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Does the Bible Support Slavery?

June 17, 2010

This is more of a quick article.

Over at MaxvsMax (can’t get enough of that webcomic you see), there is an interesting topic going on. The creator, Wes, quoted C.S. Lewis and asked for thoughts on the quote.

Eventually the topic of the Bible and its rules governing slavery come up. It is suggested that according the Bible slavery is just fine. Clearly this is morally repugnant, but God is just fine with it. Can that be right?

There are a few things to keep in mind here. Cultures change. There was a very real point in time when MAN accepted slavery as a natural thing, and was dependent on it. (And until not very long ago in the scheme of things)

Economies depended on slavery. People depended on slavery. In some ways, the world depended on it. Does that make it right? Absolutely not. But it does mean one thing.

Just because something is important doesn’t mean someone of authority can simply state, “This shall (not) be.” And it will happen.

If that were the case, we’d have universal health care in the United States as I type this.

Slavery could not be overturned in a moment. Sometimes cultures must be changed a little at a time. The Bible has done this more than once. A very long time ago a culture decided that if you hurt me I would hurt you worse. So you would hurt me even worse. And so on. So to start a path down a good road, an eye for an eye was started. You hurt me. I hurt you back just as much. The cycle is stopped. Eventually though, man grew enough that he should be able to do even better. So we gained the instruction turn the other cheek.

The Bible, and God’s instructions, were left in the middle a situation where slavery couldn’t simply be abolished and everything would be ok. (Anyone can be realistic and see the truth behind this, even as we all agree slavery is not ok)

So the best and only, available choice was the next best thing. See to it that if slavery ‘must’ exist, then the situation for the slave is as good as possible. (Something that sadly was not always followed) It is difficult to find another set of rules for slavery that looked upon the slave so well.

So in short. Does the Bible (and therefore God) support slavery? No. It merely didn’t have the authority to abolish it. So it did what it could to stem it.

  • http://www.noforbiddenquestions.com NFQ

    I might agree with you if the “someone of authority” we were talking about was, say, Thomas Jefferson in colonial America. Even if he were able to come to terms with the idea that slavery is wrong while profiting from slavery himself, he and the other founders couldn’t put “There will be no slavery” into the Constitution. Too big a change, too quickly — society could devolve into chaos. Put some guiding principles in there about freedom and equality, and let society figure them out whenever they get around to it.

    But we’re not talking about a mere mortal here. We’re talking about God. And maybe we need to clarify what we mean when we say God — I generally assume that the Christian God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent. So if slavery really is wrong, and innocent people are suffering by being enslaved, I’d think an omniscient God would know about it and a benevolent God would want to put a stop to it as soon as possible. An omnipotent God shouldn’t be held back by petty practical limitations. This is the guy who created the universe from nothing — and you want me to suppose that slavery just had to exist and God was powerless to reshape society or do anything about it.

    That is, unless God doesn’t really mind slavery — unless “benevolent” means something totally different to God than it does to us. I don’t know how we would know what God likes and doesn’t like other than reading the Bible, so it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to infer that he’s okay with it.

    Keep in mind also that God was pretty clear in the Bible about (for example) adultery being wrong, even though the simple existence of that commandment couldn’t stop adultery completely. People argue all the time about why God didn’t just make it so that nobody wanted to sin, and believers say that it’s because we’re supposed to make the choice to be good. So why not define slavery as sinful? Even if you think there was some reason why God wouldn’t want to end slavery suddenly, he certainly had the opportunity to make a statement like that.