Do Some Christians Today still Approve of Slavery?

Question

Except for murder, slavery has got to be one of the most immoral things a person can do. Yet slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves.

Many Jews and Christians will try to ignore the moral problems of slavery by saying that these slaves were actually servants or indentured servants. Many translations of the Bible use the word "servant", "bondservant", or "manservant" instead of "slave" to make the Bible seem less immoral than it really is. While many slaves may have worked as household servants, that doesn't mean that they were not slaves who were bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock.

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

The following passage describes how the Hebrew slaves are to be treated.



If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)


What kind of family values are these!?

So, Jenny loves her slaves, does she :)

Answer 1

First we all have to understand that we can't understand completely the huge cultural differences between today and 5,000 years ago no matter how much studying anybody does.
Our idea of slavery today may be very different from what it actually was in the Old Testament.
Although I have not read it my self, there is a book I have been told about called "Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals". It's suppose to display how the rights of these groups have evolved since the time of the Old Testament and what God's (the christain God) perspective on these groups has been throughout history.
Good question though! Makes me wanna look more into this topic.

Answer 2

I'd say that most people, not just Christians, reject slavery. The fact that Jesus Christ was sold out by Judas to the Roman troops for the price of a slave shows the horror of slavery.

But there are those Ku Klux Klan types that feel they need to prove white power or some fool thing like that, and say that God wants us to have slaves.

These people are hypocrites who twist Scripture to their own agendas, and not Christians at all.

If this were the case, as you seem to suggest, there would be a great many non-white chapels shut down.

Answer 3

Dear Dutch Dolly, Antoher verse is Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5). What exactly is your point? If slaver y was a reality at that time, the verses you ave are simply teling the masters to not treat the slaves badly,The verse I gave is telling the slave to be obediant, even as to the context of the Chruch's obediance to Jesus christ. And you are incorrect in your assertion that slaves were treated worse than livestock. People often voluntarily went into slavery as a vocation. Sometimes the slaves chose to stay with their masters because they love their masters. However, in this case you would not know this because you have not studied the culture in which those verses regarding slavery were written. You like to take them out of context. In addition to that you make the fallacious error of removing scripture from there literary context, thus showing that you do not even know how to begin studing literature. much less a Book with a resume as large as the Bible. The levitical laws, were applied to those people, in that historical context. This is no Suprise, the BIble is full of world History,and if you would read on in the Bible, using context, you would see how thru the work of God in these cultures, slavery was eventualy abolished. Ultimately, if you read these scriptures in context, they teach a fundamnetal basis of society that we use today. It teaches that that we are to behave and carry ourselves properly and morally within the social and political context in which we live in order to keep peace and order and to glorify God. Theres no doubt that people used the Bibel to condne slavery and rationalize its abusive use, However this does not negate the valdity and trustworthiness of the Bible, you make a serious logical error when you say that erring application of Biblical truths, by those who missapply it, invalidtas the truth and moral structure of the Bible, thats a serious logical fallicy.
God Bless
Apostle

Answer 4

I do! I approve of being slaves to Christ! It is the highest honor!

BTW, to argue against slavery you need to go back to the culture of the day. Slavery was part and parcel of life in ancient times. The Bible documents the fact that slavery exists (but nothing is mention about APPROVING it) and regulates it such that slaves are not oppressed but are treated well, which is far different from how the surrounding nations oppressed their slaves.

And you should also know that it is Christians who worked hard to abolish slavery, the kind where the blacks are oppressed and mistreated. Moreover, back in the NT times, most forms of slavery are akin to the modern day maids from Indonesia or Phillipines who go to Singapore or Malaysia to work for families.

Answer 5

Divorce is also a terrible thing. We wink at this in today's society. I assure you that God has a much higher moral standard than you do. He will not even tolerate sin in the heart. Jesus once explained to the Pharisees that God allowed this evil because of one reason only, "because of the hardness of your hearts" (Matthew 19:8)
Slavery was a fact of life in Biblical times and throughout human history. The Bible did not attempt to deal with this issue because it was concerned with a much weightier issue, the eternal destiny of men's souls. I am sure many who practiced slavery during the early history of this nation considered themselves Christians. It should be remembered however that it was chiefly the work of Christians that brought an end to slavery, both in this country and in England. It is because of the hardness of men's hearts that these things exist. It takes the grace of God working through the Gospel to change men's hearts.
It might interest you to know that the first integrated college in the US was Oberlin, founded by the great American evangelist Charles G. Finney.

Answer 6

Well, I claim to be a "Christian"; and if Christ were on earth today he would not be a Christian as loosely as the term is used today. "Christian" is not a group activity, it's one soul at a time with a personal relationship with Christ. It's like they say, "Standing in a church does not make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a mechanic. But, those people having a tribal mentality can't envision individual relationships, and group cooperation. In fact, Christianity is not a religion, but a belief that survives not because of religion, but in spite of it. Religion is a man-made system of rules and dogma. Christianity is a transformation within each heart and soul. Many false prophets abound, but few are Christians. Don't paint everyone with a broad brush if you don't know anything about them.

Answer 7

not really...Christians will rarely approve of slavery today. You see slavery mostly in Muslem countries today, Slavery was abolished in Christian countries first as a general rule

think of it this way... yes there were rules restraining abuses of slavery in the Bible... but...
God allows divorce in the Bible, and has rules restraining the abuse of divorse in the Bible, but in the book of Malichi God says I HATE DIVORCE in the end, allowing something and approving of something are not really the same thing often it is a restraint of abuse and stopping a bad thing from being worse

in the end, it is remarkable that it was foretold that God Himself would be valued at the price of a cheap female slave, 30 pieces of silver, by Israel... and , in fact, that is what happened in the person of Jesus Christ. He came to serve on the cross that those who believe can then serve God acceptably Jesus went through the humiliation as a slave that we could be set free to serve God

Answer 8

They knew it was wrong. In an attempt to please God, the king let all slaves go free in Jeremiah. Slavery was a form of punishment for betraying the trust of ones neighbors, in order to pay off debts. If people had no other means to pay, it was determined that they should work for the debtor. And after 7 years your debt was paid and you go free. That was Jewish law. Part of the dont treat your people this way. God put the Israelies into slavery as punishment.

Answer 9

yes alot of those people were slaves if they were captured durring war they were made slaves. but the rest were indentured servants. as men of God all the people who worked for them slave or servant were treated with respect. people like you just want to find a problem

Answer 10

no, one must take into account the cultural aspect of the scriptures. socrates wrote extensively about the subject, that doesn't mean that he did not own slaves, or felt that it was wrong, it was just a part of the time. taking things out context seems to be a rampant issue when individuals try to disprove or prove an issue of discourse.