Danhalen said:
Back in the day (Jesus times), slavery was permissible. I am not certain, but I think I recall that there are rules in the bible for how to handle your slaves. That being said, is it immoral to own another human being? Please give your reasons for believing why or why not slavery is immoral.
There are numerous things that seem to be lumped in with slavery that actually have nothing to do with slavery. Those things that get lumped in are by and large the worst part of it all.
Slavery itself, (ie, a person being bound in servitude to another), is not all that bad. It's certainly not an ideal situation, but often times it was a better situation than the alternative.
But, I'm being fairly vague. So let me get more specific.
In OT times people were living under very harsh conditions. People and their families faced almost certain death quite often. Regardless of the reason why some families faced sure death, there only option at times was either to die or to promise themselves (and their family) to work in servitude to another family in exchange for food/shelter and so forth. The choice was very often their own choice. From the slave owner's perspective, he also isn't necessarily in a great situation where he can have people mooching off of him. So getting a 5 or 7 year commitment from someone makes it worthwhile for him as well. They are sort of safeguards both ways around.
In this form, slavery is more of an indentured servitude. The OT does have some laws protecting slaves. It has some laws limiting the amount of time slaves can be owned, and so forth. I think overall the laws are things that we would mostly agree on are good to have in the sense that without the laws, slaves might be ruthlessly dealt with. The argument of course then is why not say all slavery is wrong in all circumstances? I'll get to that lower. But for now, it's sufficient to say that laws that protect some are much better than no laws at all.
Now onto some stuff that gets "bundled with slavery" that really has nothing to do with slavery. The most common thing is ruthlessly beating a person, or simply killing someone that's a slave. Now this is clearly immoral. All through the bible man is told not to abuse other men. This doesn't somehow not apply to other men that are slaves, servants, people under their authority, children, spouses, neighbors, etc... it applies to everyone. So a man who beats his slave or his child without cause is committing a sin, but the problem isn't having a slave or having a child in this case, rather the problem is abusing someone.
So realizing that abusing someone is a separate concern that slavery, the issue of slavery becomes an issue of "freedom". In OT times, as I mentioned, people freely put themselves into slavery. So we can hardly say it's unfair if they put themselves into that situation. Nor could we hardly say it's unfair if it gives a family a chance at life where the alternative was certain death.
But still there's a feeling that taking away someone's freedom is still wrong. And this I think I still somewhat agree with. But slavery isn't nearly the only thing that takes away our freedom. The simple fact of today is that in order to survive at any real quality of life in america, people need to work and maintain a job. Our employers do in fact take away some of our freedoms. Now certainly we can leave our employers, but depending on what field your in, you may have just lost your one opportunity for a decent job. So we willingly put ourselves under the authority of others quite often. The biggest difference is that we don't have to wait 7 years to quit a job. If you can imagine times being MUCH worse, such as during the great depression... people would be a lot more appreciative to get to work for someone for the rest of their life if it meant they could provide for their family.
But another example of where we are under someone's authority is the government we live under. Governments dictate a lot of stuff to us, they tell us what we're allowed to do, they take some of our money, and so forth.
There are just numerous accounts in present time where we are under the authority of other people. And this is a similar setup to slavery.
In the NT a few places we are told that it is better not to have slaves. And it's pretty logically seen in the OT as well. God also said it was better not to have governments. But the reality of times and a sinful world is that slavery & governments are sometimes the only way we seem to be able to handle certain situations. If everyone did as God wished, then we would all enjoy a great deal of freedom, love, joy, peace and so forth.
In short... slavery itself, or the idea of taking away someone's freedom for a set amount of time, is not ideal, but at times the better option. And slavery itself is not the abuse of another person, which is clearly the worst thing we think about with respect to slavery. But yes, abuse is horrible & immoral. God tells us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. That commandment is to all our relationships with people, so slave owners are commanded to love their slaves just as much as they love themselves. If you can imagine a slave owner that did love his slaves that much, then I think you can imagine those slaves being quite content in their job.
There are some rational reasons I think why God & Jesus didn't tell people to try to stop all slavery or stop all governments and so forth... but that's another topic.
