Slavery

[jasoncran]

Slavery is continually generating into a new form even as the old form is passing away.

Slavery is alive and stronger and much more intellectualized and thereby more fully self-justified than in the more primitive form of slavery of the body.

Even some of those who are angry at the old form, are the leaders in the abuse in the new manifestation.

Joe

care to eloborate?

 

[Caroline H]

Slavery is continually generating into a new form even as the old form is passing away.

Slavery is alive and stronger and much more intellectualized and thereby more fully self-justified than in the more primitive form of slavery of the body.

Even some of those who are angry at the old form, are the leaders in the abuse in the new manifestation.

Joe

Come again?

 

[Caroline H]

Drew,

I have some concerns about your last post here.

You say:

Yes, there was slavery. And yes, Paul does not, perhaps, explicitly tell us to abolish slavery. But if Paul, or other Bible authors, were to try to set down in writing a comprehensive set of instructions on how to live, the Bible would be ten thousand pages long.

Let's look at the sources directly:

- When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

- If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)

- Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

- Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

And regarding sexual slavery into which the act of selling one's daughters is specifically condoned so long as they are clothed and fed: When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

And all you have to say is "Yes, there was slavery"?

The Christian bibles are widely considered by Christians to represent the source for moral guidance in the universe, yet they get the very simple moral question of slavery, including the sexual slavery of our daughters so terribly wrong. It seems to me that this ought to be a serious source of consternation and cognitive dissonance for intelligent Christians like you Drew, but instead, you just glide over it with blithe commentary

As far as excusing the Christian bibles from failing to condemn slavery because doing so would be just too much to ask of these books, all I can do is illustrate with an example of just how far out to lunch you are. It would be as if my daughter, doing a school project on Adolf Hitler, asked me who he was and what his role in history was, and my response to her was that he was a highly patriotic vegetarian German leader who commissioned the construction of the Autobahn and the VW Beetle. A few weeks later, when she'd be finished her project, she would surely approach me and ask her why I didn't mention his quest for world domination and the Holocaust, and I would have to think that you would be quite proud of me if I just told her that that expectation of me was just too high as there is only so much historical information that I can meter out.

These books aren't too busy filling us with good information on other topics more important than slavery: they specifically discuss slavery at length! What they say about it, and more importantly, what they don't say about it, reveal these books to be abject failures as sources of moral clarity.

Slavery, among the greatest cruelties and injustices that is simultaneously so obviously immoral to anyone honestly concerned with the welfare of others, should have been explicitly outlawed by these books, that instead, instruct us with nonsensical details such as that we should not eat pork or shellfish before the time of Jesus, and that they are just fine for consumption afterwards, or that we can kill our slaves as long as they take a few days to die.

AAA, the Bible says absolutely nothing about selling one's daughter into SEXUAL slavery. That is reading into Scripture something that is not there at all.

You really need to watch your tone here, because you are bordering on outright attacking Scripture. Words like "nonsensical" do not belong here when discussing the Bible.

Also, to take all of those passages out of their historical context, as has been pointed out already, is to make a fallacious argument. That is something you know already because you have argued against such tactics in other threads, yet you do it here when it suits your viewpoint.

One more thing... You said

Besides, according to Christian supernatural books, the Christian deity is evil (Isaiah 45:7).

Here is the passage from verse 5:

"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

Right before saying this, God has explained to Cyrus that He has called him to be used for his purpose of restoring Israel. God explains that the nations that Cyrus will subdue will know that He is the Lord. In Hebrew, when you have two extremes or opposites used together, it is a figure of speech called a merism, which is a type of metonymy where a totality is expressed by two contrasting things. The phrase "you know my sitting down and my uprising" means that God knows when I get up, when I sit down, and everything in between. That means that God doesn't miss anything, He sees it all. This is no different... When it says "I make peace, and create evil" it means that everything is in the Lord's hands. This passage was specifically directed with Israel in mind, and so it would be proper to conclude that this passage merely states that anything that happened to Israel, whether good or bad, was in the hands of the Lord and was for His glory.

Calling God evil is against our ToS and will not be tolerated.

 

[glorydaz]

You really need to watch your tone here, because you are bordering on outright attacking Scripture. Words like "nonsensical" do not belong here when discussing the Bible.

Also, to take all of those passages out of their historical context, as has been pointed out already, is to make a fallacious argument. That is something you know already because you have argued against such tactics in other threads, yet you do it here when it suits your viewpoint.

One more thing... You said[/color]

Besides, according to Christian supernatural books, the Christian deity is evil (Isaiah 45:7).

Here is the passage from verse 5:

"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

Right before saying this, God has explained to Cyrus that He has called him to be used for his purpose of restoring Israel. God explains that the nations that Cyrus will subdue will know that He is the Lord. In Hebrew, when you have two extremes or opposites used together, it is a figure of speech called a merism, which is a type of metonymy where a totality is expressed by two contrasting things. The phrase "you know my sitting down and my uprising" means that God knows when I get up, when I sit down, and everything in between. That means that God doesn't miss anything, He sees it all. This is no different... When it says "I make peace, and create evil" it means that everything is in the Lord's hands. This passage was specifically directed with Israel in mind, and so it would be proper to conclude that this passage merely states that anything that happened to Israel, whether good or bad, was in the hands of the Lord and was for His glory.

Calling God evil is against our ToS and will not be tolerated.

Thank you...that needed to be said. :yes

The Bible is not just a moral guide, it is the history of a nation....of the world.

Man does not work according to God's perfect will.
We are a work in progress.

God also has a permissive will that accomodates man's sinfulness and hardness of heart.
He created man, therefore He says He created evil.

 

[AAA]

the Bible says absolutely nothing about selling one's daughter into SEXUAL slavery. That is reading into Scripture something that is not there at all.

Well, Christians may prefer the term "conjugal slavery". Call it what you will, the biblical passage I quoted was referring to the treatment of daughters sold as slaves who were to have sex with their slave-masters. These girls could be sold back into conjugal slavery if they no longer "pleased" their masters after 6 years, obviating the need to set a slave free after 7 years. How nice. The passage is meant to "further protect" these girls by assuring that if their slave-master married another, he would still provide them with food, clothing, and sex. This is not a fringe position: it is even attested to by the widely popular Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

Also, to take all of those passages out of their historical context, as has been pointed out already, is to make a fallacious argument.

My point is that slavery, sex-slavery, and genocide are evil in any context. Perhaps a Christian here would like to provide a context where they are not evil, or, more importantly, a context where the rebellious supernatural Christian deity (what did he rebel against again? Oh yeah - many of the contextual immoralities of the times he lived in) could not or should not point out how evil they are in no uncertain terms.

God has explained to Cyrus that He has called him to be used for his purpose of restoring Israel. God explains that the nations that Cyrus will subdue will know that He is the Lord. In Hebrew, when you have two extremes or opposites used together, it is a figure of speech called a merism, which is a type of metonymy where a totality is expressed by two contrasting things. The phrase "you know my sitting down and my uprising" means that God knows when I get up, when I sit down, and everything in between. That means that God doesn't miss anything, He sees it all. This is no different... When it says "I make peace, and create evil" it means that everything is in the Lord's hands. This passage was specifically directed with Israel in mind, and so it would be proper to conclude that this passage merely states that anything that happened to Israel, whether good or bad, was in the hands of the Lord and was for His glory (emphasis is mine).

Is this supposed to be some objection to the idea that the Christian deity is responsible for evil? If so, it is an abject failure since it contains the very admission that the Christian deity is responsible for evil that would occur to Israel. There is no difference between being responsible for evil, and being evil unless one would like to argue that the Christian deity is morally justified in causing this evil ... that it was for some greater good ("His glory"?). If so, go right ahead Christian Forums community: I'm all ears. Note: its not enough that it simply be possible that the Christian deity has a morally justified reason for the evil the Christian deity is responsible for; it must be clearly shown that the Christian deity does have a morally justifiable reason for it.

For example, it would be ludicrous to insinuate that because it may be logically possible for Hitler to have had a morally justifiable reason for the Holocaust, Hitler was not evil. One would have to show that Hitler had a morally justifiable reason for all that torture and murder.

Now back to the point at hand: what is the Christian deity's morally justifiable reason for the torture and murder of 13 million people of Israel in the Holocaust?

Calling God evil is against our ToS and will not be tolerated.

I'll just say these 3 things: (1)The OP is really just a re-formulation of the problem of evil, arguably the single most important issue in all of Christian Apologetics (still not solved by the way). (2) The problem of evil specifically requires that one consider the possibility that the Christian deity is evil. (3) This is the Apologetic section.

 

[glorydaz]

Now back to the point at hand: what is the Christian deity's morally justifiable reason for the torture and murder of 13 million people of Israel in the Holocaust?

Calling God evil is against our ToS and will not be tolerated.

I'll just say these 3 things: (1)The OP is really just a re-formulation of the problem of evil, arguably the single most important issue in all of Christian Apologetics (still not solved by the way). (2) The problem of evil specifically requires that one consider the possibility that the Christian deity is evil. (3) This is the Apologetic section.

You're blaming God for evil. God has a perfect will and a permissive will.
He allows, but He does not cause evil.
He gave man a free will, and allows the good and evil to grow together until He harvests the world.

 

[LaCrum]

Gassing humans and treating them like farm equipment or sex toys, wiping out entire populations including children is all pure evil. Full stop.

Interesting.

You do not call something crooked without some idea of what "straight" is. From where do you draw your assertions of good and evil?

 

[ChevyRodeo]

The Jews where slaves, How did God react to that ? ask the 1st born of egypt. He killed all of them for the pharaoh not letting them go.

Slavery as in chains is something Jesus obviously does not stand for in his messages of improving humanity. Slavery as in free labor for other monetary gain, is not diminishing to human rights, So you could say its just another type of butler or maid.


When Noah made Ham a slave and all of his other people slaves to the others, that context is that Ham would be underneath, not in chains. His purpose would be to serve not lead, and his people would serve, not lead.