Right on cue — following the previous post “the bad Jesus” — comes a fundamentalist’s defence of Bible ethics:
- Yes, slavery is not wrong at all if the system is run by “good people”, no doubt the Christians. Indeed, the implication is that slavery is a good way to treat people who have been guilty of “misconduct”.
- The Bible’s laws on slavery were designed to “mitigate evil”. Of course. No-one was allowed to beat a slave so severely that he actually died within a day or two of the flogging (Exodus 21:21).
- The down side of slavery is that “in a fallen world” there is a certain “imprudence” to give non-Christians such powers over another. The worst that can happen, it seems, is that such masters might stop the slave worshiping God.
And what sort of god does the Triablogue author lament the slaves are unable to worship?
- God is allowed to commit barbaric and genocidal acts because he is God. Only God can kill a baby to punish a parent or snuff out whole populations. Only God can do such things and still be Good and worthy of our worship so that we all willingly submit ourselves to him as his slaves.
Meanwhile the Pope, the Great Whore of the Apocalypse, quite rightly protests: Pope Francis Calls Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism a Sickness.
But isn’t the sickness itself the consequence of lending public respectability to the same sort of unverifiable faith-based reasoning that Pope himself defends?