One of these four statements must be true...

There is no paradox!One must be logically true if the assumption is true because:IF God exists and has rules that are never wicked and if those rules are recorded faithfully in the bible and those rules sanction owning poeple and beating them THEN owning people and beating them must not be wicked. But you say that it is wicked.SO,If you agree that owning and beating people is wicked, where is the point in that last story where the logic breaks?You can only really identify a few key points... either the bible does not, in fact, sanction owning people and beating them... or the bible does not faithfully record God's rules... or God's rules are sometimes wicked... or God does not exist.Unless you can see any other gap in the logic?I'll spell it out in half-steps (forgetting the need for the "God exists" bit, because I assume that you're not challenging that!:IF God has perfect rules AND those rules are recorded faithfully in the bible THEN the bible has perfect rulesIF the bible has perfect rules AND the bible sanctions brutal slavery THEN brutal slavery is acceptable.Do you see my challenge to you to break the logic?You must either think that brutal slavery is acceptable (at least in some circumstances)Or you must think that the bible doesn't say "brutal slavery is acceptable (at least in some circumstances)"Or you must think that the bible is not the literal word of God (at least in some parts)Or you must think that God thinks that brutal slavery is acceptable (at least in some circumstances)If you think that God has perfect rulesAND you think that God's rules are faithfully recorded in the BibleAND you know that the bible sanctions slaveryTHEN you must think that slavery is part of a perfect ruleset. Do you? Is slavery not fundamentally immoral, per se?Is your position basically that if God commands (through the perfect medium of the bible) perfectly moral rules then owning people and beating them isn't wicked because God commands it thus? I suppose we could defend this position by arguing that this rule was for a certain group of people in a certain time... but this wouldn't wash because we might ask "how do we know which of the Bronze Age rules still apply"? There would be no reason to believe any moral pronouncements in Leviticus, for instance, and you'd have to revise any position that you held on homosexuality if your justification for that was biblical (unless you wanted to be a hypocrite).Do you not accept that the bible sanctions the owning and beating of human beings?Maybe instead you think that the bible isn't exactly the direct word of God; slavery might be some slip-up that made it into the Bible because of the prevailing thinking at the time... but then, again, you'd need to stop citing Liviticus to justify positions on homosexuality, for fear of being branded a hypocrite... unless you could give us a reliable method for determining which of the Bronze Age rules did "slip in" in this way and which were literally God's laws.Or maybe you question even the suggestion that "God is sometimes wicked" and claim this is false, despite the fact that he created and commanded a World in which SLAVERY was acceptable (owning and beating someone half to death) according to His own book. Maybe you are forced to admit that you think that brutal slavery is sometimes morally acceptable?How can you think that {God exists}, {His rules are never wicked}, {the bible records His rules perfectly}, {the bible says that brutal slavery is okay} and yet still think that brutal slavery is wicked?You cannot hold all of those positions simultaneously and remain logically consistent!