Slavery was seen as something that was commonly seen in the Bible. So much so, that Christian slaveholders in early America used the Bible as an free-pass to have and hold slaves. But does the Bible actually condone slavery?
There are many parts of the Bible that people have questioned over the years, but I think that one of the biggest arguments is whether slavery was condoned in the Bible, or if it wasn’t. Well, firstly we can say the slavery worked differently that some might think. In the New World, or early America, slaves were generally people who had been taken captive and were forced into slavery. However, in the Bible, slavery could come from many different ways. People who had no money could sell themselves into servitude or they could have even been criminals working in servitude to justify their sentence and appease God. There were, of course, those forced into slavery, but it was not as simple as that most times.
Do I think that the Bible directly condoned slavery? No, I don’t. I think that slavery was an awful that happened in many different cultures and that lead to the spread of it in the future. People like to pick and chose what they want the Bible to say. I think that if a person wants to use the Bible to condone something as serious as slavery, then they should really take a better look at some of the other “rules” the Bible has. 1 Timothy 2:9 states that women shouldn’t braid their hair, own gold, or wear expensive things. Leviticus 19:27 states that a man should not trim his beard, and 19:28 says that a person should not make any cuttings into their flesh, aka, have tattoos. I think the moral of this story is that there are a lot of things in the Bible, but just because they’re in the Bible, doesn’t mean you can twist them to your own standards.
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