leader, his so-called ‘conversion’ had not altered his behavior toward his slaves at all. When Douglass finally escaped to the North, he found similar hypocrisy among churches in the Free States. Though church-goers there decried the evils of slavery, they treated Blacks as inferiors and often barred them from attending church.

2) God’s grace is powerful. In spite of his exposure to such unattractive examples of faith, Douglass, at a young age, became aware of his need for salvation and was genuinely converted to faith in Christ. His description of this experience is amazing. Reading it, I could think of no other explanation for it than the powerful grace of God. How else would you explain why a young man, mistreated by people who called themselves Christians, would come to love the same Savior these people proclaimed? Through reading the Bible on his own, and through the kindly counsel of a Christian slave, Douglass came to embrace Jesus as his Lord. Who, but the gracious Spirit of God, could accomplish something like that?

3) True courage is greatly needed in this world. After reading this book, I would list Frederick Douglass among the most courageous people I can name. His persistence, as a child, in seeking to learn to read, placed him in constant danger. The secret schools he organized, as a young man, to teach reading to other slaves, increased the danger even more. A turning point for him happened when he was sixteen years old. A slave-driver attempted to beat him after having almost killed Frederick the previous day, and Douglass fought back. He tackled the slave-driver and held him to the ground for over two hours, refraining from hurting the man, but refusing to be beaten anymore. This kind of courage eventually led him to flee to freedom and later to travel the world speaking up for the rights of the brothers and sisters he had left behind. There are many ways the world needs men and women with this kind of courage today.