Why does God love slavery?

Question

Exodus 21:20-21 – "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."
Colossians 3:22-24 – "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
Ephesians 6:5 - "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."
1 Peter 2:13 - "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority."
Or are they just more convenient "metaphors"?

1 Peter 2:18 - "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh."
1 Timothy 6:1 - "1 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered."
Leviticus 25:44-46 – Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Deuteronomy 20:10-15 – When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

Jeremiah - Is Peter in the old testament? Or timothy?
Anyway as a Christian you are supposed believe that the whole bible is Gods word, not just the parts you like.

Many of you seems to be saying its acceptable in those days and God is just trying to make people treat their salves better.
1 Peter 2:18 seems to be saying salves should be obedient to their masters. Correct me if I'am wrong.

Answer 1

My, a lot of people are in denial about this. The old testament and Qu'ran both have prophet's owning slaves. Apparently Allah/Jehovah isn't big on inalienable human rights. That's a modern, Western cultural concept.

In fact, if you read the Old testament you get a real sense of God more as a stern master than a kindly parent, we humans are his property. Thank you for digging up all those passages.

Answer 2

I'm gonna answer this as an atheist with a fair amount of reading in Biblical scholarship.

The reason why Christian writers like Paul would have endorsed slavery was probably to deter hostile attention from the Romans. The Christians in Paul's time (and indeed in the time of the writers of the other letters) were having the cr*p kicked out of them by the Romans. As, for that matter, were the Jews, seeing as they were in revolt against a heavily oppressive Roman rule. But the Christians who were under the guidance of Paul, being a new sect, wanted to distinguish themselves from the Jews and didn't want to cause trouble. Hence the pro-slavery quietism. A cynical gesture, but an understandable one.

The reason why 'Old Testament', or rather Judaic writers would have been in favour of slavery would have been that in the time most of those books were written, the Jews had kingdoms and that meant that you had slaves. That was the way it was back then. It doesn't mean the Jews were bad - they were just like everybody else in those days.

Hope that answers your question.

Answer 3

Modern Christan's wont admit that their predecessors were in any way wrong.

If they had slaves then it was the right thing to do.
If they beat slaves then it was the right thing to do.
If they killed slaves it was a punishable act but not wrong.

If this religion was wrong on those accounts then they may be wrong on a lot of others.
Therefore the church condones slavery and the beating of the slaves. Man cannot change the word of god to suit his own ends. To do so would be against the teachings of christianity.

What was that? Man HAS changed the word of god to suit themselves?

10 commandments (1 anyway)
THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

How many wars have been fought because of religion?

Answer 4

I don't know that I would say that God loves slavery. More that He knows it is a fact of the world and so He gives directions for how it should be dealt with. One thing you must realize is slavery then was not like slavery in American history. Slaves were treated better then for one thing. A person could also sell their self into temporary slavery. God is a practical God. He will not force man to do anything so He gives rules for how to deal with it. If a slave obeyed the above precepts he would not be beaten or mistreated as he would be a valuable worker to his owner.

Also God can use slavery to his advantage. Read the story of Joseph.

Answer 5

Because Jesus came as a servant; he owned nothing of
this world and He humbled himself and left his throne
in heaven and became flesh & blood, & lived a perfect
life, and died by taking our sins upon himself. He was
born in a stable, and had no place to even lay his head.
He had no money to pay tribute, so sent Peter to get
money out of a fishes mouth. He said, those who desire
to be first in heaven should be as a servant here. Any
reward for such humility, is seldom found in this life, but
God has promised great reward in heaven.

God protected Israel and gave them victory over all who
might deny them their needs; why? Because that is the
people through whom Jesus was to be born. After His
birth, that "special" status was finished & look what has
happened to them since God's protection has been taken
away.

To suffer honorably & wrongfully, has it's rewards, but not
in this world.

Answer 6

You must remember, God's plan was never to have man as slaves. On the contrary, He wanted us to be free and live life to the full. God also gave us the gift of free will, but because of our evil nature we used that gift to downtrodden the weaker people in our society by using them as slaves to fulfil our greed. In fact it still goes on to this day but under a different guise. (Supermarkets and other big organisations using men, women and children of third world counties to make their goods under extremely bad conditions and with very little wages). God respected our free will and went along with mans idea of having slaves to carry out his every whim, but through the prophets God taught man a slow and sometimes a very painful lesson in loving others by His own example.
God does not love slavery, however we should not feel holier than thou (pardon the pun) in thinking we don't do such a thing, in fact we do by buying goods from these big organisations that make huge profits by making slaves of people as I mentioned above. Yes, it still goes on today. God doesn't encourage it, we do. The likes of you and I.

Answer 7

Why should God be blamed for man made religious books? Why not blame the authors instead?

Answer 8

There is a difference between servants and slaves . What you typed down for slaves should be servants. God disapproves slavery .

Answer 9

God condemns slavery, and punishes all those responsible in the new Kingdom. We must remember, Christ is master of the law, and can change it, or create new law in order to fit the changing times. Slavery as practiced in America until recently (to God 142 years is recent) will always be condemned. Look away, look away, look away...Dixieland.

Answer 10

God does not love slavery. First, remember that the bible was written by men, not God, and that through translation many of the true words and meanings were skewed or altered by mistake, lack of better words, or to fit the opinions of the translators. And everything is subject to interpretation.