this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Fair call my dude, there are plenty of great role models out there. Out of curiosity, what specific bible verses are you referring to with regards to Jesus being pro-slavery? I’ve had a couple of reads through the New Testament and didn’t get that idea myself, but I’m acutely aware they’re long and cumbersome tomes and I might’ve missed the parts you’re referring to. I know Paul was a fucked up dude who twisted Jesus’ words into his own weird Church, but did Jesus himself ever condone slavery? I can’t remember anything like that in the Gospels.
Jesus himself never direcly mentioned slavery afaik, however, the old testament explicitly condones it and provides instruction on how to get slaves (including ones who count as your property for life) in the law, and jesus did say he didn't come to abolish the law, so...
Hey man, fair call - take from that information what you will. As a philosophical entity though, I tend to focus on the words that were attributed to Jesus and not the words he didn’t speak. If your reading of the Gospels has you believing that he was pro-slavery, there’s little I can do to convince you otherwise, but I guess I read them in a different context to you. We all take what we want from the written word. I think you’ll find that deep-diving the Gospels would convince you otherwise, as Jesus’ messages of love, care, sacrifice and hope are entirely incongruent with the idea that a person can own another person, but that’s probably just my own interpretation.
iirc from growing up in a church school and all the Bible study bits I did growing up, there's a bit in the bible where jesus says that if someone tries to kidnap and enslave someone they should pay a fine to the parents in addition to the punishment they'd receive from the law which some people twist around into trying to imply that jesus was saying kidnapping and enslaving people is ok as long as you pay a fine to the parents.