Christy,
Thanks for sharing this. I feel your empathy and caring nature to be very in-line with 21st century human morals which transcends religiosity and certainly doesn’t align itself with the morals of the OT.
Patrick
I would hope so. But I would also say that 21st century western morals are fundamentally influenced by the Holy Spirit working on our culture for two thousand years and pushing us to a greater recognition of justice and human dignity. We can agree to disagree on that part. 
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21st century western morals are fundamentally influenced by people like you. They build upon previous generations like the feminist and civil rights movements of the 1960’s. In this country, morality has now transcended religion. And your children will build on this new morality with their own sense of what is right and what is wrong (certainly influenced a lot by you). We don’t need an ancient book to define our own morality. As for your Holy Spirit helping you along, I am okay with that, as your HS seems to speak to you with reason, empathy, and clarity. She seems awful nice. 
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She really is! And you can have her too. (The Holy Spirit, that is … not Christy). Although short of seeking the Spirit, Christy would be a great go-to here. Since that is how the Spirit communicates with the body (as members like Christy share with all of us) we’re glad that benefit spills over so richly to the community. Invite others to come too! 
When I was 13 years old I studied Catholic doctrine and dogma for a year to be “confirmed” in the Catholic Church. The Bishop was to come and put his hand on my shoulder and the Holy Spirit was to be infused into me. Well the day came but nothing happened. I was very disappointed but pretty much accepted the ritual as nonsense. I went ahead to live a good life anyway while the Bishop became embroiled in controversy over the pedifile priests in his diocese. The Holy Spirit is the easiest god to not believe in.
I didn’t read it in an aggressive tone, and I hope I’m not letting off an aggressive tone, that’s not my intention. And no, I do not believe such a situation is still around today. But, as I’m sure you know, people to this day are selling their children into servitude, a servitude with no regulations to protect the servant, a servitude where no amount of running away saves the servant, and a servitude where maiming isn’t illegal.
As many scholars depict, biblical slavery was to benefit the slave. If someone was charged for a crime and couldn’t pay it off, or was homeless, they could sell the only thing they had left; their ability to work. After seven years (or less if redeemed), they’d go free.
If a foreigner sold himself or herself into Israelite servitude, they had the option to be lifelong servants (it doesn’t say that every foreign slave is permanent property, it says they may be permanent slaves, if that’s their choice. Hebrews were not allowed to be permanent slaves, apparently because they were Gods people who suffered under the harsh Egyptian slavery) or the option to be servants for a particular time.
I think its option very common (thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) that everyone thinks that just because someone was a servant/slave, they were abused. Not only did God tell the Israelites to love one another, but to love foreigners as they love themselves (Leviticus 19:34). And the Israelites themselves were slaves when this was written, so if anyone in the world were to be fair to their servants or slaves, it would be ex-servants and ex-slaves.
One more note, we’re all slaves to that which we obey (Romans 6:16). Its not an exclusive term used only for ownership of another human. Children were technically their parents servants/slaves, and we’re all either slaves to God or slaves to sin. It was, in the Bible, not a negative or degrading term, at least not in Hebrew circles. (Of course, I’m sure most people would consider working to pay off a fine or to avoid homelessness is quite negative).
Fun fact: Lots of the time, slaves had slaves of their own, and many slaves were doctors and other wealthier people of society.
I’m glad you’ve knocked all those gods down. Christians have a long heritage of doing just that … getting rid of all false gods including those that come in disguise. I realize many atheists are still catching up to that notion, still busy knocking down gods that our communities eradicated two thousand years ago and yet creating even more gods as they go. Recognizing this is an ongoing task as it turns out --one that atheists are woefully behind on despite the moniker they prize. When you are ready to speak of the God we worship, we’ll be here and listening. I’m glad you’re here as a friend (or an ostensible friend of science at least).
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I was a Christian for 30 years, so I know this is pure bluster.
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I’ve seen a few atheists come (and unfortunately go) from here before. One thing so many of them (all of them that I’m recalling at the moment) have in common is a seeming incapacity to even speak of the Christian God in the terms that classic Christianity has attempted to understand. They all speak instead of this or that god that is presumably some demi-urge who we need to catch in some lab experiment or telescope in the middle of whatever mischief he might be up to. And when anybody here tries to correct them on this, it always falls on deaf ears. Go ahead and surprise me on this – I’ll be happy if you can break the pattern. If you think I’m blustering, feel free to ask for clarifications or give some about where you think the bluster is. I stand by my words, and I’ll try to keep them as sweet and tender as possible in case I need to eat any of them.
I’m sorry (even if you’re not) for whatever life story shipwrecked your faith. If you’ve been burned before as so many have from bad religious experiences, I know I shouldn’t judge, not having walked in your moccasins. But I do stand by my words, and experiences of the witness of Christ and his Spirit through people here and in this world.
Do I recall correctly that you said somewhere else you taught in a Christian institution for many of those years?
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Steve was once a contributor to BioLogos.
He’s a contributor now. Was he (were you, Steve) in some different or official capacity before? Sorry if I’m forgetting something I should be remembering. I’ve been a frequent lurker /commenter for a lot of years here.
I didn’t realize I was matching it with Trans-Atlantic involuntary slavery. Please explain.
This is called the No True Scot fallacy, a pretty common strategy for the avoidance of criticism. Your accusation against atheists (and I doubt it’s even accurate) is that they are critiquing the Wrong Gods but not the Right God. I too have read the forum, and so I know that: 1) the Wrong Gods are commonly cited and worshiped, right here on the forum; and 2) the Right God is not nearly as coherent as you want to believe, deserves critique, and doesn’t always fare well.
Your blanket misrepresentation of atheists is not a big deal; I’m pretty used to it. But you’re bluffing, whether you know it or not. The Wrong Gods matter, a lot, and the Right Gods are not so different.
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Yeah … I see where you’re going with that. You’re partially correct for as far as this goes. Christians are known by their fruits. There is no getting around that since it’s pretty thoroughly saturated through Scriptures and what Jesus himself explicitly taught. It’s called “showing your faith by what you do”. The No True Scot fallacy has been trotted out to show how Hitler was a Christian (of course he was, since he claimed at some point to be! …) or various other dubious claims. Apparently I would become a Rhodes Scholar if I but claimed it were true. But since most of us are actually interested in reality, we realize that not every claim of self-identity is true. There will be surprises in Heaven we are told – both good ones and terrible ones (the terrible ones often being ostensible religious leaders themselves who thought they had all their ducks in a row). Is that a convenient way for we Christians to divide up history into the good guys and bad guys with all the good guys “on our side”? It could be, I admit that. But I’m not doing that here, and I don’t think other Christians here (well, maybe one that I can think of recently) are trying to claim that the Church hasn’t perpetrated heinous evils. I just can’t buy into the unbalanced view of history on all this that atheists trot out where they become mostly (if not completely) blind to anything good that the Church has ever done. I’d better sign this one off as I suspect we’ll be crossing posts here.
I feel like this thread is more heated than the other threads I seen. I think it would be better to lock this thread than let it go on.
True. For a while, I was reading a series of detective books set in Rome in the 70 AD era, and while fiction, were reviewed as being pretty accurate in describing day to day life. The doctors were depicted as slaves, and freed slaves were often wealthy and well integrated with society. Marcus Falco series, sort of fun if you want recreational reading.
Please tell me what I should stop saying about atheists (and by atheists, I pretty much meant anti-theists --I make a significant distinction there even if you don’t) So perhaps I should use the more specific label. But I do sincerely want to be corrected if I’m spouting falsehoods. I do realize that any generalization (as in ‘all atheists …’) will necessarily not be 100% true. But other than careless shorthand, what am I claiming about anti-theists that is “bearing false witness” as it were?
I disagree. And I think that we should struggle with slavery and other monstrosities in the OT. What we shouldn’t do is try to sugarcoat it.
I (or Steve) can continue on private messages if he wishes. I don’t like heated discussions either, and I usually end up cringing when I read my own words at a later time. Maybe it’s time for me to start working on the other tasks I was going to be doing today.
As often those difficult things are exactly what the New Artheists quote in disparaging Christianity, I agree that we should have a good grasp of what they mean, both today as well as in the past.