From: mussack@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com (Christopher Mussack)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: The Bible and Slavery
Date: 16 Oct 92 08:20:59 GMT

People sometimes reject "the God of the Bible" because of the
attrocities mentioned there. I wish to address one issue,
namely slavery. I purposely take this issue because I think that what
I have to say will be controversial.  The argument goes why 
does God allow such a horror as slavery, in fact He seems to 
condone it.

One aspect of Christianity that I always felt was that
Christianity endorses no specific culture or economic
system or political system. This is in contrast to many other
religions, including Judaism. Wasn't this one of the big
fights in the early church, how much of the Hebrew culture
had to be followed to be a Christian? (I believe that the answer 
was none.) I think it was Mohammed's comment that Christianity 
gives us a theory and Islam puts that theory into social practice, 
thus the closer connection between Islamic culture and religion.

However, we each live in and must deal with our cultural, 
economic and political systems. I believe that often the rules 
and laws put forth in the Bible are of the form:
given your situation (culture, government, marriage, whatever) here
is what you should do. Early civilizations had slaves, were 
patriarchical, and depended on a certain cold-blooded attitude
to survive. The average person had much less personal freedom
than we have today. There was a strict hierarchy and basically
you shut up and did what you were told. Remember the Hebrews
begged God to give them a king, to fit in with the cultures around 
them.

Slavery was part of that culture, it was an integral part of the
economic system. I don't think we should blame God for that.
The ethical considerations in the Bible did not have to do with
abolishing social order, they had to do with how one behaved
within the social order. Thus, given that you have slaves,
you should treat your slaves decently. Given that you are a slave,
you should do what your master tells you. I contend that slavery 
per se is not evil, but the way people treat each other is evil.
There are many passages 
in the New Testament that warn about going against the 
grain and that we should obey civil authority, "render unto Caeser". 
God did not set up a perfect society, at least not yet.
Few people have the strength, courage, leadership, or insight 
to change their culture. Most people have to go along with the
crowd and do the best they can. 

To relate it to today, are our cultural, political, and economic
systems any better? Slavery isn't fair, but is it fair that I have 
to go to work when some people inherit millions? Is it fair that
I live in a nice house and have plenty to eat when many people
are homeless and hungry? How much freedom do people really have
in our society? Another example: future generations may wonder
how we could pollute the air so much, yet how many of us are
willing to forgo driving? Perhaps a good ethic would be: given
our dependency on the automobile we should be conservative in its
use, keep our cars tuned up and in good condition, etc.
I'm not sure that we are called to overturn every aspect of
society that is "evil". One challenge in Christian life is 
trying to decide how far to go. Do I vote for pro-life candidates, 
do I demonstrate at abortion clinics, do I take in a 
pregnant teenager? Do I donate money to a homeless shelter, 
serve soup at a kitchen, tutor inner city youngsters, 
hire assasins to get a drug dealer? How much of society do I
reject, and how much do I go along with? Do I make smokers
go outside or do I get them an ashtray?

This does not answer the question of how could God allow such
a screwed-up world in the first place. For that I have no answer.
Notice I don't give the pat answers about "discipline" or "Satan".
I don't feel there is a convincing argument for people who reject 
the "God of the Bible" because of the horrors described there.
However, to those who wonder why God doesn't do something about
the evil in the world I answer that He _did_ do something. 
He put _us_ here.

Chris Mussack