Does the Bible condemn racial slavery?

The Bible does not specifically condemn the practice of slavery. It gives instructions on how slaves should be treated (Deuteronomy 15:12-15; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1). The Bible does not outlaw slavery altogether. However, the problem is that many individuals mistakenly interpret this as the Bible condoning all forms of slavery.


What many fail to understand is that slavery in biblical times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the past few centuries in many parts of the world. The slavery in the Bible was not based exclusively on race. People were not enslaved because of their nationality or the color of their skin. In Bible times, slavery was more a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.

In contrast, the slavery of the past few centuries was often based exclusively on skin color. In the United States, many black people were considered slaves because of their nationality; many slave owners truly believed black people to be inferior human beings. The Bible most definitely does condemn race-based slavery!
Consider the slavery the Hebrews experienced when they were in Egypt. The Hebrews were slaves, not by choice, but because they were Hebrews (Exodus 13:14). The plagues God poured out on Egypt demonstrate how God feels about racial slavery (Exodus 7-11). So, yes, the Bible does condemn some forms of slavery. At the same time, the Bible does seem to allow for other forms. The key issue is that the slavery the Bible allowed for in no way resembled the racial slavery that plagued our world in the past few centuries.

In addition, both the Old and New Testaments condemn the practice of “man-stealing”, which is what happened in Africa in the 19th century. Africans were rounded up by slave-hunters, who sold them to slave-traders, who brought them to the New World to work on plantations and farms. This practice is abhorrent to God.

In fact, the penalty for such a crime in the Mosaic Law was death: "Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death, whether." (Exodus 21:16). Similarly, in the New Testament, slave-traders are listed among those who are “ungodly and sinful” and are in the same category as those who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, adulterers and perverts, and liars and perjurers (1 Timothy 1:8-10).

Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society. The Bible often approaches issues from the inside out. If a person experiences the love, mercy, and grace of God by receiving His salvation, God will reform his soul, changing the way he thinks and acts. A person who has experienced God’s gift of salvation and freedom from the slavery of sin, as God reforms his soul, he will realize that enslaving another human being is wrong. A person who has truly experienced God’s grace will in turn be gracious towards others. That would be the Bible’s prescription for ending slavery.

Christianity vs. Islam

As Christians we are called to discern the false religions and worldly philosophies in contrast to the biblical worldview:

Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6)... and Jesus also proclaimed that "...for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." (John 18:37) 

When Christianity is compared to Islam for example, they are not just incompatible, but are also opposed with each other and set on a collision course with historical and global consequences.

The Koran and the Bible have opposing value systems:

• Chistianity offers grace and Islam offers legalism.
• Christianity offers a God of intimate relationship, while Islam offers distant demands.
• Christianity offers conversion through conviction, while Islam offers conversion through conquest and Jihad.
• Christianity offers intrinsic value to all human life, while Islam offers less value to a woman’s life when compared to a man’s sense of shame.
• Christianity offers peace love and joy, while Islam offers fear, terror tactics and honor killings.

Many Muslims leave their faith in fear (i.e. honor killings), and Muslim women struggle for status and fair treatment.

A person can take on the label of Christian, but not have a biblical worldview or lifestyle based on the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels.

So a nominal or cultural Christian who commits a horrific crime would be entirely contradictory to a Christian worldview and his actions are completely unjustified and incompatible with the Bible.

Take Hitler for example.  He had a distorted view of Christianity.  He committed mass murder in the name of secular fanaticism, social-political Darwinism and world dominance.  His views against Jews were not justified by biblical teaching but instead by a science-flavored myth of Darwinian logic to defend the Aryan race. 

In contrast, a devout Muslim can commit a terrorist or violent act and have perfect justification in doing so from the Koran, Sharia law and in the name of Jihad. 

In order to have peace, Muslims would have to be moderate (less devout) and go against their teachings.

Christians would have to be more fundamental to live-out their Christian worldview. 

However, the Bible explains that God is not only a God of "love"...  His attributes also include holiness, justice, jealousy, righteousness and perfect judgment.  In other words, there will come a time when it is required to fight (i.e. 'war'- Joel 3:9). 

When we attempt to understand the underlying meaning of the word of God, it should not depend on the "cleverness" of the interpreter, but instead we should rather focus on the evidence of history, biblical grammar, comparative linguistics, anthropology, and context; or else the interpretation becomes very subjective and fuzzy.  This means we are required to thoroughly research the true meaning of the scriptures from the author’s perspective and not our own. 

The Bible teaches that God loves all people, but hates sin. The Koran does not say this, but instead, it says that Allah only loves those who obey Muhammad and loves not the infidels or those who reject their faith. 

If we look at it from a Bible vs. Koran perspective, in order to have a peaceful coexistence would be for Muslims to be more moderate and for Christians to be more radical.  That means we must live for Christ alone.

What's a Good Worldview?

1- There is no such thing as a neutral worldview.

2- A good worldview should have a high degree of coherence or internal consistency. (A logically contradictory statement cannot be true.)

3- A good worldview would have a strong foundation in fact. This is called correspondence.

4- A good worldview has explanatory power.

5- A good worldview would avoid the two extremes: Occam's Razor and Reductionism (oversimplification)

6- A good worldview is established not by one line of evidence or one knock-out argument, but by accumulative evidence.

Truth and Reality: Two Distinct Concepts

Truth and Reality are intimately related, but distinct concepts.
Truth is conformity with fact or reality.
For one entity (truth) to conform to another entity (reality), the entities must be, in some measure, distinct from one another.

Reality is the "bedrock" -- it exists whether anyone makes claims about it.
Said another way, reality is that which exists independently of ideas concerning it.
So for example, God existed before humans; sub-atomic particles were a component of reality long before humans knew they existed. These are examples of the presence of objective reality in the absence of truth claims.

Truth exists in the context of a claim about reality. Claims can be true or false as measured against reality. Once someone claimed that sub-atomic particles exist, that claim could be evaluated as true or false, and that claim does not alter actual reality.

Jesus claimed to be "the way, the truth and the life." His claim can be evaluated as true or false via general and special revelation. (To be clear, I believe the evidence clearly suggests His claims are true, and all will one day know whether our beliefs aligned with reality, and subsequently were true -- and therefore represented Truth -- or whether they were false)

So (for clarity) I would not make the claim "I believe in tithing"; I struggle with the many potential meanings of that statement. I might make the claim "The Bible calls us to tithe" -- I can get my head around the truthfulness of that statement. While whether I tithe is related to whether I actually *believe* the claim is true, it also seems to be realted to other factors. I agree that we would be justified in quesioning the veracity of a person's claim to believe they are called to tithe, when they do ot tithe.

So when Jesus said he was born to testify to truth, he came to affirm that we can "really believe" that what God has declared is "really real". He lived a life affirming the reality of this Universe as God created it. And (as an aside) as the author of this universe, God gave us the rules of logic, which allow us to have this discussion!

Truth does not depends on one's belief, in fact just the opposite: beliefs can only be declared to be true if and only if they conform to reality.

So to summarize:
Reality exists independent of any claims against it. Truth exists in the context of claims against reality. Beliefs (which are claims) do not influence Truth; beliefs can be labeled as true or false.
By "testifying to the truth", Jesus affirmed the reality of God's nature as evidenced through general and special revelation.


Other Sources:
Confusing "Truth" & "Reality"

Accounting for the 4 Fundamental Laws of Logic

The laws of logic are not relative conventions (or agreed upon principles).

• They are absolute because they are NOT subject to "vote".
• They are NOT based on human thinking since human thinking is often contradictory.
• They are NOT derived through observing natural principles found in nature.
• They are conceptual realities (they only exist in the mind).
• They do not describe physical behavior of things since behavior is action and laws of logic are not descriptions of action, but of truth.
• One has to use logic to try to disprove, refute, or even deny it.
• Logic is necessary or indispensable in life. One literally can not live without it!

Logic or reason is undeniably true, unavoidable, self-evident and applicable to all coherent discussions. That is, one cannot NOT use logic (at least not so and engage in an intelligible discussion at the same time). Logic is a necessary precondition of all intelligible thinking.

The following are the four primary laws of logic:

1- The Law of Non-Contradiction:
Something cannot be itself and not itself at the same time in the same way and in the same sense. (A cannot be A and not A at the same time.)

2- The Law of Excluded Middle:
A statement is either true or false. Thus the statement "A statement is either true or false" is either true or false. A is either A or not A. (See, e.g., Matthew 12:30.)

3- The Law of Identity:
Something is what it is. Something that exists has a specific nature. A is A or A is identical with A. (e.g., the Christ of the Bible is not the "Christ" of the cults or the occult.)

4- The Law of Logical or Rational Inference:
Law of Sufficient Reason. There should be sufficeint reason to all happenings.
If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.
For example, the word trinity is not found in the Bible, but the concept is found in the Bible.
(see, e.g., Deut. 6:4; Eph. 1:3; John 1:1; 20:28; Acts 5:3-4; and Mark 12:29-30).

The atheistic worldview cannot account for the laws of logic/absolutes, and must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to rationally argue.

We are created in the imago Dei--the image of God. This includes, among other attributes, the ability to reason. This entails the value of evidence and reason.

For example, we are told in 1 Corinthians 10:31 "So whether you eat or drink [or think] or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

We are told in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." I believe that reasoning well is one of those "weapons."