Slavery: Christian Excuses

Those are non sequiturs."We're left with the idea that God is capricious, doesn't remember what he's said previously, or does remember and doesn't give two hoots "That is very much a narrow way of thinking.You have PROPOSED a dichotomy between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but it is what we would call a false dichotomy. The real Jesus was very Jewish indeed.We also have studied these issues, when we do our bible study each week, and there is a difference between God's permissive will and God's perfect will. Circumstantial Priority is at play in the Old Testament. We see it is rife in that God, "allows" man to fall, allows Abraham to try and make God's will come to pass instead of having the patience to wait for Izaac, "allows" people with faith to have more than one wife.These historical events show that God, in His ultimate plan for salvation, was willing to "look past" certain sins.I would say that there isn't a contradiction between Jesus' teaching and the Jewish scriptures, the real problem is that compromising Christians and atheists, do not have any interest in understanding the bible as a cohesive entity. Therefore I do not agree with the claimed contradictions.Logically, look at it now - Jesus has said that we will be cleansed from sin, as we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore does that mean that God WANTS us to do all of the sins we even still do as Christians?The bible never hides the deeds of men. This does not bring the bible to it's knees, it shows that it is a book of reality.You jumped to many conclusions in this post, about a great deal of different topics, without providing much in the way of proving anything.It's simply not true that we don't understand science, but again, reality is not that simple. There will be Creationists that don't understand science, and Creationists that do. There will be young Christians still on milk, that make comments that do more harm to the bible than good, and there are those who truly study the bible, and it does not mean the bible is any less true if such people are a bad example, as that is the same form as a straw-man argument, in a sense.I would ask people to actually look deeper into the bible, try and understand why God allowed certain events to take place at certain times in history.

But what is bad behaviour if moral relativism is the game we are playing? Nobody can agree as to what is "right".Nowadays, abortion is permissable, morally speaking, but it could be termed as "murder" from another place of argument.How can you be so concerned about a moral collapse where there is no such thing, ultimately, as "bad" behaviour.You see, the secular philosophy, falls because it has no foundation. There is nothing to fight for if you are fighting from your own values because who is to say you are right? Maybe I am right, and you are wrong?As Christians, we have no excuse for bad behaviour, apart from that we have a sinful nature like everybody else.Every system, every political and secular system has not been able to eradicate sin. Are atheists seriously, "concerned" about Christian behaviour? No, they just have a DESIRE to see the Christian look bad, appear bad.This is not a noble course of action. A noble course of action might be to say, "well, perhaps this person condoning slavery is attempting to justify the bible to the best of his ability, or perhaps he only wears a Christian name-tag, or perhaps he is wrong, even though he had a good motive". Wisdom allows us all of these potential conclusion, whereas foolishness says we should believe one, silly conclusion, that "the bible as literal is wrong, and Christian morality stinks". Well, that kind of "thought" might qualify for the front of a T-shirt in my book, but that's all.But if those comments are genuinely racist - this doesn't prove anything about Christianity or Christian morals. (Lol, what a meaningless and modern term) - all it proves is that another sinner exists.People sin for innocent reasons, and for guilty reasons, sometimes people commit actions they would not normally commit. We as Christians can only shine according to the measure of grace God has given us. We can still be wrong about things, but does this mean we are evil? No, it might mean the person has a good motive and yet does something evil.Atheists play the moral high ground when they are standing on a foundation of quick-sand. They think that if they can show that we sin, that Christianity is wrong. They don't know that this simply does not follow. At no time did God say we were not sinners. He has always showed favour with sinners, this does not say anything about Him other than He has treated us with undeserved kindness.My faith in God does not incorporate, "Christian morals", I don't have any, I merely allow, to whatever degree I will let Him, the Holy Spirit to sanctify me. As it is written, "though the outer man decays, the inner man is renewed day by day" (paraphrase)Just my own thoughts, I won't stay to debate, mate, that's pointless.

For me, and I mean this genuinely, there is only one explanation that makes sense to me, considering the 100% proof positive existence of sin, and that is what the bible says from the start.For me, no other religion or compromising Christian or atheist has given me an adequate explanation of what I know to be true about myself and everyone else.If there is a brilliant explanation of why the OT is wrong then I would love to hear how death came before sin, for example, or how millions of years of killing is a good way of designing, or whatever.People do give answers but ultimately those answers KILL the New Testament theology.If death is just natural then why should I care than a man called Jesus died on a cross?If death is the result of sin, then I can say, like Paul, "oh wretched man that I am, who will free me from this body that is subject to death".Don't forget, when you know God personally, it is not as hard to accept the scriptures.For me - the bible, it can be very hard to defend it, but for me, I can't PRETEND it does not explain life. For me, it explains life, why it is the way it is. The ugliness of the Old Testament, most of those problems are God dealing with a sinful people. To a degree, He can give them a law, and put up with them, or He can just destroy them. The law had to show that it was not the solution, the NT tells us it had to be harsh, it tells us that the plan of salvation was ultimately through Jesus Christ.Without the OT, what is atonement? What is the payment for sin? Did not God kill animals to clothe (cover) Adam's and Eve's sin? Right from the beginning God shows He is God by showing that His justice is absolute, but that He would desire mercy, in His plan of salvation, by becoming the killed.Those condemnations of the OT, they all DEPEND on a specific view and goal. It is much, much, much easier to throw it out, than to actually find solutions, and dig deeper.Half the things you believe about the OT would probably be down to thinking according to modern Greek, logic, etc...and not understanding the Hebraic thought pattern, which was infinitely different, you wouldn't believe the wrong conclusions you can come to simply by having a dismissive attitude and a certain way of thinking. If you are determined to condemn the bible, it is very easy to find a way to condemn it. This in itself says more about the person than it does about the bible. This is the problem, people, "insist", for example, that a bat is a bird, but an "owph" is a "flying thing", this is an example of Hebraic thinking, compared to modern thinking.

You are using very selective words, called, "epithets". For example, the term, "slave" or the way you are phrasing alleged texts. First you have to prove that slavery is in the bible according to a specific definition of slavery. You have not provided what the text says. Does the original Hebrew use the word slave, and what do we, as modern people, define as slave, hyper-specifically?I could say I am my boss's slave in that he can threaten me if I do not comply. If God "allowed" a type of servanthood, did you ever consider the possibility that He allowed this to be permissive, for the benefit of the group, because He knows something you don't know?From our angle on history, we can make some pretty silly basic logical errors, by "seeing" it according to relative morals. Slavery is just a term, what I need is truthful evaluation, a willingness to examine, why we need the epithet loaded, term, "slavery", or the epithet loaded term, "homophobia" or "fundamentalist". All of these hit-terms usually turn to dust when the Christian genuinely uses his brain to answer such tenuous argument. Audiatur et altera pas.If you quote the OT text, you will find that you are actually putting your own spin on the text, for example look at the spin you put on this comment;"Did He ever teach that if your slave died of a beating by you, everything was OK as long as the slave didn't die that night, but died the following day?"I am not a stupid person, therefore as a person of thought I am going to ask some very hyper-specific questions about such assertions.What was the reason the servant was being beaten, for example? What, specifically, according to Hebraic thinking at the time, did they want to establish, logically speaking, in regards to the person dying the following day? Is it what Trixie thinks, and must we obey Trixie's understanding of it rather than reasonably evaluating it?You see, you WANT it to be regarded as something which is, "bad" which people call, "slavery". My fair response is to request that you prove that it was exactly the same slavery you are defining, to explain why slavery is "bad" and then prove this kind of bad-slavery is what took place in the OT, rather than using the epithet, "slavery". (Google "epithets")There are some very strange laws in the Old Testament, some of them can be understood if you dig more into them, some of them, although they seem ridiculously harsh, are actually deterrents, for example, and there is no evidence that such a law came to fruition in real history, at all.You see, your very specific way of interpreting the texts, is certainly a subjective way. I appreciate why on the face of it, a syntax-understanding might be appealling because it appears to us, as generally decent people by our own standards, that the law is foul. Often we are misunderstanding God's purpose through ignorance as He doesn't always divulge what He wanted from such laws. For example, historical events or culturally acceptable realities might be lost on us.For example, Christ said, "Let He who is without sin cast the first stone".Think about it, God was more interested in a love for obeying the law, with the individual Himself, rather than an eagerness to see the punishments of the law. But in the OT, He specifically states that the people are evil.A lot of the laws, they make for perfect cherry-picking for atheists, but they forget that God was dealing with a certain people at a certain time, that He had His own reasons for certain laws, sometimes to simply scare the people through deterring them or making examples.I don't believe that by making a relativist moral-attack on the bible will make it false.I think it is the height of ilogicallity (if nothing is objectively wrong you can only say the bible is wrong subjectively, TO YOU)- you can see the likes of Dawkins revel, and I mean revel in this cherry-picking not because Dawkins is moral, except by his own relative standard, but by making God seem foul, people will then also deem God to be foul, therefore, "false". Picking up on a term like "slavery" might invoke a certain historical picture of black slavery into peoples mind, and then the bible becomes, guilty by association, instead of being logically "guilty", according to a sound syllogism. It is not an indictment of the inerrantist position, in the sense that looking to people's views, will not affect the truth-value of scriptures in a literal context.If a person can't tell what is morally right or wrong that does not mean you are morally superior, or that literalist Christians are more "sinful", (generalisation)what it means is that there are grey areas in a grey world. Perhaps they haven't thought of it intelligently, but that is not the bible's fault.In a perfect system, you will not have to lie to save somebody's life, whereas you might in a imperfect system. This means that it can be ALWAYS wrong to lie, in a perfect system, elementally speaking, because you will never face a situation where it is more "right", to lie, it being the lesser evil. It seems to me that God chose lesser evils at times, in history. I do not associate the servants of the OT with the historical slavery of black Africans, which is absolutely pivotal to your whole argument, and which has not been logically shown to be the case.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

It will still be valued. I can be wrong, I am quite open to being wrong, but then who was Jesus' father? Was He the God of nature red in tooth and claw?It is a worldview which fundamentally explains sin, like no oether view.I don't think I can choose to not believe it though, mate, I honestly am convinced.

You are not understanding the point of that law, it would be to protect the servant, it would not be to favour a beating. It does not say, "beat your servant as much as you can but not so that he dies on the same day", that is a perverse judgement of the scriptures that REQUIRES you put your own meaning to the scripture.Most of the time, such laws are deterrents for people that are so sinful that they need such an obvious law, God knew the people and He said they were evil and that they would not obey, so He provided a neanderthals law, in a sense, in that He knew how morally redundant the people were, and yet He would put up with them because of His own benevolent plan of salvation.For example, we have to look at this judicially. If you beat a man, and then he days, the cause is more probably the beating, but this law, the point of it is, that in any given circumstance, a man could die the following day, of another cause. If anything such a scripture is an example of God attempting to provide their mindsets with some kind of impartial judgement. Most of the time, these laws would have no baring on reality, as those things would not happen.Another example is stoning your child to death for disobedience. Man, it is so obvious that no parent would do that, so it was an incentive to work hard to make the child righteous, and to be a good parent, most of the time, these "ugly" morals, are nothing of the sort.These days, it's all about political correctness and what you "say", rather than what happens in reality.In reality, the atheist is a sinner no matter what his morals are, even if his morals, (his words) are greater words than say, a Christians, this won't make the atheist act any better.For example, Trixie said, IIRC, that s/he is glad that a Christian will stay Christian if their moral capacity is so bad, but it's irrelevant, because even if the Christian accepted slavery this would not mean that the Christian would go out and enslave someone. What the Christian is saying, is that God's permissive will allowed for less than perfect standards in the Old Testament.

No, I actually accept refutation on that point. I was a bit rusty, I still think there might be some basic differences between a biblical slave and normal slavery, but I will allow for the term, "slavery", in the sense that I think you have adequately provided the information so that you can fairly use that term. It's wrong to enslave another human being(1). It should be a crime. (2)You then ask, why does the bible institutionalize slavery rather than condemn it? It is a fair question, but it is not fair to insist that God is morally bankrupt. I think there is a good answer, and I mentioned it earlier in the thread.Firstly, I gave the first answer/(1) because nowadays we have a better system. We can talk of morals but we are also dealing with reality.In reality, God destroyed man from the earth in the flood. Now, He can choose a people, and put up with them to an extent, and their ways, to an extent, or, He can destroy them, but no matter what He does, they will not be fully righteous/moral.The bible, allowed slavery, but this says more about the people of the Old Testament than God. God's permissive will is weaved into the bible on an unequivocal scale. He "permits" certain activities, usually for His own reasons.We are told in the New Testament that the plan of salvation was God's will, that the people were evil, they were, "stiffnecked" and their "heart is set on evil". God knew they were no good, and He knew that slavery, for example, was common. infact it was the reality of the day.For example, in the past racism would perhaps have been the normal "way", this does not make it right, but if you had lived back then, you might have been racist, or, you might have been accustomed to racist ways. After all, despite men's morals, there were still places that said, "whites only" which white moral men would have gone into. You also would have gone into such a place if it was the only place to receive food, and would not make you any more sinful than anyone else.I am saying that morals are not relevant to life. You might be a moral person, but for example, you might be in favour of murdering well formed babies in the womb, as a lot of them are well formed, I have seen the violent pictures, that are no less violent than the old testament.So, sin still abounds, even in an imperfect system. Sure- God permitted "slavery" in the bible, but I don't think sin was necessarily at play, there would have been loving masters and loving slaves, slaves were given the decision to stay with their masters, so I think our moral angle of what it meant back then to be enslaved, will largely be based on ignorance.I might post a link, as to AIGs opinion on this, as they are more informed than I, on this issue, I myself can't refute the term, "slave" at this time, but I still think it is mostly an epithet, because of examples of a certain idea people get, I still think there would have been differences in biblical slavery.There are lots of things in today's society which allow CERTAIN evil to happen to an individual, such as abortion, and this is morally acceptable, even though an "evil" happens to an individually, but with biblical slavery, did an "evil" happen to a slave, necessarily?I think your position as moral relativists, is ultimately a position of having a foundation of quicksand - you can argue that morally, it is acceptable, for example, to abort, yet even if you do argue that, it is still a sin and an evil that happens to the individual, otherwise you would be okay with having been aborted. Or, other moralists will say it is wrong.My point is, you are declaring things to be morally "wrong", but "morally" in this context is a moot term, as it can't establish any REAL "wrong", and such morals even dictate that there is no ultimate wrong.So you say there is no real wrong, no objective wrong, and then say the bible is wrong. Why? Why is your wrong, wrong, rather than my wrong?Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Yet you have sinned.If morals come from us, then who is to say your morals are correct? Unless you can show moral perfection, how can you make the value-statement; "we have better morals than your god". Says who? You say there is not ultimate moral and then you place your own as the "better" morals. Logically, the word, "better" is a vacuous term in this context as there would be no such thing as "better". "Better" would be a matter of opinion, given the above set of premises you outlined.In REALITY, I know that God is 100% righteous, and you are a person of the flesh, a person that has a sinful nature and has sinned. I know God personally, that He is righteous and without sin. This isn't a matter of morals. Morals are words. I am talking actions.Your actions show me that you have hypocrisy and self-righteousness, and I know these to be sin, and yet you want me to value your set of morals? If your morals do not give you the ability to not sin, why should I value them? Unless you are perfect, I have no reason to listen. You can have millions of morals, while all of the time sinning under the radar. All you do is "re-define" sin, so as to make it "not sin", to you.It's can of worms.

The problem is sin. You are deceived by thinking that mankind has the solution to the problem. What is the problem? Mankind. Indwelling sin is the problem.You sit there and type these things to me, when I am a slave of God. I can't lie, I can't do many of the things your morals allow you to do. I can't commit fornication as an example.My actions do not sound, "morally special" but those actions of righteousness ensure that a baby can't be aborted( murdered), whereas you would just have some nice-sounding words, such as "pro-abortion". Actions speak louder than words. I don't have pretty words, I have the Holy Spirit GENUINELY changing my nature of sin, I can look back to the past, and see the ugliness that was my former self, whereas your relative morals have no power at all, they do not give you the ability to not sin. Even prisoners are moral - they think it is "wrong" to tell on their friends. You can have a million jails full or moral people if you want, but in reality, indwelling sin is the problem, not morals.Think about it, there is a difference between Reality and actions, and morally pretty words.In reality your morals might allow you to have sex with many women, perhaps cause an abortion, or a single-parent, after all, look at society today - you say it is improving, but is abortion and single-parent families and an increase in crime, do these "actions" show an improving society? Society is becoming worse, not better, because you think that morals can change a person's ability to not sin. I agree, we have become civilized, moral sinners, capable of hiding and pretending that we don't sin, and having more surreptitious and clever ways to be brutal, we are dying of disease and doing all manner of vile things, but we now have the ability to cover it all up with some pretty words.

This concludes my participation for two reasons.

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1. It is snowballing, it makes it hard for me to provide quality posts, my thoughts become less clear, I type faster and so forth.

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2. I don't want to quarrell with anyone. I think I have said my piece, if you are convinced my words have had no value, then fair enough, I am not going to say you are wrong or fight with anyone. I will allow you all to have the final word.(I might provide a link from AIG though, I will edit it into this post you are reading.)

There are examples of societies that done all those things, and did not have religion.The society I live in, in the UK, murders babies in the womb by hundreds of thousands each year. Please see the pictures of the brutally mangled, well-formed babies. Crime is rife in a largely secularist society. There are children that are in strange families, that have no sense of a mother and father, sin is more abundant than ever, it's is just "limited" by laws, but people still rape, murder, and usually those persons are not going to be people that have been born again, and have the Holy Spirit.How could you, being genuinely born again, do such acts? So who is doing them? Is it religious people? I would not say I have religion, so what has that got to do with anything anyway? Do murderers and rapists turn up at church on a Sunday? What got the prisoners in jail? Was it reading the bible? From what you are saying, I am typing these words from jail, if we are to believe the absurd consequences of your statements.I am afraid your whole argument that the atheist is the enlightened breed, is quite silly, and has nothing to do with reality. In reality, those evil religious actions of the past were committed by atheists - people that did not genuinely have a conversion experience.So by lumping me in with the "religious", sure - you can pretend I would allow slavery, you can pretend I would burn a witch, but REALITY shows another picture.You make out I am bad and you are good.You use the epithet, "religion", but I am not in that group, there are atheists that are much more religious than me.You forget that the reality of Christ in your life is not another false religion, you no longer are a slave to sin, but a slave to God. In a way, you can't willfully sin. Largely, these religious histories will have been driven by atheists, in that they were atheist to being born again. Even Muslims, seeks, Budhists, etc....come under "atheist" to us, because they are in the same position as the atheist, according to scripture.

Like I say - I am defending the Word of the Lord concerning those who are genuinely born again of the spirit, who are no longer slaves to sin. If you want to genuinely believe I am posting this message from jail, then I pity you. I am sure they are. It's a very comfortable name-tag. I myself do not like to use the term, "Christian" because it is so wide a definition, that satan can be one.An atheist is a disbelief in gods. Even atheists like Dawkins call people like me an atheist, in that I disbelieve in many gods. My point was that to those of the body of Christ according to the scriptures, everyone outside of the body of genuine believers, is atheist, in that they have not believed genuinely, in Christ.It is easy to show people who proclaim belief, and they might have some perverse head-belief in the bible, but in reality they are USING the bible to justify their sins. I appreciate how it looks to people like you, I know they bad examples, but really they don't believe, I know this, because I know that a truly born again person is transformed. There are many prisoners who become genuinely born again and never commit the same crimes again, I have heard many testimonies.

The Bible and Slavery | Answers in Genesis I read this article. Sadly, the atheist chosen to omit, dishonestly, many scriptures that would support my claim that slavery in the bible was not the harsh slavery of the epithet used.It's sad that people who claim great morals, could not do the courtesy of including the scriptures that would not favour their in take on the bible.To read what I mean, you have to scroll down to the scriptures that are quoted. The "slavery" in the bible, was clearly not the same thing as you want it to mean if we read ALL OF SCRIPTURE.I make it a rule to interpret scripture based on the WHOLE of scripture, so we have to collectively look at all circumstances and instances of slavery, and what God's plan was.Please read all of the article, I would say my own position is that of the person who written the article.

It's not my way though. If you genuinely seek to understand the bible, and what it says, then you will realize that the only way you can be a believer and carry on sinning, is to TWIST the bible, and take statements from the bible, by quote-mining. The fruit of the spirit for example, how did the criminals answer for that one?For example, the Jehovah's witnesses have their own bible so that they do not say that Jesus was God.It very easy to say you are a Christian, and be a complete twurp about the bible, by misunderstanding the scriptures, but if you actually read the Gospels you will see that even Jesus said that many would come in His name and He would say to them, "depart from me, workers of iniquity".We know them by their fruits. If they justify their sin, in jail, by quoting scriptures, do you seriously believe that a study, and in-depth study of the scriptures, would support what they say?There are a thousand different "institutions" of Christianity, that do not hold to the scriptures because of many misunderstandings of the scriptures. When you truly are born again, you are effectively saying that you are no longer the god of your own life. So urges for crimes, fleshly lusts, etc... there is no room for te old ways. The scripture says, "if you walk in the spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh".Every crime could be called, "carnal" or "fleshly", and the NT says that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.It is very hard for me to explain this to you adequately, because I read the bible every day of my life, but I don't remember the scriptures in my head, I only meditate on them, I remember the teachings but I can't pull chapter an verse. I don't want to pull chapter an verse, Iwould much rather you read it with an open heart.Read some of the small letters from Paul, Frako, the teachings concerning the flesh, the carnal, natural man and the spiritual man, just read a little letter, and after watching those videos, as you start to read the scriptures, you will start to think; "Hang on a minute, if you take these scriptures seriously, you can't in no way go out and do the opposite or there is no way you believe what is being said".I have to go now, I only request you yourself do not read what people say the bible says, but that you read it for yourself, and see if it is telling us to be our own god, to obey carnal desires. For all desires that are sin, are usually carnal. Even the people here, in this topic, have omitted the scriptures vital to the argument about slavery, so I would say to you, read them all, without being cynical - just glance through them, and even "pretend" they are real, pretend there is something more to them. I will pray that the eyes of your heart may be opened.Rapists for example, Jesus said not to lust in the heart. The letters from Paul say not to walk in the flesh but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.I'm not saying that genuine believers can't sin, I am saying that where their lives are nothing but sin, it is obvious that they are phony.I reiterate that I totally appreciate the hatchet-job claimant-Christians do to the bible. They make it seem like the bible is condoning them. All I ask is that for the sake of honesty, you don't let them get away with it, after all, would you want to HELP their cause?It is clear you hate these people, child rapists, that call themselves Christian - why should you HELP those people by believing them?I personally am encouraged that you do have morals, that you can see through them. I appreciate atheists in my life, a lot of them are very moral and honest - but I just don't want you to be deceived.I've tried to take time to talk with you and not run away from anything anyone has said, it's a shame there aren't many believers at places like this, I hope you can take something from the words I have said, it is like trying to eat a meal with hands tied behind my back and a gag in my mouth, it is very, very difficult to have the sole responsibility when I myself am inadequate, I do not have omniscience.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.