>>6363092 (lb)

>Funny how the bible never condemns slavery. Seems like an important thing to skip over how all that started, and it never discusses the ending of slavery…

The Greek word (doulos) can be translated “slave,” or sometimes “servant” or “bondservant,” and often referred to people who had a surprising level of legal and social status in the first-century Greco-Roman world. Most were not “slaves” from their birth, or for their whole life, or because of their race—for instance, the Roman jurist Gaius (second century) claimed that most slaves were prisoners of war who actually would have been slaughtered if not made slaves.

Similarly, in the Old Testament, Israelite regulations freed slaves every seventh year (Ex. 21:2), commanded the death penalty for manstealing (Ex. 21:16), and generally sought to limit the institution in protection of the slave. Further, slavery was generally not organized by race but by circumstance and economics (for example, foreigners, debtors, and so on).

To be clear, slavery in any sense perverts God’s created intention for human beings, and there are some harsh passages we have to deal with. But there is a vast difference between the deplorable wickedness we see in a film like 12 Years a Slave and, say, what Paul is addressing in the first-century Ephesian church, or Abraham’s relationship with his top servant (Gen. 24:2).

Moreover, the bible had much to say about "Usury," the form of debt slavery most of us take for granted today, so much so that many of us are even blind to our own chains. Here are just a few examples of what the scriptures say about Usury.

“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. (Exodus 22:25)

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. (Proverbs 22:7)

Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’ (Luke 19:23)

Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. (Nehemiah 5:10)

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)