Christianity and Slavery

The Bible plainly endorses slavery. Period.

Slavery is evil.

Therefore at least parts of the Bible endorse evil behavior. – Dol

Who is the all-wise judge who declares ’slavery’ ‘evil’? To certain classes of people manually laboring for the minimum wage were similarly ‘evil’.

But of course you meant to say that ’slave-holding’ is evil. But you speak as one oblivious of the slavery in which you are presently held, never having yet been bought and paid for, and held, and commanded, by a more merciful Master than the one of whom you remain oblivious. Having been born a slave into that spirit’s house, you have nothing with which to compare your present condition, and no reason to count yourself unhappy, or your circumstances ‘evil’.

If ’slave-holding’ is ‘evil’ – that is to say ’sinful’ – then Jesus is a sinner, Who has bought and keeps Christians. Therefore is there no hope in Christ for anyone who counts ’slavery’ ‘evil’. Compared to much worse privations which he might have had to endure instead, some slave might count sweet the slavery by which he has been ’saved’ from them.

But this plug ugly Americanism that raises its filthy snout against Christianity somehow commands deference everywhere it goes, as though it were a man, and not a swine. Who dares to take to task some upstart American who valorously declares slavery ‘evil’? Various grades of ’slavery’ are simply of the essence of every condition of human life. – Tertius

And although Paul passingly defends slavery, Jesus sure didn’t, including in the Christian Bible. – Shalow

You signal your personal ignorance of both the apostle and the Lord Who appointed and sent him, that you think that Paul could have differed with the Lord Jesus Christ about anything at all.

Where did Jesus ever condemn the institution of slavery? Any marking of a slave’s desire to go out free does not condemn slavery as such, any more than a wage laborer’s desire for a raise condemns the capitalism by which his labor is profitably exploited. The notion that human beings universally ‘are’ by nature, and ‘ought to be’ free, is an American balloon. What does anyone think that Jesus is holding back in the passage that follows, that He should have treated so matter-of-factly of slavery?

7″Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come immediately and sit down to eat’?

8″But will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink’?

9″He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he?

10″So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’” – Tertius

With metaphors and stylish justifications you will not make slavery a lesser crime. Slavery is evil and wrong. With it you are depriving a person of his freedom to pursue his destiny for better or worse. A person is being robbed of his dreams and hopes and opportunities, even if an opportunity is the opportunity to fail. – Emovere

With the sort of plaintive bleating that never fails to strike a chord in female hearts everywhere, you will not make slave-holding any more a ‘crime’ or a ’sin’. There are natural slaves, incapable of personal independence, like children forever, to whom a master is salvation from their own selves. But even with respect to those slaves capable of going out free, and successfully fending for themselves, there never was one who was not the incarnation of his master’s money, and the representative of a large investment upon which his owner might reasonably have been expected to maximize his return. His very value tended to preserve him even against the vicissitudes of his own master’s temperament. – Tertius

Then there is the humiliation and despair of seeing loved ones being disposed of at will or whim by the slave holder, and profit being taken from that kind of misfortune. I can’t envision anything enjoyable in not being able to decide the smallest thing about my life or destiny or about that of those close to me. It is absolute chicanery to insinuate otherwise. – Emovere

Under consideration are things of greater moment than female visions of ‘enjoyability’. Even to a slave ‘duty’, ‘justification’, ‘honor’, and ‘a good name’ might speak deep in his heart. The hatred and impugning of slave-holding is rooted in a hatred of authority in the first place – the hatred of the heavenly Authority by Whom any authority was ever authorized, to Whom every creature is a slave. – Tertius

The Bible, God and Jesus could have assumed moral leadership, explicitly forbidding the barbaric practice. In that aspect they failed miserably. In fact Jesus himself gives advice as to how to treat slaves. Such endorsement and acceptance make him a sinner. – Emovere

(But she is a natural slave, no? At least there is something ‘likewise’ and comparable between the subjection and the obedience required of a wife and the subjection and the obedience required of a slave, as Peter delineates them [between 1 Peter 2:18 and 3:6] ). – Tertius

Who is the all-wise judge who declares ’slavery’ ‘evil’?
All modern societies would fall into that category. – Dol

Ohhhhh! ‘Modern societies’!! Hallelujah for ‘modernity’ of society!

To a Christian ‘all modern societies’ fall into the category of evil conspiracies by nature, all of whose superlative ‘judges’ are drooling idiots when it comes to detecting real ‘evil’. – Tertius

‘To certain classes of people manually laboring for the minimum wage were similarly ‘evil’?
Hardly. Someone working at McDonald’s can quit their job. Slaves can’t do that. – Dol

Ohh, ‘quit their jobs’ and go where? And do what? Does every soul have a mommy to droop home to? They can quit their jobs and brave the street life, perhaps, learning to live by theft of one sort or another. They can quit their jobs and go out and get kicked around or otherwise violated out in the street.

There is nothing intrinsic to slavery that implies the right of a master to ‘kick around’ or to otherwise ‘violate’ his slave. There is such a thing as the abuse of a slave, even as there is such a thing as the abuse of a domestic animal. – Tertius

School?? You can’t normally do that if you’re a slave. – Dol

Ah, but you can if you’re some mommy’s son, can’t you! She’ll cover for you! Why, you’re no slave! You’re a boy with rights and family resources! – Tertius

Get a different job closer to home? You can’t do that if you’re a slave. – Dol

Ah, a ‘home’ is to be taken for granted, – if you’re not a slave that is! Why, you just avail yourself of the ‘home’ that you got for yourself working at McDonald’s! You can always get a job that is always there for you, closer to the warm, dry ‘home’ that is always there for you! – Tertius

Get a different job with a better manager? You can’t do that if you’re a slave. – Dol

Oh, sure! Why, you’re so cute that any manager would necessarily love to have you! – Tertius

Learn a trade or a profession? Slaves are generally not allowed to do that. – Dol

Ho, just go ‘learn a trade or a profession’ with the money one has saved up working at McDonald’s, right? You have all the presumption of one born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I wonder if you have ever done an honest day’s drudge work in your life. I wonder if you are a day older than 19 years of age.

My tone is intended to show you your child-like presumption upon others, a presumption that betrays a dependency not unlike the essential dependency of the natural slave.

But a wise slave’s availing himself of the opportunity to learn a ‘trade’ or a ‘profession’ – like blacksmithing, or carpentry – was what made him more valuable, and kept him better housed, better clothed and better fed. That there was no exchange of money involved did not change the greater actual prosperity that he had gotten for himself by discerning what was of greater value to his master and applying himself to the ‘mastery’ of it. – Tertius

Gee, there seem to be a lot of things that you can’t do if you’re a slave (even if you work at McDonald’s.) – Dol

All of your complaints are about relative disadvantages incumbent upon a certain socio-economic status, as though the disadvantages which attend succeeding higher statuses were also in turn ‘real evil’ for which some oppressor somewhere must be to blame. A graduate from slavery might eventually find answering to an alarm clock and a punch clock performing drudge work for wages ever short of subsistence a ‘real evil’ for which employers and other capitalists ought to pay with their lives, and real ‘modernity’ installed – communism, with all of its blessings!

Any of the privations of a slave you will find approximated in some fresh disguise in every step upward in the socio-economic ladder.

If I were a slave, I would search all day every day for some honorable way to procure my freedom, and not by simply running away from something that would chase me indefinitely if I should get loose from it without honor. Frederick Douglas is unworthy of the honor poured over him by a runaway slave American culture, for by his own words he ’stole himself from his master’. Now it might be argued that he is not a ’slave’ who has the strength to free himself and to keep himself ‘free’, even as America owed it to itself and its natural strength to free itself from Britain and to keep itself free. But therein is the very justification of the force by which a slave is held to his labor in the first place, and there is no moral indictment to be issued one way or the other in the matter, that the application of force in order to get things done should be styled ‘real evil’.

But similarly, if I were a wage laborer I would search all day every day for some honorable way to procure circumstances in which I could make more money, or later even to seize self-employment and a ‘freedom’ from clocks and other people’s schedules and other people’s supervision and other people’s enterprises. No matter where one stands in the unrelenting underlying caste system, he is always looking to improve his lot, for there persists something slavish about whatever may be required of him, wherever he is on the ladder. – Tertius

“If ’slave-holding’ is ‘evil’ – that is to say ’sinful’… ” Simple question: do you think otherwise? – Dol

Do you think that a Christian subscribes to any other definition of ‘evil’ and ’sinfulness’ than the ‘religious’ one to which you cannot relate anyway? I think as my mind has been reformed to think – that Morality is defined in Holy Scripture, and not in the upstart principles and precepts of some upstart ‘modern society’. – Tertius

“…Americanism that raises its filthy snout against Christianity…”? America is AGAINST Christianity? – Dol

Duhhhhhhhh!!! Stick to science, Dol. I never meant to impede you. – Tertius

There’s one of the most incorrect statements on this forum in a while. – Dol

(- this from the unimpeachable arbiter of correctness in our midst! Who dares question the judgments of some long-faced student of science?) – Tertius

It doesn’t actually take much “valor” to declare slavery as “evil”. My guess is that even Mike Huckabee would agree if asked. – Dol

Some stuffed shirts are out groveling for votes from a nation of swine. Others just hope to fit in to some sanctimonious ‘modern society’. – Tertius

“Various grades of ’slavery’ are simply of the essence of every condition of human life”? – The “grade of slavery” that I’m talking about is the one where one person owns another as their property. That “grade of slavery” is evil. – Dol

- says Dol Almighty! Oh, that settles it! – Tertius

The Bible endorses that grade of slavery. It’s too bad that in your sermon you didn’t address that. – Dol

What’s to address? I do not challenge it as you do. I have nothing to modify about whatever the Spirit of the Holy Bible has had to say about the subject. To your pronouncements I prefer the pronouncements of God Almighty. I have no common cause with multitudes of effeminate churchians who think that they need to apologize for God’s appointment of ’slavery’ for some and ‘freedom’ for others. – Tertius

I, Aequusvox, say that parts of the bible are sinful. And I will defend any American who ‘valorously’ declares that slavery is evil.

I also say that anyone who believes in slavery is not worthy of being called Human. And if I had the powers of your mythical god, I would smite “him” so that all would understand that slavery is evil and sinful.

Did I make myself clear? – Aequusvox

God Almighty says that you, Equusvox, are sinful, and unequipped to utter an intelligent word about the Bible. Neither will you ever escape the darkness and slavery to which you have been consigned until you have begun to fear the God Who is alone able to enslave and to emancipate. – Tertius

Since your above quote does not come from the KJV or the NIV, would you please tell me which translation or version you were using? Thank you. – Har

New American Standard Version – my favorite and preferred. I also use New King James. I did not pick out the one of the 21 versions that translates ’slave’ instead of ’servant’. I quoted from the version that I use daily.

Political considerations loom large and affect translation in versions to be circulated to a populace whose society and culture were founded in a democratic spirit of ‘leveling’, that cannot abide anything to be exalted above anything else. Its hatred of slave-holders is really one piece with its more recently emergent hatred of husbands and fathers, its hatred of masculine authority, which is all one piece with its real underlying hatred – its hatred of God. – Tertius

Rubbish written in pretty prose but rubbish it is. That is why I like humanism better, justice by means of reason opposing the delusional justifications of religious craze. – Emovere

The awful truth about humanity as it really is, as opposed to the rubbish imagined of it in the delusional self-justifications of a religious craze like ‘humanism’, is that if he who ought to be enslaved is left free, he will enslave those who ought to have enslaved him. If he is not compelled to work for what he eats, he will only avail himself of the fruits of others’ work. – Tertius

Yes, there are individuals who are incapable of personal independence, and a master would be better for their welfare, call it a benevolent despot if you will, (although I doubt that in cases like this benevolence would be the primary motive) but we have established some rules, precisely because that is the way things were in the past. You took advantage of the weak, the conqueror enslaved, the wealthy established serfdom, the feudal lord had the right over his serfs; he could reserve for himself the right (pleasure) to deflower the virginal bride of the poor serf. And now you advocate the correctness of that system, the justification being that at the end it was better for the dumb slave; after all that is how in the colonial times the good God fearing people saw things – the poor backwards negro out of the jungles of Africa is better off in my plantation. – Emovere

You take some pretty wild liberties with what I actually do advocate. A natural slave needs to be disciplined, because he cannot discipline himself. He takes wild liberties with whatever he is actually entrusted with, and knows no restraint unless he is forcibly restrained.

A wife bears a certain equivalency to the slave, and a child, also, in relation to his parent, as a wife to her husband; and the same sin-sick democratic humanist mentality by which slavery is ‘abolished’ proposes shortly afterward to ‘liberate’ women from their husbands, and finally children from their parents, that chaos and anarchy should at long last disintegrate civilization, and slaves level all with themselves, only to find themselves eventually conquered by outlanders committed to keeping order. – Tertius

What you are saying is no different than saying it is ok to take advantage of a child because the adult is better equipped to deal with life; and, surprisingly, child slavery and labor abuse were the norm. Children were looked upon as little men, and all kinds of outrages were perpetrated against them. Somebody had to stand up for the weak and less able, and defend them. That ’someone’ was humanism, and the enforcing
tool is the law. – Emovere

For fear of abuses, it sounds like you would leave children undisciplined and ‘free’ to degrade themselves and their parents with their untrained impulses. – Tertius

Maybe if someone put a shackle on your leg with a 50 Lb ball and put you inside a mine with a pick for 14/7, and you got a whipping if a bucket was not full you would not have that nonchalant attitude about
slavery. – Emovere

The spiritual equivalent of what you have described was laid upon me, and I deserved much worse. But at my extremity there was nothing except forced labor to turn me from a course worthy only of a natural slave. My fortune lay with a merciful Master Who was willing to provide a path for me from slavery to freedom.

Human nature being what it really is, slavery is indispensable. Its real continued existence, disguised though it may be, is what makes the procurement of real ‘freedom’ so sweet. Neither could the real, fearful ’slavery’ into which every human soul is born have been illustrated except by the human institution that reflects its privations. – Tertius

There are some mottos reflecting some attitudes against losing our freedom, like, “better dead than red”, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees”, etc. Obviously they mean nothing to your
complacent life. – Emovere

Yes, ‘better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven’, said the damfool who mistook hell.

You are the complacent one who misses the real meanings of slavery and freedom. – Tertius

From what I have read, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew who believed that the sinful world was going to be destroyed imminently, and therefore he had no need to address ’slavery’. He believed that the world was to be taken over by a messenger of god, and what he was trying to do was to prepare everyone to be ready to enter the new kingdom of god. – Aequusvox

The ’sinful world’ that was imminently to be destroyed (in 70 AD) was the ’sinful world’ of first century Judaism – but only as the shadow and image of any long-established church that presumes similarly upon a written past. The ‘world’ that was to be ‘taken over’ by a ‘messenger of God’ was the ‘world’ of His disciples, who remained in the world after His departure – but only as an image of the kind of Christians who are separated and delivered from participation in a rotten preceding ‘Christian’ establishment. The ‘messenger’ ‘taking over’ was the Holy Spirit Who arrived in His wake – as an image of a ’spirit’ of that same ‘Spirit’, who distinguishes those separated and rejuvenated Christians from the degenerate, doomed churchian ‘establishment’ out of which they have been brought. The emergent apostolic churches were the ‘kingdom of God’ to which hearing Jews were being introduced, and for which His disciples were being prepared – as images of the communities of ‘Final Christians’ who are a ‘kingdom of God’ in distinction from the corrupt establishment that precedes. – Tertius

This is why he told everyone to sell their belongings and give to the poor and needy. He stated that it would be easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle then for a rich person to go to heaven. – Aequusvox

The point was that anyone ‘rich’ in reputation, prestige and notoriety in the established Judaism would have needed to have borne with corresponding ‘poverty’ in order to have started over in the upstart Christianity. Just so is the reverberant contradistinction between the honored ‘credentials’ which seem to accompany the primal, and the apparent apostasy that seems to debase and disqualify a final Christianity that supersedes it. – Tertius

That he turned out to be wrong, as history has proven, does not change the fact that he was trying to instill this idea into his followers. – Aequusvox

He appears ‘wrong’ to those who misunderstand Him. – Tertius

Therefore we must interpret his messages in the light of his beliefs at that time. – Aequusvox

Jesus didn’t ‘believe’. Jesus ‘knew’. Those who do not know Him mistake whole ‘worlds’ for other ‘worlds’. – Tertius

Paul, who had neither spoken to nor ever seen or heard Jesus, changed the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus. – Aequusvox

You say that Paul neither saw nor heard nor ever spoke to Jesus, but Paul says that he did – on the road to Damascus. I believe Paul. I know his spirit.

Anyone who reads the Gospel of John as compared with the ’synoptics’ realizes in a way that is not emphasized in the synoptics that Jesus not only ‘preached’ a ‘gospel’, but He purported at once to have been that gospel in His own whole Person. – Tertius

That is why the followers of Jesus worship him as a god. – Aequusvox

You have no clue as to why Jesus’ followers worship Him as God. Jesus’ followers know why they worship Him, and it is not because Paul ever wrote anything, but because Jesus has presently caused them to ’see’ Him in His glory. – Tertius

The first followers of Jesus, the Ebionites, did not see Jesus as more than a human who was the messiah. – Aequusvox

Where is anyone getting this ‘Ebionites’ business from? – from the same place from where they dredged up the ridiculous false ‘gospel of Thomas’? – Tertius

So, in this light, we can blame the original Testament, but we cannot blame Jesus for his views on slavery.
Remember, when we quote Jesus in the bible as saying anything about slavery, we have no evidence that he actually said such. – Aequusvox

By the same presupposition ‘we’ might resolve that there is no ‘evidence’ that Jesus ever existed – which is of course the presupposition behind all such pretensions to ’scholarship’. – Tertius

“Ohhhhh! ‘Modern societies’!! Hallelujah for ‘modernity’ of society!”?
Oh, I see. You’re another one of those creationists who wishes to return to the distant past. – Dol

Don’t try to lump me in with anyone, Dol, you don’t really know what you’re talking about. – Tertius

How far back do you wish to go? The Middle Ages? Religion dominated over science then. – Dol

I don’t ‘wish to go’ either backward or forward. It is your implicit proposition that ‘modernity’ represents improvement wrought by science, as though ‘abolition’ owed anything to disinterested science rather than to misguided, meddlesome religion.

Religion never had any business dominating science in science’s own realm, but it has always had at least something to say about ethics in science. Neither has science any business ‘dominating’ or dismissing theology and interpretation. Science gathers data, the ultimate interpretation of which is the province of theology that is of no interest to a scientist as a scientist. – Tertius

Christ’s time?
I’ve seen trailers for a new movie “10,000 BC”. Maybe you’re interested in going back that far.
Of course you only have to go back prior to 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued to participate in slavery. – Dol

All times in this present world are equally benighted with respect to ultimate issues. – Tertius

“To a Christian ‘all modern societies’ fall into the category of evil conspiracies by nature, all of whose superlative ‘judges’ are drooling idiots when it comes to detecting real ‘evil’.”

Oh really?

So slavery isn’t “real evil”? – Dol

No, slavery is only the image of the consequence of having cooperated with real evil. Remember, there are states worse than slavery, from which the slave is saved in his downward wont. If he is wise he can be turned upward by his condition, and find some honorable way to extricate himself from it. “A wise slave will rule over a son who acts shamefully, and share the inheritance as one of the brothers.” – Tertius

Things like Inquisitions are not allowed in modern societies either. I’ll bet that flies in your face as well. – Dol

You don’t know me at all, Dol. What really flies in my face is some wet-behind-the-ears science major trying to hang the God-damned Inquisition around my neck. Don’t blame me for the outrages perpetrated in history by the bastion of false Christianity. – Tertius

“There is nothing intrinsic to slavery that implies the right of a master to ‘kick around’ or to otherwise ‘violate’ his slave. – Tertius

Actually, the Bible says that there is.

Exodus 21:20-21:

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.

So, according to the Bible, it’s to “kick them around”, you just can’t kill them. – Dol

What, would a master ’strike his slave’ for nothing? Would even a parent strike his child for nothing? It is to be presumed that the slave has been refractory or recalcitrant, that his master should have stricken him. But the degree to which he is to be punished lies within his master’s decision because it is to be presumed that the man would not destroy his own property; he might attempt to correct or improve it, but he were a fool to destroy it. If he accidentally destroys it, he has just seen somewhere between $12,000 and $20,000 of his money up in smoke for his excessive wrath. – Tertius

“There is such a thing as the abuse of a slave, even as there is such a thing as the abuse of a domestic animal.”?

But abusing a slave is OK according to the Bible, as long as you don’t actually KILL the slave anyway! – Dol

You presume that it is definitively abusive to strike a slave. I’ll bet money that you also think that it is definitively abusive to strike a child. Or a beast. Or to spank a bratty wife. But ignorance of God is insensible of the source of the blow when He strikes. – Tertius

“But of course you meant to say that ’slave-holding’ is evil. But you speak as one oblivious of the slavery in which you are presently held, never having yet been bought and paid for, and held, and commanded, by a more merciful Master than the one of whom you remain oblivious.” -

Gee, just what I was hoping to avoid – a sermon. – Dol

So go sit with scientists, man! Why do you talk to Christians at all if you can’t abide a ’sermon’? – Tertius

I talk to Christians because I like arguing about evolution and creationism! I don’t believe that obligates me to listen to sermons. – Dol

So what has obligated you to issue your less than scientific rejoinders to what I have written about slavery?

And what obligates me to listen to dead pan demands for ‘evidence’ ‘evidence’ evidence’ from dead souls whose fond hope is that children’s games like ’science’ and ‘logic’ will save them from God Almighty?

I have no argument with ‘evolutionary theory’, except with the assumption that it is ‘accidental’ in any ultimate sense. What is there in my ’sermon’, anyway, that in any way impugns the scientific pursuits which you find more meaningful? – Tertius

It doesn’t impugn anything. It’s just a waste of my time. – Dol

Then responding to it at all has wasted your time. So why did you respond, except that you wished to vent the real underlying hostility that you bring to this table in the first place? – Tertius

You’re so sad that slavery has been outlawed. – Dol

Not sad at all. Just not self-deluded about the issue with the rest of the self-justifying American swarm of runaway slaves. – Tertius

The “grade of slavery” that I’m talking about is the one where one person owns another as their property.

That “grade of slavery” is evil.

I’ll bet that most people would support that opinion.

Should we put it to a poll? – Dol

Is that the scientific method? To put things to a vote? Do the rabble not outnumber the honorable everywhere? Do the women and children not outnumber the husbands and fathers everywhere? Who cares whatever some herd of swine like ‘most people’ might ‘vote’ for?

If I were owned, I would count my condition far less than desirable. But I would not consider my master worthy of death for it, and I would not consider myself just for running away from him, unless he had come and conquered me and unjustly enslaved me in the first place. If he had bought me from someone who had overpowered me in war in Africa, or from someone who had overpowered me for having committed some crime, or if I had been born in his house, I would not consider that he had done me any wrong by having kept me and put me to forced labor that justified my existence in the world. – Tertius

“…I do not challenge it as you do…” – Tertius

- Which is something that frankly concerns me. I didn’t realize that there were people around in the 21st century who had such a lassiz faire attitude towards slavery. – Dol

You might yet live many years, and gradually realize the truth of what I have written about slavery, and the ridiculous foolishness of the ‘modern society’ that has pretended to ‘abolish’ it. – Tertius

“…I have nothing to modify about whatever the Spirit of the Holy Bible has had to say about the subject…” – Tertius

Again. I find that to be a concern. – Dol

I hear the rack being tooled up by a self-righteous scientific Inquisitor of the future. But you and your ilk will never overthrow the God of Truth. And when He strikes you, you will wail, “Oh, why me???!!!! Oh, life is soooo unfair!!!” – Tertius

“…To your pronouncements I prefer the pronouncements of God Almighty…” – Tertius

You mean the Bible.

You haven’t provided a shred of evidence showing that the Bible contains “the pronouncements of God Almighty”. Dol

I have referred you to Ivan Panin’s work, and you haven’t even glanced at it, and you won’t, either, because ‘evidence’ for the God of the Holy Bible is hardly what you seek. Like Aequusvox you will betray science by rejecting it out of hand. – Tertius

The idea that people would say, “The Bible endorses slavery so it isn’t such a bad thing” gives me added incentive to try to convince people that the Bible is NOT the Word of God. Thank you for that incentive. – Dol

Slavery is worse than wage-laboring, but it is better than shiftless nakedness and starvation.

In your shoes I would not raise my impudent voice against the God of the Holy Bible, Dol. You have already said enough deserving of a blow from His hand. You can laugh at the idea now, but on your death bed nothing will be funny. – Tertius

“…if he who ought to be enslaved is left free, he will enslave those who ought to have enslaved him…” – Tertius

Is this shorthand for you have allowed your mind to be enslaved by your religious dogma of choice? – Stearc

Is this shorthand for your presumption that your mind remains ‘free’, and that any mind that does not subscribe to the dogma of your choice is ‘enslaved’? – Tertius

You seem to have a mighty idealized version of slavery. Do you realize that if you were a slave and had a child, that child could be taken away from you at any time and sold so that you would never see him or her again? – Emovere

Do you realize that in my supposed freedom I have seen most of my children taken away from me by social and cultural forces beyond my control, so that I have never seen them again, and can’t reasonably hope ever to see them again? What were the difference between a slave’s owner and a force beyond a free person’s control? What advantage has the latter over his particular form of the problem? – Tertius

Do you realize that if you were a slave, you would not be able to get married unless you had permission from your owner? – Emovere

Do you realize that no citizen can ‘get married’ unless he has permission from the state? And what do you think the state is ready to do with his conception of ‘marriage’ if it differs from the state’s idea of it? Do tell what is the difference between a slave’s owner and the government over any ‘free’ person’s head? – Tertius

Do you realize that if you were a slave, your wife could be sold to another owner and you would have no control over it? – Emovere

So you are saying that the ‘marriage’ that had been previously ‘permitted’ was no binding marriage at all, but a fraud perpetrated by a master willing for whatever reason to humor his slaves for a while. But at his own peril such a master would have ‘put asunder’ what in good faith God had ‘joined together’ through him. The apostle wrote, “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven, with Whom there is no partiality.” What does the apostle imply, except that slaves, in the image of human beings generally, have certain ‘rights’ to justice and fairness from their masters, and that a master who by injustice and unfairness perverts the image of God in himself can expect to be dealt with ‘fairly and justly’ for it by his own Master in heaven. – Tertius

Do you realize that if you were a slave and your owner wanted to have sex with your wife, you and she would be powerless to refuse? – Emovere

That would be the violence of a rapist who violates the flesh, then, would it not? He deserves death for that, don’t you think? Before the Judge of all the earth some slavemaster is by no means at liberty to do such a thing any more than a rapist is justified by the momentary power by which he commits his violence. – Tertius

Do you realize that if your owner wanted to have sex with your 13-year-old daughter, you and she would be powerless to refuse? – Emovere

Do you realize that evolving state laws propose not only to supply everyman’s 14-year old daughter with birth control pills, not to mention abortion ’services’, with neither his knowledge nor his permission, but to expose his 13-year old son to the overtures of the sexually disoriented? – And that a father will not only be powerless to forbid it, but may soon be powerless to call the sexually disoriented ’sexually disoriented’? – And that such state laws seem to issue from those of the very political stripe who in the nineteenth century railed so self-righteously against slavery? Hmm, I wonder what might be the connection.

What do you think is the difference between powerlessness against the violence of a slave-owner and powerlessness against the naked authority of an unsympathetic government? The only hope of a slave lies in a mild master who takes thought for what is just and fair; similarly the only hope of any citizen lies in a mild government that takes thought for what is just and fair. – Tertius

Do you realize that slavery involved more than forced labor- it involved control over every aspect of the slave’s life. If your owner wanted to force you to have a child with a particular woman, you would have to do so whether you were attracted to the woman or not. – Emovere

You seem to think that there is anything except shameless force governing you with respect to any aspect of your citizenship. – Tertius

The big difference between working at McDonalds and being a slave is the person who works at McDonalds can quit any time. A slave cannot quit. The person working at MCdonald’s has control over his or her future and his or her daily life. The slave does not. – Emovere

What pathetic naivete. – Tertius

I suppose you would also think that a prisoner of war who tried to escape is not just for doing so. – Emovere

Admittedly, there is force involved, either on the part of the master who buys the slave and afterward sees to his investment, or on the part of the slave who bolts and runs, and manages to keep himself ‘free’ as long as he can avoid the master who hopes to retrieve his money. You don’t see yourself justifying the very arbiter of life in this world – that is force. It is the typical female argument that ever misspends its pity. – Tertius

“I have seen most of my children taken away from me by social and cultural forces beyond my control, so that I have never seen them again, and can’t reasonably hope ever to see them again.” – Tertius

“Taken away” from you??? “Beyond” your “control”???
If that is true, it is tragic but says much more about your relationship with your children than it does about society or slavery or the evils of either. – Dol

I was comparing the force beyond the control of the slave -namely his master – and any force beyond anyone else’s control – especially governmental ‘control’. A slave is not the only creature who perhaps does not have things as he wishes. If a slave-owner sells away his slave’s daughter, how does his power differ from one that prompts a social, cultural, or political movement that permanently estranges someone else’s daughter from him?

My point is that forces exist, and will have their way against other forces, if they can. Slavery has not been ‘abolished’; it persists by disguises and subtleties. As for the institution itself, those of the political stripe that then proposed to abolish slavery in reaction to the abusiveness of some slaveowners, now propose to abolish marriage in reaction to the abusiveness of some husbands; to abolish parenthood in reaction to the abusiveness of some fathers; to abolish organized religion in reaction to the abusiveness of some clergymen; to abolish capitalism in reaction to the abusiveness of some employers. It is all one, underlying which is the American proposition to abolish authority itself, of which there is none anywhere except on loan from the ultimate Authority.

It is only by the application of some greater force – like the force of the federal army in the Civil War days – that some other force is disarmed. Afterward the winners ascribe immorality to the force that they have vanquished, whereas it was never anything more than a question of force.

Those who owned slaves bought them under the aegis of law long in place. Does it occur to anyone except southernors that if the federal government was decided to abolish slavery that it ought to have offered for the redemption of each slave the $12,000 to $20,000 that had been spent on him in the first place? Who would have missed slavery so much? It was tons of money up in smoke, wealth not ill-gotten permanently destroyed, and with it the ‘freedom’ that it afforded, by the overwhelming force of a more powerful organization. Those who dance on slavery’s grave exult in nothing more than a more powerful ‘owner’ who has supplanted a former owner. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. It is all force, and control, and it always has been, and it always will be. And anyone who has not bumped rudely up against governmental constraints upon ‘liberties’ upon which, for their absolute innocence of enterprise, he had presumed all of his life, has probably never even attempted anything. – Tertius

In Emovere’s example, neither the parents nor the children had any choice in the forced separation. In your example, I would guess that the children had a choice, which happened to disagree with your own, but maybe there is a lesson to be learned from that. – Dol

I don’t remember having been presented with any ‘choice’. When several of my children reached their majority they broke fellowship with me and consorted with my enemies, to their own shame and ruin. ‘Forces’ carried them off to folly and dissolution, against my will, and over my protestations. But it is for them to learn a lesson. What, am I to take a ‘lesson’ from them? (Perhaps Americans can teach God Almighty a lesson, having plenty of alterations and improvements to make upon His administration of things). – Tertius

What were the difference between a slave’s owner and a force beyond a free person’s control? – Tertius

What force would that be? – Dol

I told you – a cultural ‘force’ – a social ‘force’ – a political ‘force’ – a governmental ‘force’ – opposed to the ‘force’ of a ‘free’ man’s words upon his children’s thinking and conduct. – Tertius

“What advantage has the latter over his particular form of the problem?”

Freedom to make that choice. – Dol

What ‘choice’? I had no ‘choice’! My children were carried away from me just as irresistibly as the new master’s buckboard carried away some slave’s children. What good does it do me to ascribe ‘wrong’, or ‘cruelty’, or ‘violence’? It was a force greater than any that I could bring to bear on the matter at that time, and it was that simple. – Tertius

“Do you realize that no citizen can ‘get married’ unless he has permission from the state?”

And what sort of conditions does the “state” bring to bear in allowing that permission? Whatever they are, they are not arbitrary. You may need to be a citizen. You may need to be able to pay a fee. – Dol

Within living memory in this country a state could forbid the marriage of persons of different races. Whatever state law may be now wherever you live, what unimpeachable greater wisdom embodied in it commends to you its ‘permission’ of anything at all? – Tertius

A slave owner, on the other hand, can use any reason. – Dol

You avail yourself of the opportunity you find in the largesse of a milder master, to pronounce the harsher old master ‘evil’. You are still under constraint, whether or not you have had reason yet to feel it so intensely. – Tertius

“Do tell what is the difference between a slave’s owner and the government over any ‘free’ person’s head.”

The differences are substantial and obvious. – Dol

The similarities are substantial and obvious. – Tertius

My son is getting married in June. Any objections from the ’state’ are the least of his and his fiance’s concerns. If he was a slave, the possible objections of his owner would weigh foremost in his mind. – Dol

Again, you and he are just enjoying, for the moment, an easier master. In certain circumstances the possible objections of the state might weigh heavily indeed. – Tertius

‘The apostle wrote, “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven, with Whom there is no partiality.” What does the apostle imply, except that slaves, in the image of human beings generally, have certain ‘rights’ to justice and fairness from their masters, and that a master who by injustice and unfairness perverts the image of God in himself can expect to be dealt with ‘fairly and justly’ for it by his own Master in heaven.’

Silly answer noted. – Dol

Flippant answer noted from one who seems oblivious that he does not measure evil by good, or immorality by morality, but only force by greater force, authority by higher authority, control by superseding control. – Tertius

So you are claiming that a slave owner would NEVER do such a thing because of the threat of punishment
in the afterlife? – Dol

He would have to be a believer in punishment in an afterlife, wouldn’t he? – and genuinely afraid of it? These are things which one such as yourself might find inconceivable. – Tertius

Gee. Imagine my surprise at seeing Christians EVER committing sins. They always have such punishment
in front of them. Maybe if they went to confession on Saturday they would be forgiven? – Dol

Your misidentification of Roman Catholics as necessarily ‘Christians’ explains much of your attitude. – Tertius

While the punishment that awaits the slaveowner in the afterlife for rape is something that does not appear to have a significant practical influence on people, in fact the secular forces allow such a thing when slavery is legal, as the Bible endorses.
Slavery removes a person’s freedom. Not being a slave does not guarantee that someone will be rich or that they will have a good relationship with their children or that they will marry happily or that they will never be raped. It only guarantees that they will have a choice in most or all of those things.

But it also means that slavery is evil.

The Bible endorses slavery.

Those parts of the Bible are evil as well. – Dol

I think you would better stick to science, Dol. The evil words into which your false logic leads you could bring upon you what you so self-righteously abhor – the slavery into which a criminal or a debtor falls by the weight of his own sin. When it comes, you will think that it is something else, something that you should be able to handle, because the slaver comes subtly disguised, and you deem yourself free to disbelieve in spirits. – Tertius

“…in my supposed ‘freedom’ I have seen most of my children taken away from me by social and cultural forces beyond my control…”

You are stumbling all over your semantics, what this “supposed freedom” is supposed to mean? – Emovere

You are stumbling all over your English. Is English your first language?

My ’supposed freedom’ is the ‘freedom’ that Americans think that they have because they are free from private citizen slavemasters, not noticing that they are all slaves to far less personal and far less accessible government whip crackers whose creeping conquest continues all day every day and all night every night. Who does not notice that every legislature is a convocation of conspirators against freedom? – Tertius

As long as you live in society with humans you can not have unlimited freedom since your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin, unless your idea of absolute freedom encompasses absolute power to trample on other’s rights and freedoms. – Emovere

The limits upon a slave’s freedom are severe indeed, but they do not differ in their essence from any other sorts of limits upon freedom. They may be mild and lax indeed, in the case of a trusted and loyal slave; they may be mild and lax indeed compared to the limits upon the freedom of an incarcerated convict, or of a soldier in the field; they may be comparable to the limits upon the freedom of a child; but to call them ‘evil’, just because one shudders at the idea of having to bear with them, is ludicrous. Slavery pleads to be graduated, to be sure; but so does childhood; so does military service. – Tertius

You could be very free if you lived in a deserted island but your freedom would not be unlimited, nature and your own means (physical, mental and material) will limit your ambitions and desires if they are beyond what is possible in your circumstances.

If your idea of idyllic freedom is living in a harmonious paradise with other bible loving brothers and sisters that is utopia, even if realized, and everybody constantly yielded to the smallest desire and wishes of others you would have to do likewise to reciprocate thus yielding some of your freedom.

If you plan to serve and love the lord each and every moment of your life right there you lost your freedom since you become a slave to an idea, even when you are sugarcoating it by saying that is exactly what you want to do to secure your ticket to heaven. – Emovere

I think I have already acknowledged that I am a slave myself – to the Lord Who has revealed Himself to me, and I do not count Him a sinner for having bought and kept me. His terrible authority weighs light as a feather on my neck, because I have learned to comply with His will, and He has trained me to behave as though I were His son rather than His slave, for which reason He treats me as a son. I have become the trusted and loyal slave, the limits upon whose freedom are mild and lax indeed. – Tertius

When you are talking about children being taken away by social and cultural forces, by forces beyond your control, I know what you mean, and felt the same frustration. But that is the price to pay by the masses for their stupidity and allowing things to reach this point. Stupidity has consequences, did you know? Very few healthy islands are left in society.
But you are not helpless, you can build a strong character in your children where they are not only strong enough to say no but also have no desire at all for that cheap chicanery. They have higher goals, values, interests, and above all understanding and maturity, etc. That is better protection than placing them in a safe corral. Think of it as vaccinating them. They become immune. – Emovere

Several of them seem determined to learn the hard way. – Tertius

I know a few young men, who a few years ago were boys, who never picked any vices despite being exposed to all kinds of crap. They just watched with a grin their acquaintances go down the drain.

They are straight, hard working, successful and dependable workers and never to my knowledge set foot in a church.

You said; What were the difference between a slave’s owner and a force beyond a free person’s control?

How about to begin with a question of principle, if you are that concerned about a success challenged individual, instead of enslaving the person for his own good as you suggest, you can help, you can contribute to a boot camp for instance where individuals unequipped for life are prepared with at least some rudiments. It does not have to be a give-away, either; there is something known as paying back.

Ultimately arguing that enslaving an individual for his own good is a poor argument; a more powerful argument could be made that it constitutes a taking advantage of someone’s misfortune with cynicism for conscience. – Emovere

I have found that God enslaved and put me to forced labor for my own good. I have learned my lessons, and have allowed slavery to leave its impression. I have treated with my Master, and He has proven tractable and merciful, more than ready to arrange for my freedom on the condition that I continue in honorable and profitable relationship to Him. This too is for my own good only, for there is no end to His riches, and He doesn’t need me.

This fundamental aspect of anyone’s relationship to God could have had no illustration, in a world of illustrations, apart from the existence of slavery, any more than another aspect of it could have borne illustration apart from such an institution as marriage. – Tertius

Hey, Tertius, you wouldn’t happen to be one of those weekend Civil War (oops, pardon me, the War of Northern Aggression) re-enactors, would you? I’m fairly confident as to the side you would be on. – Recomstruere

Again, if all the sanctimonious democrats found slavery so inconsistent with democracy, then as taxpayers they could have extinguished it without a ruinous war by ponying up to reimburse those whose property they proposed to ‘free’ to the four winds.

For my part, I am from Pennsylvania, and I suppose that I would have fought on the Union side, with my neighbors; but I might well have been possessed of the half-stepping inhibition that brought defeat after defeat upon the Union arms, and so protracted the war, in the face of a far more sanguine foe animated by passions far more visceral than any high-minded hopes of ‘preserving’ a ‘union’.

I lived in South Carolina for two years, and I cannot prove that a black cloud lingers over a region where slavery persisted for hundreds of years. If there can be an invisible sun, so can there be an invisible black cloud, I suppose. It is one piece with the everlasting grief that reverberates from the Civil War days themselves. I have not intended to ‘celebrate’ a slave system any more than I would ‘celebrate’ a prison system as anything more than a grim necessity; it is all too laden with grief; it is all too sunless with despair. But the darkness of its privations is indispensable to the light of the glorious liberties by which emancipation is distinguished from it, and to the image that it bears of a grievous but indispensable corresponding phase of spirituality. – Tertius

It is NOT false logic to declare slavery evil. It IS false logic to declare that someone in debt is a slave to their debtors. At least they have the freedom to choose how to pay back those debts.

REAL slaves have no such freedom.

The Bible endorses slavery. You don’t dispute that.

Those parts of the Bible are evil.

That is not false logic. – Dol

Okay, here is how the logic seems to proceed:

As the universal arbiter of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, Dol decides according to however he feels about things whether or not a thing is ‘evil’. Dol has declared slavery ‘evil’. Therefore slavery is evil!

Is the natural stratification of society ‘evil’, against which democracy so stridently pretends to mitigate? Says who, except the natural underling to whom democracy represents free and unwarranted opportunity to escape the answerability with which underling status is naturally encumbered?

Is it as a self-anointed democrat that you make pronouncements against things upon which democracy pretends to be such a superseding improvement? If you would dispense with slavery, would you dispense with the prisons also? – the public schools? – how about the military draft in time of war? How do you miss all of the force with which a society is held together and sustained by a government whose final authority resembles nothing so much as the final authority of a slavemaster? Is government ‘evil’? If it is, it owes its existence to the ‘evil’ of people whose lawlessness calls government into existence.

Slavery settles over people who have despised work. The diligent and the industrious have learned how to extricate themselves from it.

“The hand of the diligent will rule, but the slothful will be put to forced labor” said Solomon, a wiser man than any sitting here prating and carping against ‘the Bible’ that marks them all natural slaves – restive and recalcitrant ones at that – having no immediate hope, and without God in a sunless world. – Tertius