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Hi Nick, thanks very much for your comment. I agree with you that it can be frustrating when God does not make things as clear as we would like them to be, and I even found myself frustrated by many of the questions you are asking as I was writing this sermon. While I believe we can come to some reasonable conclusions - some of which I do cover in the sermon - when the Bible doesn't say things exactly in the way we want them to be said, either we have faith that God has expressed himself in the way that he has for a reason and that his reasons are good because God himself is always good, or we don't have faith in that. One question that you ask in particular really resonates with me: why would they have believed that slavery was wrong? During my time in Namibia I have actually met people who keep people in a kind of bonded servitude that we would consider modern slavery - orphan children with no families are taken in by others in villages, not as adopted children, but as young workers to look after livestock. They are fed, but they are not paid, and sometimes don't get to attend school. When confronted, the adult always says the same thing: "I am doing a good thing. This child would starve if I did not help them in this way." It is easy to tell them that they should adopt the child as one of their own and pay for all their needs, send them to school, and provide them with all the care, love and attention of a son or daughter, but they have no obligation to do that. Their response can very easily be, "Go ahead and adopt this child then." The fact is that if you ask these people "Do you support slavery?" they say "Absolutely not. Slavery is wrong. But this is different." This is why I spent a good amount of time in this sermon dealing with the reality of slavery in modern times. With our mouths we all say "Slavery is wrong. I do not support slavery." But our purchasing habits often tell a different story. The global economy is built on oppression and infected with slavery. Many of the things we own and consume have slavery in their supply chains. As people who are frustrated with the wrongness, immorality and sinfulness of slavery, are we doing everything we can to prevent our own complicity in this terrible practice? Or do we say "But this is different"?

@@thegentleman6115 Thank you for the reply pastor. It truly is appreciated! I've heard the "God must have had a reason" argument many times on slavery. But we're not talking about something like, why did my child get cancer, that's happening today. We know the history of slavery. We had slavery for thousands and thousands of years after the Pentateuch was written, with millions upon millions suffering their entire lives under the yoke of an abhorrent practice. I often ask myself how much sooner slavery would have ended if only the Bible had said slavery was wrong. We know for certain that in America no one could have held up the Bible as the justification for continuing slavery if it did. But the Bible didn't say that, and people did quote the Bible as justification for slavery. And they were right. And God knew that would happen. So we ended up having to fight a civil war over the issue. More death and suffering that God knew would happen. I just don't get it. I truly don't, and it bothers me. And it's not that "God didn't make things as clear as we would like them to be" at all. It's that, according to the Bible, God said the exact opposite! It's not at all that the commandment against slavery (or even just the statement at a minimum) wasn't "clear enough". It's that it isn't there in the first place. Anywhere. And Jesus certainly didn't clarify it. Not one word. It just makes no sense. It's no wonder people came to the conclusion that God Himself was ok with slavery. It's what the Bible says. And I'm not suggesting that God should have waived some sort of magic wand and eliminated slavery all at once. But in a litany of rules about what He approves of and wants us to do, not a word against slavery? Ever? It's not a clarity of words problem at all. It's a lack of them. He told us we shouldn't kill each other knowing it would continue at least to today. But He did tell us it was wrong. But a practice that we could have ended a thousand years ago He couldn't be bothered with? I know that sounds insulting and I'm sorry, but it is true isn't it? This is my problem. Clarity is not the issue at all. Condoning and silence is. And I understand the sentiment of the story you told above. But it's not really relevant. Taking in an orphaned child is not slavery. Even if they do have to work. Not even a little. Most slaves in OT times were either prisoners of war, or born into it to slave parents. These orphans could leave whenever they wanted, even if their options were limited. They still have freedom. They don't have to stay there their entire lives. Their children don't also have to do the same thing. It's just not a great analogy I don't think. And yes, we try to root out and eliminate slavery today wherever we find it. There are laws, the websites you noted, formal groups and international rules about it. We fight against it. Because we know it's wrong an immoral now. But it could have happened sooner. All it would have taken was one simple sentence. But we got the opposite instead. And it bothers me a lot.

Your focus seems to be particularly on the American pre-civil war type of slavery. I understand this style of slavery is very much in the forefront of our modern mindset having happened so recently and having involved the most powerful country of the modern world, but the reason I defined slavery in my sermon as broadly as "the oppression of the poor and the desperate" is because it highlights God's stand against oppression, deals with types of slavery other than the US form, especially since it is not a common type of slavery in the Old Testament, and it distracts from the common and present problem we face right now relating to the oppression of the weak and desperate. You are right that issues relating to suffering caused by human action are different to suffering caused by phenomena not caused by human action in many ways. However, my disagreement on this point is that ultimately these issues come to a common conclusion: asking why God allows them. This is the true crux of the matter. Just as in the book of Job, which deals squarely with the problem of evil and suffering, God's answer is not clear in the way we would want it to be. This is why I say that this comes down to an issue of trusting or not trusting God. There is no problem with this bothering you - it has bothered people for millenia. But that is the issue at hand here. The road you walk to get to this destination fundamentally changes your perspective on the destination itself: if you walk a road of trusting that God is the all-good all-loving truly-just God he says he is, the destination looks different to if you walk a road questioning those truths. You make the statement "how much sooner slavery would have ended" - again, I have to disagree with this statement only because slavery has not ended. As you point out, God made a specific law against murder, but we would never think that murder was going to end. In the same way, even though pretty much every country in the world has made slavery illegal in one form or another, slavery itself has not gone away. Millions still suffer under it - upwards of 40 million to this day. God stating clearly that slavery is wrong would not have ended this suffering any sooner. You say that people quoted the Bible as justification for slavery, and that is true. But I disagree with you that they were right. Why is it that the American slave owners removed great sections of the Bible from the slave Bibles they provided to their slaves - including basically the whole book of Exodus? Why would they remove whole portions of the Bible unless they believed at the very least that the Bible spoke against slavery, or could be construed in that way? Why is it that the anti-slavery movement grounded their own arguments in the Bible and its message as a whole? I believe - and with me many biblical scholars - it is because the whole message of the Bible makes it clear that slavery as a system can only wilt and die when viewed from the position of God's full message in the Bible. The pro-slavery folks at the very least knew this reading was available, and so edited their Bibles to ensure it was not available to their slaves. This is why I must disagree that the Bible is silent and condones slavery. God rescues a whole nation of people out of slavery - why did he do that if he is not against such oppression? God makes specific laws about the restrictions of what can and cannot be done during slavery - why did he do that if he was not against the oppression of the poor? God states that no-one in his promised land should be poor, and that he expects his people to be open-handedly generous to prevent poverty - why does God expect his people to eliminate poverty in the land if he is not against it? Why does God tell his people in Leviticus "love your neighbour as yourself" if not to stop then from oppressing one another? Knowing that foreign slaves were treated differently to Hebrew slaves, why does God tell his people "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner" (a refrain that starts in Exodus, and is repeated by each of the major prophets)? This is why I defined slavery as I did - the "oppression of the poor and desperate". The Bible makes it clear that God is against all oppression of the poor and the desperate. This quite importantly links with your following point where you say that "Most slaves in OT times were either prisoners of war, or born into it to slave parents." I disagree with this statement. Most ancient historians say that the majority of slaves were debt slaves - people who voluntarily put themselves into slavery for a limited time in order to pay debts and prevent their families from starving. By the time we get to the prophet Jeremiah, it seems that pretty much all slaves in Israel are Hebrew slaves of this kind, and because of this their owners are against freeing them in accordance with the Law. Those who were prisoners of war or the children of those who were enslaved in similar ways are very much in the position of the child from the story I told - they have had their fathers killed in war and their land taken from them. They are now destitute. The vast majority of people in ancient times were subsistence farmers, so the loss of land is the loss of any ability to survive. When you say that the story I have told is irrelevant, this is why I disagree: these orphans do not have the freedom to leave that you suggest. Such a freedom is a freedom to starve. The Old Testament law makes it clear that slaves who run away from their masters cannot be returned to them by force. By your definition of freedom, they were "free" to leave. But if they ran, what did they leave behind? A family who would starve without them. Where would they go? Their homeland is now controlled by their enemies.That is an empty freedom. That is why it is an important analogy - not to mention that it is happening right now, to this very day. But that story points out another very important issue: that slavery is complex, and that there is a manner in which it meets the immediate needs of the poor and desperate. This is why people would voluntarily sell themselves into slavery - because the "freedom" to starve is not much of a freedom at all. And it was easy for those who owned these slaves to feel as though they were doing their slaves a favour. The fact that you can't see how my example is analogous to the situation of ancient slavery is exactly the reason why the analogy is so important. I hope at the very least you can see my position, and why I feel I must disagree with you on a number of foundational points of history, fact and interpretation. All I can ask is that you understand my position for what it is: an attempt to show that God stands against oppression; that a proper reading of his words in the Bible make it clear that he is not pro-slavery and not even silent on slavery even if there is not a single verse that is as clean and clear as we might like; and that if we are truly bothered by the terrible damage that slavery does to people, we should be continuing to take action against it to this day, because it continues to exist and even thrive right under our noses and it can be all too easy to avoid it by feeling like it is not analogous to a specific type of slavery that we keep in our minds from more recent history.

@@thegentleman6115 No, my focus is not on America slavery at all. I use it sometimes as an example only because many people bring it up. My focus is on Biblical slavery. It's my whole and entire issue. And you can't just redefine slavery away as "the oppression of the poor and the desperate". This simply isn't what I'm talking about. If it's all you want to talk about then we can save each other a lot of time. I'm here to talk about actual chattel slavery in the Bible. People owned as property for their entire lives along with any children born to them. Not poor people, not Hebrew indentured servants (a separate category altogether), or debt servitude. Just involuntary chattel slavery. If you're not interested in that topic let me know. And you keep pointing out all the good things the Bible says about treating people well and fairly, taking care of them and loving them. And I completely agree. My problem is reconciling this with the fact that it condones chattel slavery. How can these two things be coherent together? I just don't get it. They seem, at best, at odds and contradictory. We know that chattel slavery is wrong today. Why did God not tell us it was wrong thousands of years ago? Just a quick sentence at least? And comparing having a job, or a mortgage, or your orphan to the actual chattel slavery in the Bible simply isn't a fair comparison. They are not the same thing. They just aren't, even if they have some similarities. Sorry. You really seem to be saying that chattel slavery was Gods solution to poverty and starvation in the OT. There are better answers to those problems you know. It's not, "Hey, this family is starving so let's make them, and all their generations to follow slaves as an act of charity". I don't find that answer satisfying in the least. But if I boil down your arguments it seems that this is what you're saying. And that this was God's best answer. This cannot be the answer. It's not our answer today. We may not have the ultimate answer, but we have a better answer. And slaves were not free to simply runaway to gain their freedom in the OT. This shows a total lack of understanding of the laws in the Ancient Near East at the time. Most countries or societies had similar rules. They applied to slaves of foreign nations who escape to your nation. You couldn't just buy a slave in Israel and the next day he could walk next door and be free. That is not the way it worked. Simple history and logic would show that. Again, sorry. So if we can focus on actual chattel slavery, and not try to redefine it out of existence or talk about something else I would be truly interested in the conversation. It's important to me and I'm seeking answers. I'm just not finding them. But I'll keep trying...

​ @Nick Brasing No worries, I'm happy to have a more specific conversation, but in order to assist being specific, I would be helped if you could tell me the specific Old Testament laws you are referring to which relate to chattel slavery that results in the perpetual ownership of children.

Thank you, Former Rev Moderator!