The new testament and slavery.

(Matthew 24:45-51, NWT) “Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so. Truly I say to YOU, He will appoint him over all his belongings. “But if ever that evil slave should say in his heart, ‘My master is delaying,’ and should start to beat his fellow slaves and should eat and drink with the confirmed drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day that he does not expect and in an hour that he does not know, and will punish him with the greatest severity and will assign him his part with the hypocrites. There is where [his] weeping and the gnashing of [his] teeth will be.

This passage clearly implies that Jesus never had any problems with Slavery.

I find it ludicrous to believe that Jesus love's all equally, if somehow he never spoke out against slavery.

I know, I know - slavery isn't the important thing it's the attitude in life that you have and whether your follow gods word, right?

Wrong; gods word states that we should love our neighboors as we do ourselves, do unto others the way we would like them to do to us.

How then did Jesus not speak out against slavery.

This passage seems to imply that Jesus never had a problem with slaves.

How can you explain this without assuming that god didn't have a problem with slaves?

 

Jesus is my main man, a hero I've chosen to live my life by, along with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Martin Luther King. I've learned to live with the fact that Jefferson, who told us "all men are created equal" had slaves and had sex with one of them. Washington was also a slave owner. Lincoln, of course, freed the slaves in most of the states, but made exceptions for those states who were no longer in rebellion. FDR, JFK, and Martin Luther King weren't slave owners, obviously, but they were notorious womanizers and adulterers. If I insist on perfection in my heroes, I guess I'd be out of heroes. In Jesus' time and culture, slavery was commonplace and accepted.

 

Did you just compare sleeping around to slavery?

Side note:

That's not technically true. The Emancipation Proclamation only affected Confederate States. There was a clause that if any of those states rejoined the Union by a certain date, they could keep their slaves; none did.

 

I found out when I renounced my religion that I slept a lot better not worrying about spiritual dogma.

 

Jesus uses slaves and masters as a metaphor for his return.

True Jesus did not condemn slavery of any sort, but this is hardly an endorsement...

 

No. I mentioned promiscuous adultery and womanizing as something bad. Would you disagree?

Does that change my point?

 

Would you not agree that they are on two totally different levels of wrong?

Did you not notice the phrase "Side note"?

 

So? Do you think slavery would have ended in the United States without the influences of Christian abolitionists? Who knows, but they certainly played a major role in opposing it.

 

So you believe Jesus=God=Omnipotent, Omniscient Dude in the Sky? I guess I'd explain it by questioning that linkage. The logical implication is that God is responsible for all the evil in the world, because He hasn't eliminated it. That Jesus' mission was to speak out against every evil, and that therefore He is complicit in every problem that was around at the time that He didn't address. My concept of God is more Deist than that, and I think free will is important and accounts for a lot of evil. As for Jesus, I regard Him as possibly the most enlightened (and therefore divine) humans to walk the earth, but he was human and apparently didn't know everything.

 

I don't see how that has anything to do with Jesus' opinion on the matter.

 

This passage implies that it was written by a person who didn't "have problems with slaves".

Religion = God is an untrue statement. God (if he or she exists) is God. Riligion is not God, nor was it made by God. It is just something that was made up by some people and what it comes down to is mostly politics.

 

It was a quote from Jesus..

 

That's what religion is all about .... believing. :sunny:

In the middle ages the bible was kept from the ordinary people (those who could not understand latin) by not translating it. Priests would tell people to do whatever the church deemed right at that moment. In the name of god, of course.

When the bible was compiled, some texts were chosen, others were rejected. We have no clue about the exact motivations but my money is on politics. Censorship? Misinformation? Protection? Pick and choose.

 

You're not a Christian, are you?

 

I am completely against theistic religions. While not a communist, I'm with Marx on this one: Religion IS opium for the people.

The main message of most religions is this: Be a good person. As in: don't kill anyone, respect others, don't steal or lie, etc. And the reason to do all that is ... because if you don't, you'll get in trouble later on. Big time. Wouldn't it be nice if we could achieve all this being nice to each just like that without all the rituals, the threats, the following of strange rules invented in different times for completely different reasons?

Also: every religion produces fanatics, which is why to this day we have armed conflicts between neighbors over what which prophet ate on which exact day.

Civilization?

 

I was talking about the christian bible.

I should have put christian god.

I guess I though that referencing the bible would allude to that and that it wouldn't be necessary.

:2thumbsup:

 

I think it is rather obvious that throughout the bible slavery was in practice/considered "regular everyday life". I also think that slavery was not considered in the same way as it is viewed today. These people "worked for their masters", but they were also taken care of (fed, sheltered and clothed...as were their families).

In these days and times, I know I've worked at a few places that I came home from each day but I surely felt like a slave as long as I worked there, the whole 24/7. Whereas, back then in those centuries the masters had certain obligations/responsibilities toward his slaves, if he were considered a "good master". Now it really doesn't matter how any employer treats their employee, not in SC of the USA, I can assure you that. Barely legal works here...for an employer. However, I digress...

Of course it was "best" to be a master; but, being a slave then wasn't necessarily the taboo thing it is seen as today.
Of course I'm not capable of going back in time, but I think one must view slavery as spoken of in the bible from a different perspective than it is viewed today...and yes, of course, all of this is just my interpretation.

 

.