Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. And in my ongoing quest to never treat you with kid gloves, and rooted in my ongoing assumption that we can talk about difficult things and handle it together. Here is a painful example that I know might hit close to home for some of you, but I think it's very relevant and really analogous to something that we're talking about in the Bible. Hmm. Okay, disclaimer made. Here we go. I want you to picture an estrangement between people who used to care about each other who you've known well. Maybe you've never had that experience. I think you'll be able to imagine such a scenario. Divorce is the really obvious one in terms of this scenario and how most people encounter it. You have two people who you get to know and you come to love as kind of a package deal, but then they have some sort of falling out, and then the falling out goes nuclear and they full-on break up. That's an incredibly painful thing for them as they go through it, but it's also a surprisingly painful thing for that little circle, that little community that it affects. Because such a falling out, it's very difficult for it not to force everyone to take sides or formulate opinions. And so what will happen is the circle surrounding this estrangement or this falling out will start to pull back from one party or the other. And, or maybe they'll just pull back from the whole situation altogether. Resentment can kick in, and it's just a very difficult knot to try to untangle. And if you've ever walked through that from the fringes of it or in the middle of it, I'm very sorry. And I can relate to some of that pain. I've been around that kind of situation myself. Well, if you can picture the social impossibilities that come with a situation like that, I think you can picture a little bit the social impossibilities or challenges that would have been in place if Onesimus and Paul had not decided to have Onesimus go back to Philemon voluntarily, but instead if Onesimus got caught and literally branded as a runaway slave and dragged back to Philemon in fetters by some sort of civil or empire-sponsored slave catcher whose job it was to resolve such matters. We speculated yesterday about the physical things that Onesimus likely would have been subjected to in that day and age, having runaway, something that, again, I think is totally understandable on his part. That would have been pretty ugly, but there would have been a bunch of invisible damage as well, given Onesimus's probably very prominent role in the household of Philemon. Remember, the way Paul talks about Philemon's relationship with Onesimus and Paul's relationship with Onesimus, it's not like the bleakest stuff in terms of relationship between master and slave that you see in like antebellum American South kind of movies or storytelling, where there's quite a bit of antipathy there. Here, you really get the impression that Philemon is sad that Onesimus is gone because he likes and cares about Onesimus, and Onesimus is a part of his household. Also, Onesimus is a slave. You certainly get the impression that Paul is saying, Hey, we both have this in common in terms of our impression of Onesimus. Yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he's become useful to both you and to me. I'm sending him, who's my very heart, back to you, and then skip forward a little bit. And he says, you know, you could receive him no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He's very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. That language gives me the impression that Philemon is sad Onesimus is gone, and not just from a cruel slave master perspective, I think Philemon misses him. But this estrangement, then, would be perceived as a serious falling out by all the people in the community who probably also knew Onesimus. And it's going to be particularly taxing on this sub-community within the larger community of Colossae that is the little Colossian church. It is such a different proposition if Onesimus gets marched back in fetters by some sort of slave catcher or slave porter, and with no letter of commendation from Paul, then what the scenario looks like if Onesimus returns of his own volition without chains on his wrists, carrying a letter of vouch from the beloved and cherished Apostle Paul. You are socially intelligent. You understand how relationships work, you understand how the world works. You can picture it. Just run both scenarios or just picture this. Like if you're a parent, picture how differently you feel when your kid makes a mistake and they come to you and they're like, Mom, yeah, kiddo. I did something I shouldn't have done, and I need your help. Your heart is instantly soft. Even though I don't have the voice of your kid, me just imitating your kid, that made your heart soft. Now think about how your heart feels when you find out that your kid has been lying to you non-stop for an extended period of time and has gotten himself unrepentantly into all kinds of trouble. Your heart feels different. The latter scenario has a very different effect on the peace and tranquility of your household, on how things move forward, on what the consequences and next steps will be for the kid in such a hypothetical look. I'm not saying that Onesimus is a kid in the classical sense. I'm not saying Onesimus is a scoundrel. I am saying that in this context, you've got a serious breach of trust here and you have a broken relationship. Even if you and I think that's ridiculous, because the existence of slavery in the situation abrogates everything, rewrites all the ground rules. Well, it's not up to us. These were their ground rules, and this is how they thought about it. And that is the setting and the time where it happened. No, the outcomes here are so different if Onesimus gets marched back against his will versus if Onesimus walks back by his own volition, carrying that letter of recommendation from Paul. In the first scenario, it is law, law, law, justice, justice, justice. We're just going to do this one by the book. Steel-faced Philemon sees fettered Onesimus and is like, Onesimus, well, I wondered if I would see you again. I've thought a lot about what I would say when you showed up. Certainly we'll be having some words, sir. Thank you for your work. That's pretty dark. I don't like imagining Philemon saying that, but in this ancient context, that would probably be the expectation for the tenor of such a hypothetical reunion. Versus situation number two, which might have sounded a lot like the thing we kept going back to yesterday, that being the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Philemon perks up because Onesimus, that's he's just that's him. He's just walking back. And maybe Philemon hustles down the walk a little bit, kind of shrugging and shaking his head with his palms to the sky, looking confused, like, well, what are you doing here, man? He doesn't know what to say, right? And then maybe Philemon tries a little speech like the prodigal son tried on his dad. Luke 15, 21. The son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Quick, bring him the best robe and put on his finger, you know, and he embraces the runaway son. Well, maybe we'd get a scene like that here, where Philemon embraces the runaway slave. I mean, even if it wasn't that gloriously generous, the reality is still present. It's going to be a better outcome with higher likelihood of reconciliation and a higher likelihood of kind of picking up where we left off if Onesimus goes back because he wants to, not because he got caught. Further, I don't think it's just Philemon who is more likely to embrace Onesimus if Onesimus goes back voluntarily. I think the church is more likely to. And further, I think if Onesimus goes back voluntarily, he's kind of got a leg to stand on with Paul's letter to be like, I'm a Christian. I see what you see. We're both going through a lot of changes right now as we've encountered the gospel of Christ. Would you receive me back as a brother in the Lord, like Paul talked about? I think Onesimus could have such a conversation not just with Philemon, but with the whole church. And I think it's likely that there would be a positive outcome. That's pretty unprecedented in the ancient world. What we're imagining here is a very unique positive pathway to fixing something like this. Okay, here's another thing that happens. If Onesimus goes back voluntarily, that doesn't cost really anybody a whole lot. And there isn't a burden, an enforcement burden on the state, the cost of which should not be underestimated. There's a financial cost when the state has to enforce law, but there's also a fraying of social fabric cost. There is a stigma that comes with the state having to step in to enforce law or to enforce contracts between parties. And here, all of that is avoided. Think about a situation in your life where you could have called the cops. I'll see you in court. I'm gonna sue you over that, versus an outcome where maybe you could have done that, but instead, cooler heads prevailed and you worked things out with somebody without the intercession of the law. Generally, you get better outcomes if you can just work it out with other people. Finally, there's this face-saving possible positive outcome here that I don't think is on the table if Paul and Onesimus decide that they're not sending Onesimus back, and if Onesimus gets caught and marched back, the fact that Onesimus would come back, not in chains, of his own free will, with his head held high, and then he has a conversation. Maybe it's mostly private with Philemon. Philemon reads the letter, he hears Paul's plea, he gets it, he responds positively to the thing. Now you have something in play here that could really make things better narratively for everyone. Now you kind of get to decide how public this is going to be in the short term. It's not anybody else's story. This isn't necessarily the church at Colossae's story. Who knows how public Philemon had made his situation with Onesimus? Maybe Philemon had kind of kept his mouth shut about exactly what was going on there. And now the whole thing could be reframed without lying, but you could just let people kind of assume, because Onesimus and Philemon just moved forward business as usual, that Onesimus was gone on some official trip in an official capacity journey on behalf of his master, and now he's back. Well, that's not weird. Onesimus is a you know trusted part of that household. He probably just went on a trip and now he's back. I don't know for sure if that could be in play. Maybe Philemon had already publicly lamented what was going on. Who knows what Rubicons relationally had been crossed. But if Paul had decided not to send Onesimus back, then surely that is completely off the table. And you have no opportunity to let people kind of perceive it how they'll perceive it. Because Onesimus went back voluntarily, there's at least a chance you don't have to air the dirty laundry here. And maybe, and this is the big point of all of it, in keeping with Paul's petition, maybe that would allow for some sort of seamless transition where everybody saves face, and Philemon is very well positioned to grant the request, a request that I think a reasonable case could be made includes manumission. Maybe that's how Philemon reads it too. And maybe now he's in a place where without doing any collateral damage to anything else or undermining anybody else's household, he can just manumit Onesimus, and Onesimus becomes a part of the community, beginning the process of building his own household and being a part of the church there in Colossae. I know this is weird to say, and I understand fully that the tension between Onesimus and Philemon is not like a divorce today, or a falling out between friends who have equal power in the relationship today. I know there's a dynamic in play here. I've studied the dynamic in play here. So have you. It's a weird dynamic. I think it's a dynamic born out of an immoral institutional evil that was bigger than any of the players involved. But I see the evil of the institutions still. After running all the way through the what-ifs on Paul's side and running all the way through the what-ifs on Onesimus' side, I think they made the right call. I think he had to go back. I think there was no way forward for any of the parties involved unless they played it the way they played it. But we still haven't considered this from Philemon's side, which we need to do next time around. Hmm. This is interesting to me. I'm doing this on the fly with you. I don't have all this mapped out way in advance or anything. And it's fun to game it out and have stuff occur to me on the fly as you're hearing it and it's occurring to you. So uh thank you for gaming stuff like this out with me. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.