God Allowed Slavery Because Of The Hardness Of Their Hearts

[aspirin99]

I'd like some help thinking through this argument: God allowed slavery because of the hardness of their hearts. So, just as the NT says that Jesus claimed Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of their hearts, he also allowed slavery, and apparently, any other atrocity that Christians can't explain.

 

Here are my thoughts, but I'd like to hear yours.

 

First, divorce can be done with the consent of all persons involved. Granted, a women in the those days could have been at a disadvantage economically if she was suddenly without a home, but fairness could have been reached. You could argue that there was a moral path for two people to stop being spouses.

 

With slavery, the person didn't get to choose, and slaves lost the fundamental right to self-governance and sovereignty. There was absolutely no moral path to forcible slavery. Perhaps there could be for indentured servitude, but that's not what we're talking about. Therefore, the two issues of divorce and slavery are not morally comparable. It's like comparing consensual sex to rape and saying they are the same.

 

Second, saying that Moses allowed something that his god deemed immoral is preposterous when we view all of the asinine things that Moses demanded the death penalty for. If picking up sticks on the Sabbath could get you killed, you'd think Moses could control any behavior he wanted.

 

Those are my thoughts. Please help me flesh out this argument. Or, has this argument been written about before? I couldn't find anything.

[Guest Valk0010]

Hardness of the hearts from a suitation in which god created for them. If god is the creator of all things, then allowing slavery because of the hardness of people's hearts is still God allowing slavery.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

It's probably been made before, but its worth a mention. See, we can go on and on about how immoral the Bible and its laws are, and we do it often on this forum. There is always something new added, sometimes it seems endless the list of things immoral you find about the Bible, its laws, Jesus and God.

[ShackledNoMore]

I'm curious where this argument came from, or what the basis of it is. Denunciation of slavery is a reflection of contemporary sensibilities and certainly not biblical. The New Testament does not reverse the OT's position, but instead continues to allow slavery to the point of providing instructions on how masters and slaves should relate to each other.

 

If the xian god were actually real AND he allowed slavery because of the hardness of people's hearts, then he's still not telling us that anything is wrong with it (we just recently figured it out for ourselves, or he waited nearly two thousand years and finally spoke to our spirits?) He also presumably will not proclaim anything different until we die or he drops out of the sky accompanied by trumpet fanfare. Odd, since he already cleansed all those good master's souls white as snow with his blood. Also odd coming from a god who once demanded death for such a myriad of petty offences (e.g., picking up sticks on the sabbath): he supposedly makes allowances for us hard-hearted people to beat slaves to within an inch of their lives, but mandated death to stick gatherers? Is this where the desperate apologist would tell me I'm too stupid to understand the perfect ways of god?

[LivingLife]

The two actually have some commonality.

 

The old way was to simply put away the wife and as such she really had nothing to support herself other than turning to prostitute if her own family felt she had shamed them and rejected her or if she had no blood family.

 

Divorce was a way to make this practice stop. Pretty much how the muslims get rid of a wife by accusing her of adultery and having her stoned to death.

 

Nothing to back this up with, came from a discussion waay back in my woo days but seems to be true based on what jesus allegedly said.

 

Reality is that so much of the bible is BS and nothing can be taken on face value. The concept of slavery was not unique to the jews either, many cultures did this all over the world.

[aspirin99]

I'm curious where this argument came from, or what the basis of it is.

 

Thanks for the reply. If you Google "Slavery and hardness of heart" you will see that it is an increasingly popular response to the issue of slavery in the OT.

[Thackerie]

The apologists are also ignoring that changing human hearts is within bible god's power, if he wants to — c.f., hardening Pharaoh's heart against freeing the Jews so that god could milk some more glory out of the situation. But, of course, they ignore all of god's assholery.

[Margee]

''The oldest evidence of slavery dates to around 11,000 years ago. Anthropologists disovered a group of pygme remains in southern Africa that were shackled together. As far as recorded and confirmed slavery, the origins are either in ancient Egypt or ancient Sumeria. Egyptian hieroglyphics show that they indeed enslaved other human beings. Hammurabi's code is a detailed outline on law's regarding how to treat slaves.''

 

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Origin_of_slavery

 

Read this!! Hammurabi's code of laws. 282 of them!! Sounds a lot like Leviticus in the OT !!!

 

http://www.phillipmartin.info/hammurabi/hammurabi_codeindex.htm

[ShackledNoMore]

I'm curious where this argument came from, or what the basis of it is.

 

Thanks for the reply. If you Google "Slavery and hardness of heart" you will see that it is an increasingly popular response to the issue of slavery in the OT.

 

I just followed your suggestion... Interesting! The 2nd hit defends this argument, and one of the things it says is:

 

God made rules to keep the evil of the practice to a minimum. For example, if you kidnapped someone and made him a slave, you were put to death. If a slave escaped from his master for whatever reason, you were not allowed to return him. If you harmed so much as a tooth of your slave, you had to let him go free—in other words, no person was allowed to keep a slave if he mistreated him or her.

 

Yet the death penalty for kidnapping someone into slavery is limited to the kidnapping of fellow Israelites (Deuteronomy 24:7), Paul returns in escaped slave in Philemon, and Exodus 21:20-21 says, "Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."

 

The argument is just another instance of people inventing and reinventing god to their own standards, sometimes using weak apologetics to try to justify their positions.

[centauri]

I'd like some help thinking through this argument: God allowed slavery because of the hardness of their hearts. So, just as the NT says that Jesus claimed Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of their hearts, he also allowed slavery, and apparently, any other atrocity that Christians can't explain.

 

Here are my thoughts, but I'd like to hear yours.

 

First, divorce can be done with the consent of all persons involved. Granted, a women in the those days could have been at a disadvantage economically if she was suddenly without a home, but fairness could have been reached. You could argue that there was a moral path for two people to stop being spouses.

 

With slavery, the person didn't get to choose, and slaves lost the fundamental right to self-governance and sovereignty. There was absolutely no moral path to forcible slavery. Perhaps there could be for indentured servitude, but that's not what we're talking about. Therefore, the two issues of divorce and slavery are not morally comparable. It's like comparing consensual sex to rape and saying they are the same.

 

Second, saying that Moses allowed something that his god deemed immoral is preposterous when we view all of the asinine things that Moses demanded the death penalty for. If picking up sticks on the Sabbath could get you killed, you'd think Moses could control any behavior he wanted.

 

Those are my thoughts. Please help me flesh out this argument. Or, has this argument been written about before? I couldn't find anything.

They're trying to sanitize their God.

The apologetic creates a "tail wags the dog" scenario, where the all powerful moral compass

can have his pristine standards tweaked by mere humans.

But as you pointed out, according to the Old Testament, Moses wasn't the one that allowed divorce, God was.

The regulation is found in the Word of God (Deut 21and 24).

Divorce is clearly outlined in the law of God, when a man finds a woman displeasing.

Moses was the messenger.

God also gives instructions to men on how to rid themselves of an unborn child if they suspect the child isn't theirs. (Num 5:11-31)

 

Polygamy (and use of concubines) was readily accomodated by God, with many of the great patriarchs practicing it.

 

Slavery was commanded by God in Deut 20 for various populations that the Israelites went to war against.

They were to be made forced laborers or killed.

[★ Citsonga ★]

I'd like some help thinking through this argument: God allowed slavery because of the hardness of their hearts. So, just as the NT says that Jesus claimed Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of their hearts, he also allowed slavery, and apparently, any other atrocity that Christians can't explain.

 

In other words, slavery is acknowledged to be evil but still temporarily allowed by an all-good God? This isn't a new argument, of course, but it is beyond stupid. Why would an all-loving, all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful creator condone such terrible injustice? After all, how can there be any injustice in a supposedly Just God?

 

Besides, if God allowed it, then wouldn't that mean that it was morally acceptable at the time? And if it was morally acceptable then but isn't now, then how can Christians say that morality is absolute? And if it wasn't morally acceptable, then wouldn't it make God himself evil to condone it?

 

I once had a Christian tell me something like, "They were primitive people, and God had to work with where they were in their understanding." Huh? So these people who supposedly were just freed from 400 years of slavery in Egypt couldn't understand that slavery was bad? And what about way back in the Garden of Eden when God said that "the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (Gen 3:22)? If the "fall" gave man a god-like understanding of good and evil, then how could they have not understood it if God would have told them that slavery was evil? In fact, if they had this god-like understanding of good and evil, then wouldn't they have known that it was evil without even being told?

 

A while back I wrote a lengthy letter to my parents to explaining a whole host of reasons why I no longer believe in Christianity, and this is how I addressed the subject of slavery in that letter:

 

 

Slavery

It is commonly known that the Old Testament indicates that many Hebrews had slaves. Some of them apparently were destitute fellow Hebrews who had sold themselves as bondservants, but others were foreigners who were actually taken captive and forced into slavery.

It seems that a common Christian thought on the subject is that God was not really pleased with slavery, but just passively allowed the Hebrews to have slaves. However, with such a thick set of laws (read Exodus through Deuteronomy) dealing with things as trivial as cutting sideburns and beards (Leviticus 19:27) and eating insects (Lev 11:20), why couldn't God find the space and time to condemn slavery?

 

In actuality, the Bible not only does not condemn slavery, but also has God

granting permission

for the Hebrews to take slaves. In Leviticus we read, "And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them...'" (Leviticus 25:1-2), "Both thy

bondmen,

and they

bondmaids,

which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy

bondmen and bondmaids.

Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you

, of them shall ye buy,

and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and

they shall be your possession"

(Lev 25:44-45). These bondmen and bondmaids were slaves.

We also read, "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that

all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee"

(Deuteronomy 20:10-11). Here it's talking about forced labor, making slaves out of enemies. So, slavery wasn't just a passive allowance, as many Christians claim, but it is an

active

allowance, an act that they were clearly

granted permission

to do.

 

Common Christian thought is that God

regulated

slavery through the Law so that it would not be brutal like the slavery we typically think of. While there are indeed laws in the Old Testament concerning slavery, brutality was actually permissible, as long as the slave didn't die immediately. In Exodus we read, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel...'" (Exodus 20:22): "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand: he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money"(Ex 21:20-21). Some suggest that this law was simply to give the Hebrew slave-owner the benefit of the doubt. However, how could any honest person actually think that

beating

someone

so badly

that he or she could die within a couple days is

not

brutality? How could an allegedly loving and compassionate God allow for such brutality?

 

Even in the New Testament, slavery is acknowledged but not condemned. We read, "Servants, obey in all things your masters" (Colossians 3:22), "Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters" (Titus 2:9), and, "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters" (Ephesians 6:5). At least that last passage does go on to say, "And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening" (Eph 6:9), thus indicating that masters should treat their slaves well. That is an improvement over the Old Testament treatment of the subject, but is it good enough? Why couldn't they condemn the practice of owning people as property? Why sit back and allow slavery to continue? How ethical is that?

[JayL]

[

Even in the New Testament, slavery is acknowledged but not condemned. We read, "Servants, obey in all things your masters" (Colossians 3:22), "Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters" (Titus 2:9), and, "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters" (Ephesians 6:5). At least that last passage does go on to say, "And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening" (Eph 6:9), thus indicating that masters should treat their slaves well. That is an improvement over the Old Testament treatment of the subject, but is it good enough? Why couldn't they condemn the practice of owning people as property? Why sit back and allow slavery to continue? How ethical is that?

 

 

Historically Evangelical Christianity has been the only force in the world that opposed slavery as an institution. However slavery is still ongoing. http://www.antislave...ay/default.aspx

[★ Citsonga ★]

Historically Evangelical Christianity has been the only force in the world that opposed slavery as an institution. However slavery is still ongoing. http://www.antislave...ay/default.aspx

 

Historically, many Christians have supported slavery, and the Christian Scriptures even condone slavery.

 

Also, you're wrong about Christianity being "the only force in the world that opposed slavery." Slavery lost popularity during the Enlightenment era, and many nonreligious people opposed slavery while many Christians defended it.

 

As for the Christians who were/are opposed to slavery, why is it that they know better than their God, who, according to the Bible, endorsed slavery?