Conflict Turns into Captivity

Joseph’s descent into the pit marked the first stage of a journey that would eventually lead to the palace. What appeared to be an ending was, in truth, a passage. For Joseph, the pit was the first stop on the road toward God’s promise. For Africans in the Americas, a similar descent marked the beginning of centuries of captivity.

In both cases, internal conflict set the stage for external domination.

Joseph’s position within his family was contested. His brothers viewed him not as kin, but as a rival. Their jealousy fractured the family’s unity and created the conditions for betrayal. Scripture shows that it was not foreign enemies who first endangered Joseph, but his own brothers (Genesis 37:18–28).

History tells a similar story in West Africa. Rivalries between neighboring kingdoms and ethnic groups weakened unity and opened the door for foreign exploitation. When communities fail to protect one another, they become vulnerable to outside forces. Division created opportunity, and opportunity became captivity.

WEST AFRICA

Asante, Songhai, Mali, Benin, Dahomey, Oyo, Wolof, Fulani, Mandinka, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba. These names represent major West African peoples and kingdoms. Many enslaved Africans originated from these regions, shaped by complex histories that existed long before enslavement.

The Pit: Shackled and Sold

Joseph’s brothers overpowered him, stripped him of his robe, and threw him into a pit. There, in darkness and isolation, his fate was decided. Rather than kill him, they sold him to Midianite traders traveling toward Egypt, the most powerful empire of the ancient world. In a single moment, Joseph went from favored son to enslaved property, believing he would never see his home again (Genesis 37:23–28).

Africans experienced their own version of the pit.

Along the West African coast, slave castles functioned as holding cells of terror and uncertainty. Men, women, and children were confined in underground dungeons for months, sometimes up to a year, while European traders negotiated prices. Once forced through the “Door of No Return,” they would never return to their families or homelands. For many, this pit marked the beginning of a lifetime of bondage and displacement.

The Sellouts Among Us: Faith, Greed, and Complicity

Joseph was not sold by strangers. He was sold by his brothers.

Likewise, the trans-Atlantic slave trade depended on complicity at many levels. Enslaving enemy combatants was already practiced in parts of West and West Central Africa. Over time, selling captives became more profitable than execution. Greed replaced restraint. What saved Joseph from death also ensured his captivity.

European expansion did not occur in a spiritual vacuum. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued Dum Diversas, a papal bull that granted Christian rulers permission to conquer non-Christian peoples, seize land, and enslave them (Nicholas V, 1452). Scholars later identified this decree as foundational to what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery (Miller et al., 2010). Though the document did not name the Americas, its theology shaped centuries of conquest, racial hierarchy, and exploitation.

Churches were often present in slave castles. Voyages were blessed. Theology was used to sanctify greed.

History reminds us that betrayal often comes wrapped in familiarity. There is almost always a Judas, someone willing to trade community for personal gain.

There is always a “sellout” or a Judas among most any group, someone who selfishly puts their needs ahead of the safety, welfare, and even humanity of others

The Church in Western Europe
Papal Bulls gave license to sin, and;
Churches in every slave castle blessed each voyage.

How does learning that Christian theology was once used to justify conquest and enslavement challenge the way you think about faith, power, and responsibility today? What does it invite you to examine or unlearn in your own understanding of Christian witness?

Who are the sellouts in our world today?

Who is selling out their own brothers? Drug dealers sell drugs to children in their own communities; Entertainers portray the most degrading characters for money while distorting reality; Christians who gratify the flesh, much like Esau who sold his own birthright.

Survival Is Not an Accident

Joseph’s story did not end in the pit. Neither did ours.

African Americans endured the largest forced migration in human history. We survived one of the most brutal slave systems the world has ever known. For centuries, forced labor camps took the form of plantations, sharecropping, chain gangs, and mass incarceration. Our labor built the economic foundations of one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

By every human calculation, we should not be here.

Yet we are. That survival is not accidental. Scripture reminds us that God often preserves what the world seeks to destroy. Joseph’s suffering positioned him to save lives. We do not yet know what God’s full purpose is for our people, but endurance itself bears witness that history is not finished.

Wrestling with God and History

Remembering this history is not easy. It stirs grief, anger, and questions we have carried across generations. Many of us have asked, “Why, God?” “How long?” “How could anything good come from so much evil?”

Scripture does not silence those questions. It invites us to wrestle with them. Wrestling is not faithlessness. It is engagement. As painful as it is to wrestle with Scripture, it is sometimes harder to wrestle with the weight of shared memory that resurfaces every time we turn on the news.

Still, the fact that we are here matters.

It took centuries to shape us. God is not finished writing this story. The heritage of the past is not the end. It is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.

Joseph’s brothers chose greed over murder, and that choice altered history. God redeemed betrayal without excusing it. In the same way, our history, as painful as it is, can be faced honestly and held faithfully.

We must decide whether to remain bound to despair or to allow God to redeem what was meant for harm. Our history is not separate from God’s story. And like Joseph, we are called not only to remember where we have been, but to consider what God may yet do through us.

The Heritage of the Past is the Seed That Brings Forth the Harvest of the Future

May this house of worship be a safe place for us to learn, grieve, and engage, these next few weeks— both personally and corporately. In order for us to advance forward as a people, we must reflect upon the past as painful as it is, honestly evaluate our present condition, and embrace the destiny that God has prepared for us. We must either choose to remain chained to one of the darkest histories yielding no hope, apart from Christ who redeems all things, or we can embrace the pain of the past to propel us as God’s people to become His corporate Joseph in the world today because our history is HIS story.

The Pit: Conflict Turns into Captivity

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Lessons

Lesson 1: — The PIt

Lesson 2: The Passage

Lesson 3: The Plight of Prejudice, Predicament, Prosperity

Lesson 4: The Palace

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