As a historian, when Jesus talks about being a slave to sin, I think of eugenics. One hundred years ago, Virginia enacted into law the most destructive eugenics legislation in US history. Three years after it was passed, it became the basis for the infamous “Buck v Bell” Supreme Court case, because of which tens of thousands of people in the US were forcibly sterilized. The law was one of the many cited by Adolf Hitler in his creation of a Nazi eugenic state.

Eugenics was a scientific, political, and popular movement that began in the 1880s when a few scientists thought they could control human evolution and create a better human race. Many well-meaning people–scientists and clergy alike–were caught up, some only hoping to make healthier children while others considering more drastic means of reducing so-called imperfect populations. After the Holocaust was uncovered and ended, the word “eugenics” grew out of fashion, though some ideas linger to this day.

When reflecting on this horror theologically, I like to focus on the underlying sins that allowed eugenics to thrive—it would not have succeeded if people did not already have biases against people with mental and physical disabilities. It would not have succeeded if people did not already perceive some human groups as superior to others.

In this passage, Jesus asks his followers to take him seriously when it comes to sin, arguing that sin is not just a simple action. It can easily become a pattern, which can turn into a routine, which can turn into something that controls or enslaves us. All humans are born into generational webs of sinful ideas, and sometimes, our only hope is to claw, kicking and screaming, out of the hole into which we were born.

But this is what it means to recognize ourselves as slaves to sin and to finally want to be true disciples of Jesus–to remain in the word of God, to find the truth, and to let it set us free.