Question for Christian and Jewish Folk
How can God be moral if he’s a-okay with slavery?
Note to Christians: Jesus is also pro-slavery, so “that was in the Old Testament” is not a valid response.
The Christian church is not only against slavery it was it was Christians that ended slavery around the world in the 19th century. Jesus is the God of the old Testament too. Just because sin full people in the bible have slaves is not a sanction of the evil practice. There are murders and thieves in the Bible too, but that does not make God Okay with them. Anyone who thinks Jesus was pro slavery or any other form of injustice either has not read the bible or did not understand what they read.
"It was Christians who ended slavery"
a) Oh, how magnanimous of them to end the thing they started!
Thats like saying women should be grateful to men for allowing them to vote.
And before you say "Christians weren't the only ones who did slavery" or whatever:
No, they weren't the first to come up with slavery, but they WERE the first to enslave based on race/skin colour, to claim that slaves were subhuman, and to treat slaves so horrifically that entire enslaved populations were pretty much decimated into non-existence within 50 years.
While slavery is always horrific no matter how nice the slaves are treated, at least up until Columbus slaves had always been viewed as people, just in the lowest rank of social status. Thralls in Norse society, for example, were seen as people who just had the rotten luck to have a bad Norn deciding their fate (Norns were kind of like the Greek Fates but everyone has their individual one).
But Christians? They claimed slaves were at best inferior humans if not outright subhuman.
Do you know how the transatlantic slave trade got started? Columbus enslaved the Indigenous people of Jamaica to mine gold for him. His treatment of the locals was so horrific (like, "feeding live babies to his dogs as a treat" kind of horrific) that even his contemporaries thought he was barbaric, and one of his men decided to devote his life to helping free them. Alas, within 50 years there was no one left to help.
So he asked his son to send over some slaves to replace the Indigenous slaves and his son sent a ship full of Africans kept in horrific conditions. They kept going through people so quickly that sending Black people to the Americas just became a regular thing.
The rest, as they say, is history.
b) You say "The 19th century" like that was so long ago when it wasn't.
When my mom was a kid in the 1960s there were still living people in my country who were survivors of slavery.
"God's not okay with slavery!"
My dude.
a) The first section of Exodus 21 (Exodus 21:1-10, whose title is "Hebrew Slaves") is where God explicitly instructs God's followers on which Jews they can own as property and for how long
- Jewish men can only be owned for 7 years and then they must be set free.
- If an enslaved Jewish man is married when they were enslaved, their wife and children also become slaves but are freed with him when he is set free.
- If an enslaved Jewish man was given a wife as a gift by their master during his enslavement (because women are objects to be given) she and any children she bears are on loan for the duration of the seven years as slavewomen and their children are permanent slaves; if the man wants to stay with her and his children he must agree to be a slave for life.
- If a Jewish woman is sold as a slave by her father she can only be set free by sexually pleasing her master or one of his sons and being chosen to be their wife.
b) In Leviticus 25:44-46 God tells his followers who else they're allowed to enslave and for how long
- Anyone who isn't a follower of God should be enslaved for life.
- When you die, you should leave your slaves as inheritance for your children.
- It's totally fine to buy child slaves if they don't believe in God