Many believers will argue that God had to talk this way in the Old Testament in order to "fit in" with the dominant culture. This, of course, is silly. In Christian mythology, God is the one who created humans and human culture. In addition, a God that condones the beating of slaves and the enslavement of children at any time is an abomination.
A believer might say, "Well, all of those verses are from the Old Testament and no longer apply because of Jesus." This line of rationalization prompts several obvious questions. Why would the Old Testament still be printed in the Bible if Jesus overturned it? Why would God EVER tell us to beat slaves?
The most important thing that this line of rationalization misses is that Jesus specifically states that the laws of the Old Testament still stand. In Matthew 5:18 Jesus says:
For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Then he goes on to say:
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
According to Jesus, the Old Testament is alive and well. According to Isaiah 40:8, "the word of our God stands forever." The notion that these Old Testament verses no longer apply is completely untrue according to the Bible. Christians imagine that they "no longer apply" as a way of rationalizing their religion.
Other believers rationalize that God did not write these slavery passages in the Bible. The Bible was somehow corrupted by slave-loving men. In that case, the obvious question to ask yourself is this: If the Bible has been corrupted, how can we possibly know which parts of the Bible came from God and which parts were inserted by primitive men? You have absolutely no way to know.
It is when you start thinking about the Bible in this way that you understand something very important about the Bible. Either the entire Bible really is God's Word, or the entire Bible was written by primitive men with absolutely no input from God. Here is the reason for this very strong dividing line:
If part of the Bible came from God and part came from primitive men, you do not know which is which. You did not know if Jesus really is resurrected, or if that's just a make-believe story inserted by primitive men. How do you know if God wrote the Ten Commandments or not? If any part of the Bible has been polluted by primitive men, you have to reject the whole thing. There is no way to know who wrote what, so the entire book is invalid.
There really is no middle ground and the Bible has to be an all-or-nothing book. Either the entire Bible came from God, or none of it did.
With this all-or-nothing reality about the Bible now understood, you can see that there are only two possible explanations for the slavery passages in the Bible:
• The Bible is right, and God loves slavery. The entire Bible is God's word, so these slavery passages must be God's word too. The laws in the United States and other modern nations that make slavery illegal defy God's word. Justice Scalia should be promoting slavery in exactly the same way that he promotes the Ten Commandments.
• The Bible condones slavery because the Bible was written by slave-owning men, not by God. God is imaginary.
Chances are that you have a problem with the first explanation. God would not champion the abomination that is slavery. We all know that.
Therefore, what you are left with is the second explanation.
