Why Didn't Paul Condemn Slavery?

If you were God, how would you move people from their existing ideas about yourself and about how therefore to live, to more healthy ones? You're God of course, so you could simply exercise your power and change their thinking and behaviour. But you're also a God whose loving nature precludes forcing people - "Love does not insist on it's own way."

You could instruct prophets and have them speak the truth, but two issues arise - firstly, the prophets are human and will have a flawed understanding of who you are so unless you force them to speak precise words (oops can't do that), what they speak will be coloured by what they already believe. And if you do manage to get them to say something utterly radical to their hearers, they will likely be cast as heretics and killed.

So, here you are, watching people sacrifice because that's what all the nations around do - it's a belief they have imported because they have inter-married (which you advised them against, but heh, who listens to God...). Truth is, you don't want sacrifice, you want loving relationship. But even if you can find a prophet who gets it and speaks out that the people should abandon the sacrifice system (thus screwing a major part of the economy) they aren't going to last long... In fact, there probably aren't any prophets who would contemplate such an idea, so the point is moot. 

What you're left with is moving people inch by inch. You can get a prophet to believe that you don't want child sacrifice and at least that will minimise some of the atrocities. Later, you can move them further and ultimately you can reveal the full truth. But not today, not all at once.

In fact, by accommodating to where the people are at rather than insisting that they be immediately where you want them, you are demonstrating your true nature - a nature which is loving, kind and patient, a nature which gives dignity and value by not overriding choice - even when it is stupid.

This is the issue Paul and the other writers had when addressing issues that were deeply entrenched in the culture. They had to walk a tightrope: on one side the balancing act of how far you could move people in one go, on the other the desperate desire to fully reveal the truth about God. Push too far and you lost your audience and nobody moved at all. Push too little and it might appear that you were condoning the very thing you knew God hated. 

So, Paul doesn't outright condemn slavery, even though he knows it is the antithesis of a God who lovingly gives choice. He knows that if he does, in the Roman culture of his day, the message will be dismissed as nonsense and nothing will change. If he keeps on pressing the point, they will accomplish what they keep trying to do - to silence him completely. Instead, he tells Masters to treat their slaves as if they are siblings. He tells them that at times, they will need to submit to the needs of their slaves. This was as far as he could go and still be heard and have a voice.

In the same way, the Household Codes of the time, pinned up in most homes, described the relationship between a husband and wife, parents and children. That men were the absolute masters, whose word was law, was what these enshrined. Paul takes these, takes people where their understanding was at, and recasts it. Yes, he says, wives should submit to their husbands - and immediately all the men are on board. But men, here's your part. And suddenly there's disquiet - men don't have a part, other than to command... Love your wives as Christ loved the church - in short, submit yourselves to your wives. This was outrageous, enough to get Paul run out of town... but it was as far as he could go and still have some listen and respond.

What about us? Where are we at in our understanding of God and Godliness? Aren't we glad that He adapts to where we are - respects it, gives us dignity in it, loves us through it? But there's more, don't all into the trap of thinking that what you currently understand is all there is, that what you have heard is all there is of God to hear. 

Rejoice that He cares enough to come to you, and rejoice that He wants to take you from there to somewhere inexpressibly better.