God Is The Same Whether We Believe In Him Or Not

Christians use the Bible as the source of their Theological beliefs. Muslims swear by the Quran . Other Religions also have their Holy books which serve as guides to their form of wor­ship. Christianity the Religion prac­ticed large­ly in the Western World is now com­ing under increased scruti­ny as intel­lec­tu­als and oth­ers not con­tent to have blind faith are ques­tion­ing cer­tain teach­ings in parts of the Bible.

Exodus 21:1 – 4 “If thou buy an Hebrew ser­vant, six years he shall serve: and in the sev­enth he shall go out free for noth­ing. If he came in by him­self, he shall go out by him­self: if he were mar­ried, then his wife shall go out with him. If his mas­ter have giv­en him a wife, and she have born him sons or daugh­ters; the wife and her chil­dren shall be her mas­ter’s, and he shall go out by himself.”

Deuteronomy 15:12 – 18 “And if thy broth­er, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the sev­enth year thou shalt let him go free from thee.And when thou send­est him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away emp­ty: Thou shalt fur­nish him lib­er­al­ly out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that where­with the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.”

Exodus 21:7 “And if a man sell his daugh­ter to be a maid­ser­vant, she shall not go out as the men ser­vants do.”

Regarding the beat­ing and killing of slaves, the Book of Exodus con­tains laws regard­ing pun­ish­ment for the one who kills the slave as well as injunc­tions to avoid injur­ing the eyes and teeth.

Exodus 21:20 – 21 “And if a man smite his ser­vant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be sure­ly pun­ished. Notwithstanding, if he con­tin­ue a day or two, he shall not be pun­ished: for he is his money.”

Exodus 21:26 – 27 “And if a man smite the eye of his ser­vant, or the eye of his maid, that it per­ish; he shall let him go free for his eye­’s sake. And if he smite out his manser­van­t’s tooth, or his maid­ser­van­t’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.”

The Book of Leviticus pro­hib­it­ed the harsh rul­ing over oth­er Israelites, but that slaves could be tak­en from the Gentiles.

Leviticus 25:44 – 46 “Both thy bond­men, and thy bond­maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the hea­then that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bond­men and bond­maids. Moreover of the chil­dren of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their fam­i­lies that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your pos­ses­sion. And ye shall take them as an inher­i­tance for your chil­dren after you, to inher­it them for a pos­ses­sion; they shall be your bond­men for ever: but over your brethren the chil­dren of Israel, ye shall not rule one over anoth­er with rigour.”

Also, in Leviticus, a dis­tinc­tion is made between the hired ser­vant and the slave.

Leviticus 25:48 – 53 “After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: Either his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his fam­i­ly may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem him­self. And he shall reck­on with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubilee: and the price of his sale shall be accord­ing unto the num­ber of years, accord­ing to the time of an hired ser­vant shall it be with him.”

There are many more instances in the Bible where the Abominable Institution of Slavery is active­ly con­doned and counselled.

Many opposed to Christianity, par­tic­u­lar­ly intel­lec­tu­als of African Ancestry point to these instances which they believe to be the very words which kept their fore-par­ents in bondage for hun­dreds of years.

The insti­tu­tion of Slavery has been around since the begin­ning of man’s record­ed his­to­ry. Man has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly engaged in the enslave­ment of each oth­er. Those enslaved were gen­er­al­ly on the los­ing end of wars. Others became bonds­men as a result of debts they incur.

Some believe the New Testament did not con­demn the prac­tice either, some go fur­ther to say Jesus him­self did not con­demn it. Some who come from the class which owned slaves argue that the Bible gives the prac­tice legit­i­ma­cy. Those who are descen­dants of those who suf­fered and died under the cru­el yoke of enslave­ment, points to this as exact­ly the why the Bible should be shunned, at least by black people.

I do not have the answers for these ques­tions. Was the issue of slav­ery so deeply ingrained in human cul­ture that the Bible actu­al­ly coun­selled how it should be handled? 

When the woman broke the pre­cious Alabaster box of Ointment and washed his feet, Jesus chid­ed his dis­ci­ples who com­plained that the Ointment could have been sold and the pro­ceeds giv­en to the poor.

Matthew 26:6 – 13

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expen­sive per­fume, which she poured on his head as he was reclin­ing at the table. When the dis­ci­ples saw this, they were indig­nant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9 “This per­fume could have been sold at a high price and the mon­ey giv­en to the poor. Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you both­er­ing this woman? She has done a beau­ti­ful thing to me. 11 The poor you will always have with you,[a] but you will not always have me. When she poured this per­fume on my body, she did it to pre­pare me for bur­ial. Truly I tell you, wher­ev­er this gospel is preached through­out the world, what she has done will also be told, in mem­o­ry of her.

This was an acknowl­edge­ment by Jesus that there would always be poor with us. Are the Scriptures relat­ing to Slavery an acknowl­edg­ment that Slavery and servi­tude would for­ev­er be with us?

Whether the issue is Servitude or Poverty, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the fact that the Bible ref­er­ences both mal­adies is not proof they are sanc­tioned by God. In fact the Scriptures are explic­it­ly clear on how God wants us to treat each other,

If we fol­low God’s Commandments the issues of Slavery and Poverty are moot. We may chose to ignore God and live with our choice, he gave us free-will. Let’s not point to bits of pieces of writ­ings which we believe indict the Christian Religion,then assume we are indict­ing God Almighty. There is much in the Bible which we can dis­agree with, it does not make the exis­tence of God a less obvious.

Unless you have a prob­lem with a scrip­ture which says “Thus saith the Lord”, you are mere­ly indict­ing some­one’s writings .