How can we take the Bible as an unchanging guide to morality when it condones slavery?
You can murder men and women and keep the virgin girls as your slaves. You can beat them to within an inch of their life and suffer no consequence. You can keep them forever and pass them on to your children as your property.
The bible says this is ok...and we all know it's not. So how can you trust it as a moral guide?
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The entire Bible is about slavery. Spiritual lessons of the devastation of slavery to sin, from the garden of Eden to Jesus being killed for the sins that we do. God illustrates how we are freed from slavery of sin when we are saved by his grace. We are saved by trusting in Jesus more than our selves, or our daughters, sons, families, boss, or our money. God requires us to give our children to him. He wants us to give our entire lives to him. Then and only then will he save our families, our marriages, our relationships.
Abraham in The Bible gave his firstborn to God, so God counted his faith for righteousness. Lot had a choice to choose God or his daughter, so he chose God, so God saved his entire household including his daughters. God wants us to trust him, and then he will help us. Lot's wife longed for people more than God so God killed her to illustrate in this story how seriously we need to think about our priorities. We will all die because of sin, unless we are saved. Joseph was sold into slavery to show us how God helps the helpless. Joseph loved God, so God made him prime minister of Egypt because Joseph trusted in God, not man.
We have to choose God if we want God to save our families. We can't live for our wife, husband, daughter, or son. That is slavery to sin. We have to give them to God! The Bible is stories of spiritual lessons. So he uses actual slavery in the stories in the Bible to teach us spiritual truths. Every story in the Bible has a deeper spiritual lesson for us. Every story of slavery is a lesson paralleled to sin. God shows us in every lesson that he can free us and our families from sin. Sin is slavery. God will help us every time if we trust in him.
No offense meant, but I don't think you understand just how skin crawlingly creepy what you just said is to someone looking at your religion from the outside.
That said, we're not talking about the "slavery" to sin, we're talking about how actual human on human slavery was condoned and codified. We're not talking about symbolic slavery but actual, real "i own you and your family as property" slavery and how such an unambiguously immoral practice can be reconciled with the notion that the Bible is a timeless, divinely inspired guide to morality
@Pikachu Sin is worse than slavery. Sin IS Slavery. God uses actual slavery so people will understand the horrifying nature of sin. You understand that actual slavery is bad, but you are minimizing sin, to justify yourself and accuse GOD! This is not easy for people to understand, but it is a fact.
Uh huh? And how's that working out? God's plan to teach us how bad sin is by letting humans subjugate, humiliate and violate other humans? It's an important part of the lesson to tell us exactly who we can own and how we should own them? Another one of god's successful plans, is it? Nah. That's a post hoc rationalization. Apologetics after the fact. You could just as easily argue that god uses murder so people will understand the horrifying nature of sin but he allegedly forbade that.
You agree that slavery is a vile act...and yet it is allowed, ordered and codified in god's inspired word and NO WHERE is it remotely suggested that it is a bad thing to do to the other. It is only bad to do to fellow Hebrews.
God says sin is bad, says murder is bad, he says lying is bad, he says jealousy is bad...he says slavery is fine and here's how to do it.
Sorry, i find your justification extremely shallow.
@Pikachu OK I think you maybe didn't understand my answers, in my first response 4 days ago to this post. To make sure you understood my explanation for why these things are in the Bible to learn God's spiritual lessons, please answer these questions below.
The answers are in my first reply that I spent 3 hours praying and writing to you to make sure that I give you the best answer so you would understand. (You can get the answers in my first reply, like an open book test)
1. Please explain why Lot who was a Godly man chose to give his daughter to violent rapists? 2. Please explain why Abraham gave his son to be burned and killed as an offering to God? 3. Please explain why God the Father gave God the Son to be tortured for our sins when he had done nothing wrong?
The answer to all your questions is choose, trust, love god more than the people around you which is a creepy, cultish thing to say to anyone looking in from the outside.
You claim that "Every story of slavery is a lesson paralleled to sin"
1. Please explain how instructions that you may murder the mothers and fathers and brothers but keeping the little virgin girls is a lesson about sin. 2. Please explain how the instructions that you can beat a human near to death and suffer no consequences because they are your property is a lesson about sin. 3. Please explain how owning a human as a possession and being able to pass them on as an object to your kid is a lesson about sin.
And even if you could give reasonable answers to those questions you're still attempting to make the case that god condoned slavery to teach us that sin is bad....which is silly because god made that explicitly clear through direct orders and mass killings. So this is just another plan that god knew wouldn't work anyway?
No. This particular line of apologetics is too full of holes to hold any water.
-OK so why does the society built on The Torah, The Jews, have the most democratic, most educated, most equal society in the world?
-Why are the societies built on the Bible, the evangelical countries the most democratic, equal, educated, and happy in the world, like Scandinavia, England, Canada, and USA?
-Why are all the other middle eastern countries that do NOT use the Bible as a guide, but use The koran, have suppressive and unequal laws against women?
- If the Jews made up the stories in the Torah why did they write that God was going to punish them by scattering them and why were the Jews themselves slaves in Egypt who God rescued?
-Do you try to understand the Bible stories from God's point of view or have you made up your mind that the Bible is written and made up by Jewish liars to benefit them?
-Are you anti-simitic?
-Do you understand that Haman in the Torah is Hamas's anti-semitic movement that hate the Jews since Abraham had Ishmael who hated Jacob, Sarah's son, who also king David, and Jesus came from?
-Is the Bible prophetic or a bunch of Jewish lies? Please be carefully.
I think there are good messages in the Tanakh but that doesn't mean we get to ignore the bad ones. Either it is the word of god or it is not. My contention is that if (for example) this book condones slavery, it's not necessarily the timeless or divine guide to morality that it is touted to be.
lol no i'm not anti-Semitic No i don't think the Bible is prophetic and you can call them lies if you want, i'd call it mythologized history since i don't think (most of it) was written with intent to deceive.
❤️🌲❤️🌲❤️ This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. Joshua 1:8 KJV
I can attest it is God's word! The Bible is the most read book in the world, and it makes you successful!
God came down from heaven to show us that he can identify with our helplessness, NO room in the Inn for him. All he wants is our love. He changes us, saves us, gives us peace, hope, and love.
🌟 In every country around the world Sunday people will celebrate Christmas, light candles and say, "thank you for saving me and changing my life, I love you Jesus, my Lord." 🙏
Pikachu Jesus is coming back soon, make sure to be ready!
I have no doubt that you believe that Jesus is returning soon, just like the people he spoke to in Matt 16:28 believed he'd return before their generation passed away, just like the Church of Latter Day Saints have thought for nearly the last two hundred years, just like many people have thought in every generation.
I don't say that to mock you but to put in perspective why i am utterly unconvinced and not at all concerned.
But since this has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, i suppose that signals the end of the discussion and we'll just be agreeing to disagree✌️
