@Frank Apisa,
Christians are not going to support slavery. It’s ridiculous to believe that Christians are supposed to go out and buy slaves because of what is written in the bible.
In I Peter 2, St Peter says Christ’s followers are to obey society’s ordinances/law and Roman’s 13 says much the same, that we are to obey the powers that be. Since the powers that be in this country have created laws that have eliminated slavery then buying slaves, according to those passages, would be unlawful. Even so, first and foremost, we have the statements by Christ commanding us to love God and love each other as ourselves. These are the two commandments he gave us to follow.
According to bible scholars, Exodus 21 is about some of the laws for the Hebrews back then. The bible scholars say that some of the reasons for slavery is that if a person couldn’t repay his debts or if he was a thief then he could be sold as a slave and the money used to recoup losses. (I can think of a few deadbeats now-a-days who’d be more inclined to pay their debts under such a system. There was a time people used to be thrown into debtors prison. Now they just clear their debt by declaring bankruptcy.) Some scholars suggest such repayment of debts may have even been considered honorable because it was a way for those sold into slavery, not others, to pay for the cost of running their life.
It is suggested that marriage, not slavery, is what is being spoken of in the verses concerning women and
may refer to the old custom of marrying off your daughter to someone who can provide for her. “We read: "If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as manservants do." The intent is that the girl becomes the wife of the man who buys her and that this marriage cannot be annulled…the law protects the girl from the wiles of a man who wants to use her as he pleases. He cannot drop her like a rag when he does not want her any more. If he did desert her, the girl would regain her freedom automatically.”*
Slavery was one way that people had to survive economic hardship. Look at the prodigal son who took his inheritance and spent it, then having nothing to eat thought about how his father’s servants had bread to spare and so he determined to ask his father to make him a hired servant also.
These laws sound harsh, but they worked for them back then. Having just come out of Egypt where they were slaves the laws probably were intended to be harsh so that people would avoid going back into slavery.
Why didn’t Jesus condemn slavery? Perhaps because slavery is a condition of humankind. Slavery or servitude is spoken of throughout the bible. St. Paul refers to himself as a servant of Christ. The bible seems to say we are all slaves to sin and Jesus Christ has come to redeem us from our sin. Look at the prodigal son who chose to return to his father as a servant and was received as a son. Throughout the bible God poses the question: Choose this day whom you will serve- From Genesis with the choice set before Adam and Eve to choose whether to obey God or serve self to the last of Revelations which entreats everyone to follow God’s commandments and take of the waters of life freely. We can be brothers and sisters in Christ. We can be who we were meant to be, sons and daughters of God. We can show forth God’s redeeming love to the world.
Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, Gal 4:5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Gal 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Gal 4:7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
*Chilton
