First of all, we must admit that there are occasions in
Scripture where slavery is practiced and seemingly endorsed under certain
circumstances and in certain contexts. To try and wiggle out of that fact is a mistake
because it feels like spin and indeed it would be exactly that. However, this
does not mean that just any model of slavery was viewed as acceptable in
Scripture. It was not. Scripture reveals a very specific model of slavery
practiced in the context of the ANE and in ancient Rome. That much is true. However, Christianity introduced strict ethics around how even that model was executed. That said, slavery is not the subject of this post.
Now, for starters, keep in mind that this is a tactic from
the objector to disprove Christianity. It is not the case that the objector
really is saying to you, “look I would embrace Christianity if it wasn’t for
the fact that God allowed actions that I consider immoral. If you can show me
that God is not immoral, I will follow him, cross my heart and hope to die.”
Treat this objection for what it is: a disingenuous excuse to exercise the
universal practice of self-justification. Think about it this way: you have
before you a totally depraved sinful human being pronouncing moral indictments
against God. This is blasphemy! Part of our problem when dealing with
objections like this is that we do not consider and very often fail to
appreciate the seriousness of the sin from which they arise. Any objection that
portends to judge God is particularly pernicious and should be dealt with
accordingly. I have no difficulty telling people who make this objection that
they are guilty of blaspheming God. It is not polite not to tell them the
truth.
First, the objector has no moral standing to condemn slavery
if there is no God. That S/he does so is proof that their own belief is
irrational. The reason this belief is irrational is because a world of chance
contradicts a world of absolute morality. A world of chance cannot produce a
world of absolutes. A system that involves obvious contradictions is
irrational. Second, when pressed far enough for a rational grounding of
morality, the best they can do is say they do not know where objective morals
come from but they just know that something like slavery is wrong. This too is
irrational because there is no rational grounding for their belief. They will
bounce from one theory to another, each one failing to provide the grounding
they so desperately need. And in the end, the shoulders will shrug and even
though they do not know, they will insist on knowing that we don’t need God for
absolute morality.
Since the objector has no grounding for morality in general,
they have no objective basis from which to condemn slavery in any expression whatever,
let alone the slavery mentioned in the Bible. This means their objection is not
sustainable. You can reject it and be within your right not to answer it. The
judge of logic would say: objection overruled.
Now, let’s take a different perspective to the objection. God
as creator has every right to treat every human being as a slave if he so
chooses. After all, every human has rebelled against his Creator and deserves
to be treated much worse than a slave. So the idea that slavery is immoral
necessarily implies that human beings have a right to be treated better by God
than slave treatment, and that is patently false. We do not. We deserve nothing
but condemnation and wrath from the hand of our Creator. It is only due to
God’s grace and loving kindness that our experience in this life has any pleasure
whatsoever, or lessor degrees of displeasure than we currently experience or
have experienced over the course of our lives. And that is just as true for the
slave as it is for the free.
A lot more could be said about this argument but I will
leave it here for now. This is enough to demonstrate that the moral objection
to God over slavery fails to meet its obligation as a true objection and
therefore, any rational person ought to abandon it.
Disclosure: This article does not deal with the morality
of modern forms of slavery such as that practice by early American society. The
aim is purely apologetic in nature and the intention is to help Christians deal
with a very specific and very common objection to Christianity.
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