Below is an excerpt from The New American Bible, and there it is entitled, Laws Regarding Slavery. I will quote the excerpt and then comment on it. It may seem to the modern historical and theological revisionist that slavery is pure evil, which it is; that being the case, how can a just, merciful God allow the writers of the Bible, in the Old Testament, to write laws on slavery at all? If God is good, but evil practices are sanctioned in the Old Testament, either God exists and is not good, or God is good and God is evil and permits evil, so God this necessary contradiction, could not exist.
To the absolutist, black-and-white thinker, this harsh but stinging criticism of God is justified, but I I offer a defense of God’s goodness, while De allowed for evil (slavery) to be sanctioned in the Old Testament. The extenuating context of the times is that the morals, culture, and theology of ancient days made owning slaves a near-universal social condition considered normal and just. God and the gods, though disagreeing with this low moral standard, could not push weak, foolish, clueless humanity forward too far, too fast, without disastrous pushback. People individually and as a group, advance morally slowly and intermittently, if at all, in some generations.
The movement morally and spiritually towards improvement and progress is a slow, painful, and jerky with many historical lapses, relapses into sin, and hiccups; still, and nonetheless, there is moral, cumulative progress morally and spiritually in history.
Human nature has not changed and is still basically depraved, but, human culture spiritually and morally advances, and that is our hope. As we shed barbaric, cruel altruist-collectivist ethics in favor of egoist-individualist morality, we can provide humans with ethical knowledge, a better to standard to live up to, so sin and immorality should and will decrease.
Yahweh knew slavery was wrong but could not unilaterally outlaw it, because He would not deprive these ancient peoples of their free-willed choice to live as free equals, willing to enslave none and accept being enslaved by none.
God was and is kind and merciful and knows people are born wicked, timid, irrational, lazy, selfish, fatalistic, weak, foolish, cruel, stupid, stubborn, rebellious, wickedness-prone and wickedness-loving, and falsehood-addicted and falsehood-favoring: these temporizing, pathetic, ignorant monsters of some modest natural conscience and consciousness, minimal free will, a tiny but flickering (waiting to be ignited by the agent willing to maverize and to come alive) spark of divine goodness in each soul—these frail human creatures must freely choose to discover how to live well, and then will to live up to their improving and evolving moral standard.
God will not force them to be good: the greatest advantage to God, to each individual and to society, is gained when each person, and a community, tribe, or nation of persons collectively, aim higher morally, but they must choose to live better: God will not force it upon them from above.
The price of this is painful to watch: seeing just, wise Yahweh standing back while the judges, priests and prophets writing the Old Testament, writing about justice for slaves, are unjustly vilified, misidentified and unfairly condemned, by sanctimonious, virtue-signaling modern critics: Yahweh and these Hebrew rulers are dismissed. Modern critics often conclude that either God is evil and existing, or a contradictory fiction that does not exist, because God and slavery seem linked—and they are—in the Old Testament.
My cognitive and ontological commitment to moderation is a pronounced observation that life is messy and convoluted: binary thinking does not capture such moral dilemmas and perplexities in the full array of their historical context. Only the willfully blind condemn those whom they do not understand.
The evil committed ancient sinners is not excused or went unpunished, but we must never forget that humans have a lot of obstacles in their way; life is not easy, and knowing how to live is often near-undetectable, even if one has become good-willed and morally ambitious, to strive to live better and do the correct thing.
We forget that this generation in 2024 is moving through history, and it would be easy for self-righteous, binary thinkers 500 years from now to howl in fury and rage at our current crude, cruel moral standards and lackluster adherence to even that “low standard”.
Should we condemn slavery categorically? Of course. Should we impose 21st century moral standards on a desert people existing in 1300 BCE? Of course not. We must patient and forgiving while pushing people to grow and improve, but never ideologically true-believing that we can force change with the sword, for that violent, authoritarian, intolerant cure is far more evil than the traditional evil practiced in any society, like slavery among the Hebrews, God’s chosen people.
Here is the excerpt: “These are the rules you shall lay before them. When you purchase a Hebrew slave, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he shall be given his freedom without cost.”
My response: Note that the authors of this book of the covenant (See this Bible’s footnote: “21,1: Rules, judicial precedents to be used in settling questions of law and customs. This introductory phrase serves as the title of the following collection of civil and religious laws (chapters 21-23) which is called in Ex 24, 7, the book of the covenant,”) lay down ethical, legal, and customary rules to guide and regulate the rights, obligations and limitations imposed on slaveholders and slaves in ancient Israel.
At least ethical and legal rules, however unjust and primitive they were or seemed to be to the modern observer, were established, codified, and published. It was a significant start over pure injustice and lawlessness ruling the ancient affairs of enslaved and subjugated humans. It was a start but not the finish of the rise of morality and justice in sorry human history to follow.
Note that if a slave was a Hebrew, one of the chosen people, he could only be held for 6 years, and had to be given his freedom on the 7th year. This may not seem like much, but it was start, where people could be freed, and enslavement has some brackets, however modest, set around it.
One is not wise nor a lover of God or humanity if one expects too much of people. It is easier and gratifying to condemn and sanction, rather than to understand and forgive. When we or others sin, we should be condemned; if our sinning rises to the level of crimes committed, we should be judged and endure the justice process.
For people to gain and for humanity to progress, it would be prudent to understand why sinful children, born with little self-esteem (love) and much self-hatred (evil), group-living, nonindividuating and guided by cruel altruist-collectivist ethics, living in an evil society currently ruled by undetected, hidden Evil Spirits, morally fail. The miracle, rather, is that people are as good as they are, most of the time, and that society is as peaceful, orderly, free, prosperous, just and civilized as it is: that people are not butchering, raping, and robbing each other every day, everywhere, is a bloody miracle. This is Jordan Peterson’s observation.
Because being civilized is a thin but vital, essential veneer of acceptable social behavior gained on the surface of human personalities, on the surface covering the sheer, teeming, atavistic malignancy of human consciousness, individual and collective, only naïve, foolish, inept, nihilistic, revolutionary true believers are so quick, ruthless and eager to overthrow the prevailing dispensation, to augur in their secular heaven on earth.
We can always go backwards, but moving forward as a people upwards and outwards to reach towards heaven and the benevolent deities is a huge struggle, and victory is never guaranteed, never a human certainty, for each new generation of depraved, flawed infants require civilizing so they can build a better future than the ones crafted by their parents and grandparents.
The Bible: “If he comes into service alone, he shall leave alone; if he comes with a wife, his wife shall leave with him. But if his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall remain the master’s property and the man shall leave alone. If however the slave declares, ‘I am devoted to my master and my wife and children; I shall not go free, his master shall bring him to God and there, at the door or doorpost, he shall pierce his ear with an awl, thus keeping him as his slave forever.”
Here is this excerpt from the Holy Bible (KJV): “Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.”
My response: This translation of the Bible brings out the point that God is giving the Hebrews judgments or rules to live by, to be a moral and legally just people: God wants his people to be good morally and spiritually, and a sinful people stand a better chance of being righteous, if they have an ethical and legal code to live up to, should they choose to follow, for their own sake and to please God. God is revealed here as giving people ethical and legal structures to aid people to live better lives. It would seem, by implication, that God is author not just of laws of nature, but of the natural, unnatural (secular) and supernatural morals and legal rules introduced to suffering, wayward humanity so that they may upgrade themselves should they desire to obey civil/divine rules.
The Bible: “If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh year he shall go free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.
If his master gave given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.
Then his master shall bring him unto the judges: he shall also bring him to the door or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.”
My response: It is easy to see how Southern aristocrats in the 19th century, good, earnest Christians and avid Bible-readers, could read these lines from the Book of Exodus, and easily justify owning slaves. If slave-owning was good enough for God’s chosen people, then it surely is justifiable in the 19th century American South.
This is not a sanctimonious, specious argument for the moral and legal legitimacy for slave-holding. They felt that their injustice was Biblically countenanced, as it seemed to be, but ultimately was not.
We must in each successive generation, raise the moral bar higher, so people have some minimum standard of ethical behavior to live up to, and most will barely meet that standard if at all. If we introduce the young to a standard of maverizing as an individuating supercitizen, we will have a minimum standard, at last, that should help individuals and society significantly.
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