Apologetics: Debunking Deconstruction – Does God Condone Slavery?

Since writing my post last Friday debunking the idea that God is abusive in the sense that He’s often painted by deconstructors as a toxic boyfriend, my comments section has been being flooded by a commentor who has been pressuring me to answer whether or not I think that God (supposedly) condoning slavery and genocide (which will be discussed next Friday) is abusive. This is a common question raised by deconstructors since on the surface, the Bible neither promotes nor condemns slavery. Add on the horrors of the African slave trade and the estimated 27 million people today being kept in some sort of slavery lurking in the back of our minds, this becomes a pressing question. How could the Bible be so seemingly ambivalent to this question? How could we Christians believe in a God who doesn’t seem to condemn this? Well, there’s a lot of nuance to this question due to when the Bible was written and what is actually said about slavery in it, so let’s answer this question.

First of all, slavery in the Bible was much different than what we usually think of when we think of slavery. When we think of slavery, we usually think of people being dragged from their homes, being forced to work for a cruel master. Usually, due to what we’ve learned about in school about the African slave trade, we typically think that early eugenics was also mixed into it.

However, in the Bible, this was not the case.

Let’s first look at when the Bible was written. When Moses was writing the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), slavery had already been common practice for centuries. In fact, unless you were lucky, if you were born in the ancient world, you were likely going to be a slave, regardless of race. During the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history, about 80% of the population were peasants or slaves. By the time of the Roman Empire (New Testament times), anywhere from 25-40% were slaves (this is the middle ground that most scholars land on, though some estimates can range anywhere from 15-90%). Slavery was just a fact of life and treatment for slaves could vary from being terrible to being great. In Rome, slaves were usually given a modest salary and allowed to save up to buy their way to freedom.

So, while this is not meant as a justification for slavery (especially as slaves were often still treated terribly), it gives us a sense of what the conditions for slaves were like in Biblical times. Thus, when the Mosaic law was written, it neither instituted it nor ended it. What it did instead was something unprecedented at the time it was written. It gave slaves rights.

Hebrews were allowed to sell themselves to other Hebrews as slaves, but the ones who bought them could only keep them for six years and had to let them go in the seventh (Exodus 21:2), which made this less like slavery and more like indentured servitude. Slave owners also had to treat their slaves well, like they would an employee (Leviticus 25:39-40) and they had to basically give them a severance package when they left (Deuteronomy 15:13-14). Freed slaves also had the option of staying and becoming a servant for life if they wanted to (Exodus 21:5-6). Even Gentile slaves got these rights (though they couldn’t be freed after 6 years) and their Israelite masters weren’t allowed to treat them cruelly (Leviticus 25: 44-46). Gentile slaves were to be allowed to have wives, not be sold to foreigners, could be adopted into the family by marriage, had a right to food and clothing, and masters were limited in their use of corporeal punishment. So, while I’m sure there were Hebrew slave owners who did not keep to these commands (which is their fault, not God’s), we can see that the conditions laid out for keeping slaves by the law were more humane than the virtually non-existent laws in the surrounding pagan countries and later versions of the slave trade.

[Author’s Note: Can I also point out that for you atheists that seem to believe that by comparing Hebrews selling themselves to other Hebrews (or Gentiles) to indentured servitude Christians are downplaying slavery, that you’re also the same people many of whom advocate for destigmatizing sex work on places like OnlyFans where women sell their bodies for fame and fortune that may never come? Or that many of you atheists also promote destigmatizing sex work and pornography because of female empowerment even though many of those women (and men for that matter) are either being trafficked (which makes up 22% of the current enslaved population) or, if they are there consensually, usually have no choice in who they have to sleep with, are almost always at risk of contracting an STD/STI, are often taken advantage of by producers, are usually drugged out of their minds during filming, etc.? With that in mind, how are you not doing what you accuse Christians of doing in downplaying slavery? Just a thought.]

In New Testament times, we similarly do not see a condemnation of slave ownership, however, slave masters are admonished to treat their servants (or slaves) well (Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 4:1). This was because Christianity was not meant to be a political movement. Rather, it was a spiritual one that works gradually, one that changes lives, changes people’s perceptions of the world and the humans around them, eventually changing culture. And what do you know? If you read a history book, it was primarily Christians that led the abolitionist movement (with devout Christians such as William Wilberforce and John Newton being two notable names from that movement) and it was people like Martin Luther King Jr., a pastor, who peacefully helped push for desegregation. Had the Bible and Christianity condemned slavery and worked towards ending it quickly, it would’ve become a political movement that would’ve created so much political, social, and economic upheaval that the ancient world (which was practically built on slavery in one form or another) would be so full of more atrocities and suffering than it already is that slavery would look like a minor complaint.

Meanwhile, it was people who only believed in God in name (remember, Christian thinking and customs were a lot more widespread in the 1800s and the 1960s than it is today) and atheists who wanted to continue slavery. And today, slavery is still practiced and promoted by non-Christian religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, occult groups (before you point to cartels from Central and South America and say they’re Catholic, I would like you to know that 1). You can’t be a Christian and still commit criminal acts and 2). there’s a growing number of cartel members who are part of the cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), which is extremely occultic and is into human and animal sacrifice), etc. Even atheists promote a form of slavery in the form of communism (though they don’t call it slavery).

So, while God did not flat out condemn slavery in the Bible, He laid the groundwork for its gradual abolition by instructing His people to give their slaves rights and giving us the Gospel, which helped enable us to recognize that slavery is wrong, and no person deserves to be treated as property.

Until next time,

M.J.