General Discussions

[Mav]

This is the same line of argumentation used by slavery apologists - slavery wasn't that bad because it was really indentured servitude, the slave owners were very nice to the slaves and always greeted them with a smile and a warm hello, invited them into the house to eat etc. All of which is well and good, and better than the alternative, but it has nothing to do with the fact that by any recent standard, the idea of one human owning another, and the owned human being the literal property of the owner is completely wrong.

I love the way those who insist that the Bible is the word of God tie themselves in knots trying to explain away the  way the Bible concentrates on the ethical keeping of slaves rather than declaring slavery is evil. One way of explaining it away would be to recognise that much of the social commentary is necessarily a reflection of the society that existed a couple of Millenia ago. Slavery was commonplace back then and simply banning it wouldn’t have been pragmatic. But that would undermine the notion of an unbending moral code imposed by God. But surely God would not be worried about pragmatism: S/he would just have declared slavery to be evil.

So there’s now an attempt to reinterpret slavery as a positive thing in the Bible. We’re told that the Bible wasn’t dealing with slaves - it was dealing with “bondservants”, those who became slaves voluntarily for a set period to work off a debt to the new Master. Who said PR spin was invented by advertising gurus? Why did an all-knowing and loving God think that debt recovery should include set-term slavery? Surely God could instead have  mandated a form of bankruptcy law in the Bible in which the debtor was required to make some reparations out of his assets or income for a set period while preserving his freedom to live and work as he wished? Maybe modern society is now more moral than in biblical times. We don’t accept the nonsense from human traffickers that they are entitled to enforce the voluntary bond servant agreements that the desperate victims entered into.