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<blockquote data-quote="Athanasius" data-source="post: 1331616" data-attributes="member: 16809">The slavery presented in the OT wasn't the chattel slavery of the antebellum south. Kidnapping, for one, was forbidden and punished by death (as was rape).&nbsp; A person could sell himself as a slave to pay off a debt. There were rules about them going free in years of Jubilee or after 6 years. The treatment of those captured in war was a more complex subject.&nbsp; In the NT, you have a church in the midst of a hostile empire and hostile Jews. While freedom is presented as superior to slavery, Paul's focus is really on contentment and growing where you are planted. It calls people away from temporal cares to realizing that life on this planet is fleeting and eternity is forever.&nbsp; This is the ground for passages like in Eph 6: &quot;Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters...in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eye service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ...With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.&nbsp; And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.&quot;One of the reasons Marxists have always hated the Bible is that it does not push political revolution (like the Zealots did), but instead spiritual transformation through Christ.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Athanasius, post: 1331616, member: 16809"] The slavery presented in the OT wasn't the chattel slavery of the antebellum south. Kidnapping, for one, was forbidden and punished by death (as was rape). A person could sell himself as a slave to pay off a debt. There were rules about them going free in years of Jubilee or after 6 years. The treatment of those captured in war was a more complex subject. In the NT, you have a church in the midst of a hostile empire and hostile Jews. While freedom is presented as superior to slavery, Paul's focus is really on contentment and growing where you are planted. It calls people away from temporal cares to realizing that life on this planet is fleeting and eternity is forever. This is the ground for passages like in Eph 6: "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters...in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eye service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ...With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him." One of the reasons Marxists have always hated the Bible is that it does not push political revolution (like the Zealots did), but instead spiritual transformation through Christ. [/QUOTE]

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