God's attitude toward slavery

This is part of my continuing series on helping young people to discern history, society and faith and reasoning skills. There is so much that can be written about slavery, and should be written, but nothing can really be discussed with any intelligence or compassion without recognizing some basic Biblical facts. Without this context virtually everyone is barking up the wrong tree when they discuss slavery in any spiritual context.

God is not "OK" with slavery. He never has been and he never will be. How do we know? Because when first man and first woman were expelled, God said that they and their dependents and their descendants will work for their survival rather than live off the garden. God did not say that some people will work hard and others won't, and he certainly did not say that some people will be slaves to others.

Genesis 3:17-19
And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat: Cursed be the ground because of you; in toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, since out of it you were taken; for dust you are and unto dust you shall return."

If you do your reading you will notice two things. One is that God is rather detailed in his being irate. If God thought slavery would be a good idea, he would have thrown mention of it in at this point. But God made clear that all mankind would be slaves to the ground, from which they have to gain their food, where the ground can be perverse and hard to till (thorns and thistles), and that as created from dust, to the dust of the ground they will return. So God is making it very clear that humans are punished for their disobedience in not allowing God to care for them (by having provided both the garden and God's personal presence among them), including obeying God's few simple commandments and God is also making it clear that humans become subservient to the earth, in the long run. There is actually more allusion to this in what God says earlier in the event of the expelling from the garden. So from the beginning, human slavery is not "OK" with God, but because of their disobedience, God warns that they will never really overcome their abject dependence on the earth, which will be fickle in its harvest, and ultimately their return.

Further, God does not abandon Adam and Eve and their descendants. God even gives them clothes before they leave the garden. Further, their children are knowledgeable in sacrifice rituals to God. So clearly God is still in contact and instructing them. God maintains his contact and the Bible records the major examples, culminating in the selection of the chosen people, the Israelites, where God gives them commandments and laws.

And that is when slavery and the laws for treatment of slaves are given by God to Moses and the Israelites. Does that mean that slavery is "OK" with God? *Rolls eyes and sighs.* Isn't it obvious to you that humans developed slavery of each other all on their own? God gives laws for good though harsh treatment of slaves to Moses, well after the Egyptians, for example (the recent slave owners of the Jews), had an entire society based on slavery. Humans seem to be unable to resist their own temptation of developing slavery. God therefore intervenes and tells his chosen people that slaves are NOT outside the law and decent treatment. So far from saying slavery is "OK," this is God's "intervention" to ensure that at least the Jews treated their slaves fully within religious and civil law and with decency.

Humans, on their own, structured societies that depended on slave labor. It had nothing to do with God.

In defense of humans, I must point out that slaves were often created from conquered people from that other invention of humans, which is war. So I must point out, if there was no slavery, many humans would have killed the other humans to a man, woman and child when they conquered. A lot of people like to talk about "genetic" reasons for mixing with slaves (keeping the population robust). While that is a biological truth it is not a spiritual truth. Slavery was actually human's version of mercy, in recognition that they could not slay every human adult and child when they conquered, and that they were conquering fellow humans. Further, since there was neither a charitable code of work system or a financial code of work system, humans used slavery in order to build civilizations for themselves, for better or for worse. For example, Africans warred among themselves during the period of slavery in the United States, and conquering tribes sold the conquered ones to white people for import as slaves to the United States, rather than slaying the conquered. This is a nuance of slavery that was well understood in the school systems decades ago, but I'm not sure that people realize that today. It's not like Americans invaded Africa and captured slaves for the plantations. Warring tribes desisted from killing each other and sold the losers into slavery, in many, but not all, cases.

So that is the ancient origins of slavery and its proper perspective. Far from endorsing slavery God had to intervene with his chosen people, first taking them out of slavery in Egypt themselves and then, because all of humans societies at that time were based on slaves, secondly, God intervened to make sure the Israelites brought any slaves they conquered under their religious and legal umbrella and moral code. God would not outright forbid slavery because then the Israelites would be unable to make their free choice will about human treatment in war (and that can go either way, as we see in human history) and also because humans had not self organized in a way that they could thrive without slavery (I'm speaking of the primary centers of human occupation and civilization). As you well know, this was true worldwide and had nothing to do with exposure or not to God. Both bearable and cruel slave systems sprung up around the world in human civilization. Whenever one is tempted to think that God should "forbid" some form of human organization, remember that if God has to become the day to day cop of human development, there's no point in even allowing ANY free will among them at all. And after that, God would lose the whole point of having humans as children and might as well buy some fur covered shiny robots instead. (At least they would presumably obey and could be programmed to be good to each other). Think about it. Holocaust scholars can think about that too. At what point would God have to intervene and stop abhorent human activity? When he removes them as a species from free will and ultimately from life itself.

Now, think about what I have presented as a way to have more clarity of thought about the lingering legacy of slavery and its disgusting eruption in the form of sexual and other slavery even today.

Slavery lingered not because it was "OK" with God, but because a lack of a Christian neighbor form of economy or a for pay secular economy, people were tempted to use slavery (again, worldwide) as an economic answer. It has nothing to do with any spiritual factor. Further, the longer slavery lingered the further it became from recognizing that God protects the slaves and exhorts all people to kind treatment. And even today people are seeing the reminder that all humans are dependent on the earth, if anything they are slaves to the earth, because they must eat the fruits of the earth and they will return to the earth. Think about that in terms of the environment and degradation, and you see the accurate spiritual connection between environmental conservation and God. (Not the airy fairy new age reasons where humans denigrate other humans and put the earth on some strange pedestal compared to human thriving and survival). God pointed out to Adam and Eve that it would always be tough to just till food from the earth. As pollution and climate changes happen, that is the reason people must recall that God warned humans would be subservient, in a way, to earth, not because earth is some sort of "idol" that is "better" than those humans who try to live off of it. Extreme environmentalism is anti-Bible (and Qur'an) and puts earth above humans in a spiritual way which is WRONG and borderline idolatry.

But back to slavery. Now we have continuing legacy of slavery, such as in the United States with Afro-Americans, and we have a "new" slavery, where it is sheerly for sexual gratification and entertainment. When people apologize group to group for historical slavery, both groups must ponder and be honest with themselves about why they are talking about the past without recognizing an entertainment and poverty slavery of perversion that has erupted in the most foul way among humans.

Who are the slave owners of sexualized children and "sex economy" workers? Look in the mirror, humans of all groups.