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In reply to the discussion: 'Slaves loved their masters': GOP women's club president defends lawmaker's pro-slavery comments [View all]raging moderate
(4,297 posts)Last edited Sat May 8, 2021, 09:06 AM - Edit history (1)
There is a passage, I think in Deuteronomy, with this commandment: "Thou shalt not forget that THY people were slaves in Egypt!" with some directions about the fair treatment of slaves. There is another passage somewhere which says something about letting people glean enough food from your fields so they have enough to eat. Jesus once said that anybody pretending to be a Christian who beats people will face his wrath in the afterlife. And there is the book of Philemon, a letter written by Paul for a runaway slave to carry as (for some reason) he returned to his master; the letter says, pretty much, "As your spiritual director, I expect you to pardon Onesimus very kindly, remembering how kindly you hope God will pardon you for anything you may have done wrong." Simon Northup, in his book "Twelve Years a Slave," mentioned a few slave-owners he met who at least tried to be kind and honest. But he also described others who were just horrible monsters, including one guy who quoted half of the words of Jesus about beatings and twisted them into an excuse to mete out severe beatings to the people he had enslaved. This is like the guy in a movie I saw who quoted the Old Testament commandment not to take vengeance against people, in which God says, "Remember, vengeance is Mine to decide, not yours!" Angry at somebody, this guy shouted "Vengeance is mine!" as he stabbed the guy who had offended him. Most of our U.S. slave-owners seemed to skip through the Bible looking for excuses to do whatever they wanted, to whoever they wanted to mistreat. Also, as keithbvadu2 illustrates, they skipped through looking for passages to terrify the poor people they had enslaved.