Slavery: Christian Excuses

I'm finding this thread extremely disturbing. That there are people today who "can't say that owning a slave is a sin" and justfy that by quoting the bible makes me sick to my stomach!We're already familiar with biblical literalists and the mental contortions they have to go through, such as denying science in just about every form it exists, or using a particular interpetation for one part of the bible then contradicting that interpretation for another part, or even outright "lying for Jeebus".However, I'm shocked that, in order to maintain their inerrantist position, they are prepared to go as far as this! It's views like these that demonstrate the utter idiocy of claims of biblical inerrancy. Where do we find in the teachings of Jesus that it's OK to own and beat slaves? We don't. If the Gospels are inerrant and the OT is inerrant, then, Houston, we have a problem. 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 and expects his "children" to ever, ever break any of his rules, even when those rules are subject to change on a whim. And if, by following version 1 of His rules we are breaking a later version that we didn't know about, He'll make sure we're punished for all eternity.The fact that this view of happy slaves, pleased to be slaves, is actually taught, as ramoss posted, is awful! How on earth can a college allow this to be taught? More to the point, how on earth can any right-thinking person, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Agnostic or any other flavor of religion you care to mention, know that this is being taught and do nothing about it?All of us, everyone, has to expose this sort of repugnant belief for what it is.

Yes, Jesus was Jewish, very Jewish, but did He ever own a slave? Did He ever teach that it was right to own a slave? 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?Or did He teach "do unto others", "love thy neighbour". Also, where does that leave the commandment "Thou shall not kill"?You say All well and good, but some literalists don't see it that way. In fact on the forum mentioned earlier, one stated that he couldn't say if owning a slave was a sin because of what is said in the OT. I find that to be a terrible indictment on the inerrantist position. If they are unable to tell whether something is morally right or wrong without it being spelled out for them, then God help us all if they ever lose their faith.