Life was very hard and is very hard for some. One key difference in slavery in Rome vs America is that in Rome, slavery was essentially a job description, but did not demean the innate humanity of the slave, whereas in America, the humanity of the slave was denied, perhaps as a way to justify and rationalize how such an institution could be maintained in a Christian worldview. How else could you justify it in a nation built on the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
There was a difference for some time, between Protestant Americans and Catholic Americans. The Catholic Church has, historically, affirmed that slaves were human and entitled to the Sacraments, such as marriage. “Preserving the sanctity” of marriage encouraged keeping families together. Protestants, on the other hand, were more likely to deny slaves’ humanity. Children could be sold separately from their parents, and couples could made and separated, and used as breeding stock.
There is an other of historic genocide that should be remembered and that is the European colonisation (Catholic and Protestant) of the Americas both north and south and other parts of the world with the displacement and deaths of indigenous cultures because they are “pagan” etc and an ideology of new exodus and promised land. We are all to varying extents inheritors of that gross injustice
At the time scalping was considered barbaric. The idea that it might have a religious significance and actually be a sign of concern would never have crossed their minds.
If you look at Native American religion it has all the key elements of how to live but we condemn it because is does not have a saviour (Christ). Which is more barbaric, the religion that respects Mother Earth and Father Sky or the one that sacrifices a human on a cross? If I remember correctly the Aztecs were condemned for human sacrifice by Christians.
Not to diminish the truth of what you said, but there was genocide and plenty of it in the Americas before Columbus. This is a Biblical problem, however, it is scarcely uniquely so. To some extent, the Biblical passages are less an instigation and more a response to an existing harsh reality.
There’s more than enough blood-shed, violence, and abuse guilt in human history to go around. The principalities and powers that Paul wrote about have had a field-day on earth and, IMO, will beyond my last days.
good try but God did not invent capital punishment, humans did. God told adam and eve that if they would eat from the tree of realisation of good and evil they would die, not that he would kill them for their disobedience. Its like a father explaining his child that if they touch that high voltage cable they would die.
Its a bit like using teeny dummies, e.g. cigarettes. you tell them that if you smoke cigarettes you are more likely to die from cancer. But then there are others telling the kids that it makes them look grown up if the satisfy their nipple suction reflex by sucking on a stick of smoking plant material and there they go.
The old testament reflects the progress of humanity towards living under a monotheistic worldview that allowed them to flourish and to establish a common good. It curtailed slavery and not only introduced the death penalty for killing a slave, even your own and told you to protect runaway slaves instead as in the code of Hammurabi paying you for their return and putting you under the death penalty for failing to do so. What it shows is the humanisation of society due to the faith in a God that loves all his creation.
As such it is funny in retrospective how an error in translation makes atheists argue that the bible condones the slow killing of slaves. it is apparent in the translation in the king james bible using the term “notwithstanding” They clearly found it acceptable at the time to kill slaves slowly but tried to stay with the text saying something as “not” and “standing” it refers to “not be able to stand in” or unable to work. If you follow the rule of Koukl to -never read a bible verse - " (Koukl it :-)" - you will see the context of personal injury laws here. If you kill a free man in a brawl you will be killed, if you render him unfit to work you have to pay him until he can work again unaided. The same goes for the slave, only that you do not need to pay him because the loss is not his but your own money. If slow death was a thing it would also have been mentioned in the earlier verse on the free man. To suggest that killilng a slave slowly makes you get away with it needs a pervert thinking - or thinking of the bible as a work of perverts. The latter fits the attitude of the religiophobes judging scripture like a pubertarian judges his parents in an attempt to justify their own authority and make themselves look morally superior,
God does not take our lives but he is what gives us eternal life in him. It is the devil that tempts us to look for eternal life for our “self” as it divides us, thus supports him. The loss of the self - if not given freely - will make you go through eternal hell. Learn to be thankful for what you had in time so you can let go of it in grace. I do not wish that eternity in hell on anyone, but as it might only be seconds for those around us on the outside, the eternity we experience on the inside is what it is all about, and an eternity it is.
They clearly found it acceptable at the time to kill slaves slowly but tried to stay with the text saying something as “not” and “standing” it refers to “not be able to stand in” or unable to work. If you follow the rule of Koukl to -never read a bible verse - " (Koukl it :-)" - you will see the context of personal injury laws here. If you kill a free man in a brawl you will be killed, if you render him unfit to work you have to pay him until he can work again unaided. The same goes for the slave, only that you do not need to pay him because the loss is not his but your own money. If slow death was a thing it would also have been mentioned in the earlier verse on the free man. To suggest that killilng a slave slowly makes you get away with it needs a pervert thinking - or thinking of the bible as a work of perverts. The latter fits the attitude of the religiophobes judging scripture like a pubertarian judges his parents in an attempt to justify their own authority and make themselves look morally superior,