Can you show me a passage in the Bible, where it says "go out and get some slaves" or "go capture these people and make slaves of them".
I think there is a difference between condoning slavery and acknowledging that it exists.
The Bible says you shouldn't be married to an unbeliever, however it then says, but if you are..... (additional instruction)
The Bible doesn't say you should have slaves, or be slaves, but it says if you do/are.... (additional instruction)
Perhaps you are disappointed the Bible doesn't say "get rid of all your slaves". I could agree with you partially on that point. My grandmother died in the mid 1980's. She was born in the 1890's. She never owned any slaves, in fact she picked cotton herself.
But she knew people who had been slaves. The Civil war was about 20 years before she was born. Yet there were many "ex" slaves who continued to live lives similar to the lives they had before. Sometimes because of cruel, greedy people around them.
But sometimes because of their own choice, they knew no other life. They had no other means of livelihood. It's possible many would have died without that sole means of livelihood. I'm not condoning slavery here, but is it possible some slaves in the Bible
either chose to be, or would have died without any other means to support themselves? There are some (not all, admittedly) passages where the word "slave" in the Bible just means servant.
I don't really think this happens much anymore, but when I was younger, you would hear about it from time to time... indentured people. Slaves to people they owed money to. Not long ago, many people were imprisoned because of failure to pay debt.
(even up until the mid 1970's) You could say prison is a form of slavery. The people who were indentured to other people usually made a choice to become indentured to them. Likely they were hoping for better financial situations than what happened.
Financial recession, financial depression, crops fail, drought comes, workers die, lots of different reasons for financial failure, none of them are your fault, but still someone is out money and resources... someone has to pay.
You made a promise, you didn't hold up your end. Interestingly, people still go to prison for not paying taxes to the government.
There was study done back in the 1990's. It seems a lot of ex-prison inmates who had been in prison for long extended periods of time weren't comfortable being out in society. Many could not get jobs for various reasons. Some employers would not hire them.
But sometimes they simply lacked the skill and responsibility to have a decent job. Many had become so used to having rules and being told what to do and when to do, that they could no longer function without guidance. Many of these people
purposely committed crimes soon after they were let out, just so they could go back to someplace "safe". (safe?!?!) It was safe to them, because it was what they were familiar with. I think it was possibly the same for some slaves who were set free.
Is it possible, that in a way, their "master's" were really offering them a means of safety and sustainment? Not all slavery was beatings, whippings, and forced labor.
I ask with all sincerity and politeness, please do not equivocate on the meanings of the word slavery and various different manifestations of it in history. It is offensive and it is dangerous. The horrid conditions of slavery in antiquity are a matter of established fact. Whether there were certain masters who were kind and did not give vent to the whole host of inhuman bestiality that was within their power as owners of slaves is utterly immaterial. I will note that such arguments are never made by historians, archaeologists, or secular scholars, but only by people seeking to harmonize scripture with modern moral standards.
Just so we understand each other, here I use the term “slavery” to mean one person owning another person as property, in chattel bondage. A possession which may be bought, sold, bequeathed as a legacy, or otherwise disposed of. That the Bible stipulates regulations concerning the manner of that use and disposition does not endow the slave in any of the rights free people take for granted.
I also happen to find indentured servitude repugnant. But indentured servitude is decidedly not a case of chattel slavery.
Nor are inmates of a prison slaves. If they have received equal justice and due process under law, they have been stripped of their liberty as punishment for crimes they have committed. If you are caught and convicted as a free man, you lose your freedom, something to which you are otherwise entitled. The Bible specifies numerous people who may be stripped of their liberty solely and entirely because of who they are.
I am told, “Things were different back then,“ and other such apologia. I agree. Indeed, my entire point is slavery is no longer at all morally tolerable even though it once was.
I have no problem accepting any and all good things that are in the Bible, but I am bound to the rejection of things that no longer are. Hence, I am able to say, without exception, involuntary slavery is immoral and evil. I don’t have to conjure caveats to say, “Well, when you think about it, aren’t lots of forms of occupation a kind of slavery?” etc., etc.
You ask for a passage that commands the taking of slaves. I’ll go you one better. It occurs on the occasion of victory of the Israelites over the Midianites. The Hebrews are commanded:
“Now therefore kill every boy, and kill every woman who has been intimate with a man in bed. But all the young women who have not experienced a man’s bed will be yours.” — Num 31:17–8
Here the Israelites are commanded to commit genocide, an atrocity and a legally recognized crime against humanity. Every living thing is to be put to the sword. The commandment allows for one type of exception, that being virgins may be taken alive as traumatized, unwilling “brides.” Please resist any temptation to wonder that might be better than being put to death — becoming the property of your rapist and of the murderer of everyone you know and love. Such absurd and outrageous claims only crop up in conversations like this. In any other context, in any other situation, you would correctly identify it as monstrous.
The Bible DOES condone slavery. It sanctions it. It regulates it as an every day fact of life. As it was in that time and in that place.
All I am saying is you already live an existence morally far superior than the one you might choose if you relied exclusively upon Biblical law. If God is good, and he inspired whatever good there is in the Bible, then he has also given you light to see past blemishes within the Bible that cannot exist within any infallibly, perfectly moral code.
