Title got your attention? I’ll explain in a moment.

A recent Debunking Christianity blog got my attention this week:

• God Tolerates Slavery

I’ll spoiler it for you by saying it’s a satirical piece. It portrays a fundamental preacher who turns away a child kidnapped and sold into sex slavery by telling her God has instructions for her to accept her role as a slave happily. The kicker: as anyone who has actually read the Bible knows, this is true. So, the satirical piece evoked some comments on Poe’s Law (which states: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.“)

Both New and Old Testament has advice on how a slave should behave and how a slave owner should behave. The OT does indeed have instructions on how a father should sell his daughter into slavery should he be so inclined, and has God commanding his people to take on slaves from defeated enemies.

Here’s kicker number two: nowhere in the Bible is the concept of slavery denounced, nor does it indicate that God/Jesus’ position on slavery would eventually change. In fact, there are many passages that state straight-out that God’s Law never changes, his will is eternal, and his Word is changeless.This very argument is the reason why one of the most ardent opponents of abolition were God-fearin’ Christians.

That really only leaves two options for the believer: a) The Bible is the inerrant and inspired Word of God and we are actually as a culture and even as a species deviating from God’s Plan by considering slavery a terrible immorality; or b) Our morality is more just, merciful, righteous, and…moral, than God’s morality.

(Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise, the Bible, including Jesus’ actions and words, are filled with God ordained and advocated horror including rape, murder, torture, suicide “bombings,” genocide, racism, bigotry against physical deformities, sexism, etc etc ad nauseum. Another recent DC post focuses on Jesus’ behavior as a mooching bum and advises his followers to also give up work and family and become mooching freeloaders. My recent favorites are Jesus’ family values, like where he states: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26, and when his family try to see him, he brushes them off and ignores them and basically disowns them in Luke 8:19-21. Funny how much Jesus is very much like your basic run-of-the-mill cult leader….)

Of course the liberal Christian would likely say that times change and culture changes and surely God knows this, if not guides it. But, as usual, the liberal Christian is making things up as they go along to justify their modern sensibilities as there’s nothing in God’s “Word” to directly justify this position. The fundamentalist would very likely select choice “a” and would be consistent within his own religion…although, I’m sure he’d also find some way to justify why we no longer condone slavery (and stoning rape victims and murdering family members for disobedience, etc) despite no Scriptural reason to do so.

Choice “b” is certainly the more reasonable, likely, and just plain obvious answer. The God of the Bible is a blood-thirsty psychopath and Jesus is a schizophrenic cult leader. It’s only proper and reasonable that we no longer accept most of the “moral” teachings of the Bible as ways to live our lives! But that always makes me wonder, why do people still elevate this blood-soaked, immoral, violent, sexist, mythological tome as worthy of veneration and honor and respect? It utterly baffles me. It’s exactly like saying, “You know, this Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler…sure it has some bad stuff in it about racism and bigotry, but I’m inspired by its words of courage and bravery and the nice things it has.” Seriously.

The Bible has no place in our society as a guide for morality or inspiration any more than Hitler’s tretise. The only reason people still bother to pick-and-choose to read the nicey-nice passages and turn a blind eye to the advocations of murder and severing all ties to family (at best!) and all the rest, is because of the pernicious belief that somehow some supernatural person ready to cast people he “loves” into eternal punishment wrote/inspired that book, so we need to keep venerating it, by God!…when we would actually get better moral teachings and a whole heck of a lot less instruction toward immoral behavior from say, The Lord of the Rings or something else equally fictional.