My Zen Arcade

thanks to Pharyngula and Evolved RationalistI got to read The Woman Of Virtue which made the deliciously bold claim that slavery is just plain old fine in the Bible.
While Evolved Rationalist is right in many of his points, I actually think he’s missing the point. Or, at least, not getting to it.
Of course, Jean, the virtuous woman, is also missing the point.
I want to start out by saying that, as sick as it sounds, I can respect Jean’s opinion on slavery as it relates to the Bible. The book does, in fact, condone and support slavery. If you take the text as inerrant, then slavery is A-OK! This, of course, is the kind of thing that Christians like to ignore and will ‘write off’ as being the human influence in the Bible. They also then ignore their own hypocrisy.
But what Jean misses is the difference between God and man.
Jean says that

In order to be saved you have to be a slave of Christ. God is the one who chooses us, he saves us. He buys us with a price, the blood of Jesus. We are called to do the will of God, not ours. Not unto us but to Him. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow Jesus. We are told to hate our own self and love God even before our own families. The whole New Testament sounds like slave talk to me.

And she’s right. But she misses the point.
The point is that the slave master is not a man. He is god, and I think that any definition of god would put him head and shoulders above us puny mortals. it makes sense for us to be slaves to him, the same way animals are slaves to us (sorry, PETA). But I don’t think that Man A is so much above Man B that Man A gets to have utter power over Man B and his entire life.
Further, Jean CHOSE to become a slave to god and christ (although, I suppose, a case could be made that all existence is a slave to god, but we’ll let that go). I sort of get the feeling that she imagines slaves signed up for the job. That they looked around and saw that the only decent work was being a slave. But, of course, that ISN’T what happens. Even in societies where slaves were treated with a modicum of legal rights, choice was, by definition, removed. And, as we all know, that choice never ever existed for slaves in the U.S.
Choice is everything. Ms. Jean would do well to be a slave against her will to, say, a white man who drags her around on a collar.
Choice is everything.
Ms. Jean would do well to feel herself forced to work in the fields for a few decades.
Ms. Jean would do well to have to let her Master slip into her bed whenever he feels the urge.
Ms. Jean could probably do a lot better in her understanding of slavery.
Sadly, she can’t do much better in her understanding of the Bible.

(I suppose I find it always a little sad when I, an atheist, seem to have a stronger grasp of the metaphysics of god and the Bible than a believer.)