In our society, slavery is taught to be a moral wrong. The bible does not contradict that. It simply addresses how to handle slavery if and where it exists. Therefore it's very easy for Christians in western societies to believe owning people is morally corrupt. That's what we're all taught, pretty much from birth.

The bible openly condemns enslaving people. This is not an ambigious position. If slavery exists, however, it focuses on how treating slaves well, or treating your master well, if you are a slave, is a moral imperative. So to continue to insist that the Bible supporting slavery is an unambiguous position is false.

On the flipside, the Bible openly condemns alternative lifestyles, both in the old testament and the new. There is no interpretation of the Bible, anywhere, that indicates alternative lifestyles are anything other than living in sin. So it's just fine for a congregation to welcome people who live an alternative lifestyle into their midst, because afterall, isn't church supposed to be about helping people let go of their sin? It is NOT, however, okay for the leadership of a church to be openly living in sin, because the active hypocrisy would simply be too much.

So the bible tells you how to treat your slaves, tells slaves to obey their masters, and tells you from where you can get your slaves...... but teaches that slavery is immoral. Yeah no. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.

When the Bible wants to say something isn't allowed the authors tend to use language like "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." to say that even thinking about committing an act is equally sinful as committing that act. Not "If lust is legal you can do lust this way, but don't actively traffic sex slaves".

You must be particularly dense today. The bible FORBIDS you from enslaving people. But since slavery was everywhere when the books were written, it attempts to give a moral framework for how to deal with slaves and be a slave. Your "Where you can get your slaves" statement is an attempt to make it appear as though the bible is somehow endorsing enslaving people, yet it directly says that those who kidnap (aka enslave) are to be killed.

You can't enslave people, but you can pay money to those who do enslave people.

You can't enslave people, but your slaves are to come from those around you.

You can't enslave people, but if you do enslave people make sure to treat them nice, and if you are enslaved make sure you obey your master regardless if they break the rules.

Like I said before, the best you can get is that the bible forbids actively creating new slaves. If there was a prohibition against owning slaves it would read "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a man and hopes to have him his slave has already enslaved that man in his heart"

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 7 2019 12:45pm

You live by your own self-destructive will and desires or you submit yourself in obedience to the will of God.

It's what the bible teaches as being born-again, your new desires is for Jesus, the Holy Spirit to come into your life. Before you had self-centered desires that heavily involved sexual pleasures. St. Augustin discusses this in his "Confessions", and could perhaps be translated into a sort of addiction to let's say sugar. While you're addicted to drinking soda and eating candy daily in huge quantities, you have no desires to stop it, it gives you pleasure, perhaps in the back of your mind you're aware that you're becoming fat and tired and you feel guilt. But you continue, and for some you can't even imagine a life without these goods, you don't want it to stop. This is all very destructive to the person and society. You might have heard of Sodom and Gomorrah.

You take away the transcended morality, the personal relationship to God, the love and union of human-kind, the church - what you get is a confused and destructive society. You see the consequences of the LGBT movement and the self-centeredness of sexual-identity. The political correctness and group identity of groups like feminism.
Sex before marriage is a symptom of non-commitment. It's a shift from love to pleasure.
As Ravi Zacharias points out in the discussion of homosexuality, it's a life-style that often suffers from the same symptoms - destructive to self and society as whole. It's the type of relationships that mostly breaks apart. Where sexual diseases are much more common. Just to name a few.

People want freedom from God, but in reality they become salves to their own sin. They go from a path of relationship with Jesus, to being left utterly alone - angry at God.
As C. S. Lewis addresses - Man or Rabbit? People seem to have shifted from chivalry, from Saint, being a Man, into something much more akin to that of a rabbit. From sacred holiness to shallow desires. Another good analogy is that of a fish - you take it out of the water and it suffers a slow death unable to move freely. We're like that, slowly suffocating, longing from something this world cannot give. God loves you, so uch that he gave his life for you.

This post was edited by LazyDazy on Mar 7 2019 03:18pm

I believe that you meant to say "You can't enslave people, but if you do own slaves".

You are simply rehashing what has already been said. The point has already been made that the Bible explicitly forbids enslaving people. However, since slavery was a common thing, it did attempt to lay out a moral framework of both dealing with, and being a slave.

Nobody claimed that the Bible states that slavery itself is immoral. Western Society has decided slavery is immoral and outlawed it.

On the flipside, the bible expressly outlines alternative lifestyles as a sin. There is no alternate interpretation.

Cool. The bible doesnt say slavery itself is immoral.

Lots of modern Christians disagree with that statement and this represents a clear movement away from an unambiguous biblican teaching

You speak for modern Christians now? Lots of people believe the Earth is flat. I wouldn't consider those nutjobs to be the scientific authority, would you?