God and Slavery.

It always amuses me when atheists accuse God of being proslavery.

After all, the whole reason for the Jesus coming to the planet Earth was to set to people free from slavery, slavery to things like jealousy,  greed, malice, fear, pride; to set captives free from physical diseases, and social diseases like bondage to false rules or social values(including Slavery), and spiritual bondage to false gods.

And it was William Wilberforce and his Christian colleagues who devoted years of their life fighting the godless who profited from the trade in human beings.  Where were our atheists/godless then?  They were on the side of big money, which always resists on economic grounds (or on the spurious explanation of social superiority) any improvements in the working conditions of the very poor.

St Paul clearly writes that in Jesus Christ there is no longer any Greek or Jew (that is, no ethnic superiority or differences), no male or female (that is no difference on the basis of gender) and no slave or free, indicating all men are equal before God, and by doing so indicates that all social, ethnic and gender status is irrelevant. He thus rejects racism, sexism, slavery or class divides, and shows that no man or woman can be considered less important than another, something reflected in the founding documents of the United States of America.  Love your neighbour as yourself is described by Jesus Christ himself as the basis of all rules in the old Testament regarding of attitudes and dealings with other human beings, and explains that “your neighbour” is everybody else, not just your social equals.  St Paul describes slave trading as a terrible sin, which will be judged one-day, along with all other crimes and sins against our fellow human beings.  Jesus Christ describes not paying workers properly as a serious crime.  So, just like William Wilberforce and his colleagues did, you can easily workout that owning a fellow human being, mistreating him, and using him badly, and short changing him are against God's principles.

   Employment relationships are a fundamental part of life, and in the Old Testament  the nations other than Israel used “the powerful dominate the weak” economic model. Very evolutionary. God wanted to demonstrate the better way, and instituted what could only be described as a “left-wing”, essentially socialist economic and employment system. He did this to model his love to the world, to show the other nations that their cruel system was wrong. For example, Deuteronomy (written in 1500 BC) describes how every seven years you must cancel debts owed to you, and to not charge interest… imagine our banks doing that! It also describes how if a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, sells himself to you, “in the seventh year you must let him go free.  Furthermore, when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed, but supply him deliberately from your flock, your wheat, and your wine press.  Give to him as the lord your God has blessed you.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and that Lord your God redeemed you”.  Elsewhere, God specifically makes provision for foreigners/refugees, orphans, and widows, and every 50 years God instructs all the land to be returned to the original owners even though they might have sold, to prevent one man becoming super-rich at the expense of everybody else, like we have today. Kidnapping was forbidden, so only volunteers (who were paid), and “escaped slaves” were not to be returned, but allowed to go free, as were mistreated slaves, imagine the Roman Empire permitting that. Furthermore, if these instructions were not followed, there would be serious punishment, which should have made a decision about taking advantage of some-one easy to turn down. So in reality this was a system of bonded labour, with a time limit and a completion bonus. But the Israelites couldn’t resist the temptation to steal from the weak, and so eventually were severely punished. In Isaiah 58, and in many other places, God clearly instructs his followers to “loose the chains of injustice, set the oppressed free, share your food with the hungry, provide shelter to poor wanderers…”, it’s a recurring theme, a big message. In the New Testament, in the Roman Empire era, St Paul instructed masters not even to threaten, let alone ill-treat any slaves, and masters were to remember that Christ had saved them from the wages of sin (death) by purchasing their freedom with His blood. Given this debt of love, ill-treatment of any other human being would be hypocritical, and would face punishment itself subsequently (see in Philemon, a small book in the New Testament).

Everything in the old Testament is subject to the concept of “ Love your neighbour as yourself”, except where punishment for crimes was due.  Clear, simple, and even a lawyer/atheist cannot wiggle out of that.  There are however some things in the old Testament which God only permitted due to stubbornness in the hearts of men, the most famous is the concept of revenge, payback for damage…. “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, which Jesus turned upside down with his comments about “ Love your enemies”; and divorce, which Jesus reveals to not be God's preference either.  It does not take a rocket scientist to work out what God thinks about slavery, just as William Wilberforce and his colleagues did.

So who made your footwear/sneakers?