Slavery and the Good Book - Christianity's Dirty Little Secret

We nonbelievers frequently have to fight proposed legislation that would promote Christianity in favor of other religions. Examples are Pennsylvania’s State House resolution that declares 2012 the “Year of the Bible,” the efforts to prevent legalization of gay marriage, and politicians like Rick Perry and Rick Santorum vowing to bring the Bible back into American government. Some ask us why we care what’s in the Bible if we don’t believe in it. As long as there are those who feel strongly that America’s laws are (or should be) based on Biblical principles, we need to understand this book in its entirety, and certainly those who believe that the Bible is God‘s word should want to understand it. If the Bible is the inspired word of the Creator of the universe then I think it’s fair to look to it for our morality - our definition of what’s right and what is wrong.

So what does the Bible have to say about slavery?

A quick check of a concordance will reveal that the word “slave” appears 89 times, “slaves” appears 71 times, “servant” 528 times, and “servants” 266 times in the New International Version. While some of these references might refer to paid workers, and some to people who voluntarily entered into slavery to repay debts, there are many references to buying and selling human beings, some of whom were born into slavery and some who were aquired through wars with other nations. There is no question that these are people who are to be treated as property (Leviticus 25:44-46), and there are many verses that detail how that is to be done, what kinds of beatings are appropriate, when it’s allowed to have sex with your slaves, and things like that. Owning other people was an accepted part of ancient Hebrew culture. The fact that Hebrews might have treated their slaves better than some other peoples did hardly seems to make the practice more palatable.

Then maybe the question becomes, why didn’t God (or the authors of the Bible in whatever way you may understand that) see fit to mention anywhere that this practice was wrong? They seemed to have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. There are detailed instructions on how to prepare a burnt offering, on which foods are to be eaten and which avoided, what kinds of clothing to wear, how we should shave and wear our hair. Today’s believers seem pretty comfortable not spending too much time trying to understand or follow the old laws. They seem kind of silly today, don’t they? Yet, with all the detail of what seems to us to be the most mundane things, God never saw fit to even suggest that owning another person was wrong?

But that’s the Old Testament. You won’t get very far in a discussion with a Christian today before they say that Jesus changed everything. With his birth, death, and resurrection, we are not saved by following the old laws but by His grace.

Surely Jesus wouldn’t have condoned slavery, right? If we look to the Gospels to see what Jesus says about slavery we don’t find much. When He did refer to slaves or servants He seemed to be doing so in order to compare the servant-master relationship to the relationship between all men and God. He seems to have been not so much bothered by the slavery of his day as He was trying to make a bigger point about all people, slaves and rich men alike, finding freedom in God. Some have said that His purpose was not so much to reform the world’s customs as it was to reform the souls of men.

That may be true, but what does that mean for us today when we claim that the Bible is our source for our knowledge of right and wrong?

We know that it’s wrong to enslave another person. I don’t care what religion you follow, if you are not a sociopath, you understand deep inside yourself that it is morally wrong to force another person to work for you. Why, and how do we know this? I believe that it’s because we, as homo sapiens, are able to empathize. We have enough intelligence to be able to look at another person and imagine ourselves in his situation. If we imagine being taken from our homes, separated from our families, and denied the freedom to decide for ourselves how we will spend our efforts, it’s not hard to see that we would be unhappy about it.

I think the reason that nonbelievers point to the Bible’s silence on the question of slavery as important is precisely because it is an easy example of our morality being superior to that of the Bible. Does that shock you? I’ll say it again. When it comes to slavery, our current ideas (at least in America - I’m not denying that slavery still occurs in some places and I’m not saying I’m okay with that) are much more just than anything we could glean on the subject from our Bibles. If you claim that the Bible is the ultimate guide for moral instruction, then you would have no moral problem with owning another person. If the morality of the Bible supersedes the trends of any culture, then we have to conclude that slavery is not a big deal. Fortunately today’s laws have evolved to the point where that isn’t an option for you anyway, but you won’t find the objection to slavery in the Bible.

While the abolitionists of the 19th century were certainly motivated at least in part by religious conviction, it must be noted that those who advocated for the continuation of slavery also used the Bible to promote their position. Both sides in the Civil War claimed to be fighting with God’s blessing. The very thing that I’m suggesting in this blog - that the Bible has nothing to say against slavery - was what Southerners used to justify their position. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, said, “(Slavery) was established by decree of Almighty God…it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation….”

The fact that abolitionists were motivated by their faith, the fact that the Old Testament instructed its followers to treat their slaves better than their neighbors might have, and the fact that slavery and servanthood in its various forms were common in that time, serve only to sidestep the central issue, which is that not only does this book, which is supposed to be our guide for ultimate morality, not condemn the practice, but actually outlines how to treat slaves like property and which kinds of beatings are acceptable. If this is God’s word, then we must conclude that, in His infinite and unchanging wisdom, God was okay with his chosen people owning other human beings.

So what does all this mean? To atheists such as myself, it is an indication that the Bible was written by men who were a product of their time and culture. This doesn’t mean that there is nothing worthwhile in it, but it suggests that the Bible was not under the direction of anything omniscient, omnipotent, virtuous, good, loving, or praiseworthy.

We will make better laws if we take the responsibility as humans to imagine ourselves in other’s places and treat each other accordingly. This is known as the Ethic of Reciprocity, and Jesus wasn’t the first to suggest it. It does line up nicely with what He said about loving one another, and that if we do that the rest will take care of itself. But for those who continue to claim that the Bible is our best gauge for moral behavior, its treatment of slavery should cause discomfort.