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Both were cases of people owning other humans as property. In my view, that's never OK, but you somehow manage to make it OK in some circumstances. That tells me a lot.
Whatever differences that may have existed between slavery in the AME and in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were both situations where some people owned other people has personal property. You say that's OK. I disagree.
What does it mean exactly to "own another person as personal property"? What aspects of that person are "owned" by the other? Certainly the mind and interior workings of a person cannot be properly "owned" by another, can they?
At what point does authority and control become ownership? Where is the line? Is there a line?
What does it mean exactly to "own another person as personal property"? What aspects of that person are "owned" by the other? Certainly the mind and interior workings of a person cannot be properly "owned" by another, can they?
At what point does authority and control become ownership? Where is the line? Is there a line?
They are two separate issues that influence each other but vary independently. In a technical sense, ownership is very easy to define. If I can buy or sell a person, then they are a slave.
On the other hand, some abusive employment arrangements can be reasonably characterized as de facto ownership. For example in a "company town" where virtually all employment is directly or indirectly a result of one employer's presence there, where perhaps housing is company owned with the company acting as landlord, people are going to have a very pronounced reluctance to push back against unjust policies or overreach or mistreatment.
In fact there are many human relationships that are toxic for one or both parties and where they feel unable to break away from them for various reasons. But I think it cheapens the concept of slavery to extend that word to people who are basically self-confined to situations that don't work for them. Ownership, IMO, is key.
You are correct that what one thinks privately in between their ears cannot be directly controlled even if a person is owned and so in a philosophical / technical sense everyone is is free to think whatever they think. But a person enslaved or imprisoned (or in our penal system, not infrequently both) is not free to "pursue happiness", whatever that means to them. They are only free to imagine it, and to rationalize their limitations.
No one is trying to justify slavery. But I am laughing at your bulldog determination to prove what is simply false. It's the same old same old nonsense. You have a bone to pick with Christianity, and truth doesn't seem to be something you care to talk about.
What does it mean exactly to "own another person as personal property"? What aspects of that person are "owned" by the other? Certainly the mind and interior workings of a person cannot be properly "owned" by another, can they?
At what point does authority and control become ownership? Where is the line? Is there a line?
Well let's make you a slave, and then you'll know. Or your wife. Or your daughter. Or your grandson.
The christians here dance around slavery is sickening.
What does it mean exactly to "own another person as personal property"? What aspects of that person are "owned" by the other? Certainly the mind and interior workings of a person cannot be properly "owned" by another, can they?
At what point does authority and control become ownership? Where is the line? Is there a line?
The fact that you have to try to find a way to justify one person owning another as property tells us a lot about you.
Better to just chuck the OT and its outlandishness (slavery, animal sacrifices, militancy, directions to slay neighboring peoples, etc.) as not representative of a universal creator and sustainer, than to try and justify it.
Better to just chuck the OT and its outlandishness (slavery, animal sacrifices, militancy, directions to slay neighboring peoples, etc.) as not representative of a universal creator and sustainer, than to try and justify it.
I don't disagree, but I'm curious how that would work.
Christianity started as a Jewish sect. Jesus is explicitly represented as the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy and the requirements of Mosaic law -- all from the OT.
Christianity could have gone the route paved by Marcion, declare the OT god to be an inferior, evil god, and Jesus to be the earthly manifestation of the true god, and reject the OT as divine revelation. But that's not the faction that won out. It could have gone in the direction of gnosticism and made Jesus into a being of pure spirit that simply possessed a man by that name. That sect did better, but the proto-orthodox managed to triumph, though it took then about 300 years to fully and finally pull it off.
But Christianity is what it is ... to fully disassociate itself from the "outlandishness" that you rightly decry, it would have to become something I'd wager most modern Christians wouldn't recognize, wouldn't you think?
Again, we're too quick to pin God as corrupt, when as I said, this is what man wanted. Its what we still want. We just label it different things. For instance, we know because of the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and government policies to this day, black Americans are at the bottom of every conceivable statistic concerning life in this country as a group. And no one, NO ONE, is willing to do a single thing about correcting that. Why? Because we desire to keep this group at the very bottom. That is how the wealthier class maintain their status in this country. It is how the upper middle class and middle class maintain their statuses. In order for one to live like kings and queens, there must be a group who eats all the failure. You have to find neighborhoods to dump all the power plants. Let the poor breathe in the chemicals while the upper class benefit from the power that is generated. Let all the pollutants run into their drinking water, then act dumb when the kids grow up half crazy because their brain development was hindered.
Of course there are other groups in America who were harmed by this desire to hold on to statuses, but concerning the status of slavery in this country, no other group has been harmed like black Americans. According to Scripture, God created us as equal rulers. He invited us to rule with Him. There were no slaves. We were family. Yet man decided to rebel, and things got screwed up. And even with Israel's covenant with God, they still wanted the status of slavery in their midst. (This is after being slaves themselves. What does that tell us about the condition of man?)
At the end of the day, the slavery regulated by the laws of Israel, recognized the humanity of slaves. It is humans who didn't recognize their humanity. God didn't command Israel to have slaves. In truth, the very first mention of slavery in the OT deals with Noah condemning Ham's son and his descendants to be a slave of slaves to his brothers. God didn't say anything about it. It was all mankind.
Last edited by Heavenese; 11-13-2023 at 05:51 PM..
God didn't say anything about it. It was all mankind.
Well he certainly should have. Instead he chose moral weakness and then institutionalized a great harm to humanity.
I don't understand what sort of excuse you think it is for god ... creator and ruler of heaven and earth ... to say, "what else could I do? they wanted it so I had to let them do it".
And then to actually rationalize it by saying slavery isn't so bad anyway ... it just beggars belief.
Or to put it in terms you might better understand: "woe to them who call good, evil, and evil, good".
But Christianity is what it is ... to fully disassociate itself from the "outlandishness" [of the OT] that you rightly decry, it would have to become something I'd wager most modern Christians wouldn't recognize, wouldn't you think?
They should recognize it - the contradictions and violations of the OT - but most unfortunately don't / won't. They should see a loving Jesus representing a loving God, a universe of incredible depth and intricacy, the beauty of nature, souls and lives connected, etc. But they listen to churches and media, and bring in the contradicting OT, and make a mockery of it all.
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